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Nokia made too many phones

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Re: Nokia made too many phones

#221

Post by Eduard »

rcarmo wrote: post #61
benrutter wrote: post #53

> Not only the variety of devices was creating an incoherent user experience, but it also made it almost impossible to create an app market. I'm not sure I agree with this take - it seems to be based on the idea of comparing Nokia phones to something like the iPhone. But at the time these phones were all made, the experience of using a phone was: - Answer or reject incoming calls with the "answer/decline" button - Re…

Actually, large telcos had a decently profitable business setting up their own app stores and charging customers for game and ringtone/wallpaper downloads. And most of the devices that could actually do that properly were Nokias (MIDP was OK, but Nokias outsold MIDP phones ringtone-wise for an order of magnitude).

> Actually, large telcos had a decently profitable business setting up their own app stores and charging customers for game and ringtone/wallpaper downloads.

I don't remember app stores or game downloads existing up until iPhone and Android, let alone being profitable.

There was MIDP and J2ME, but they were so niche, and I'm only aware of them because of an practical course during university, circa 2008.

But maybe your regional context is different from mine (Germany).

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#222

Post by MonaroVXR »

indymike wrote: post #120
robocat wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The actual phone's usability and software were a complete afterthought. Yet it seems that Nokia phones were loved for their UI. Keypad UIs are hard to create - and competitors certainly had some toxically useless UIs. Somebody at Nokia got something right somewhere along the way? Maybe the engineers? After all presumably the engineers were eating their dogfood.

> Yet it seems that Nokia phones were loved for their UI. Keypad UIs are hard to create - and competitors certainly had some toxically useless UIs. Yes, for making calls, texting, taking pictures and changing settings, Nokia phones were really nice. The whole games (Java) and apps (WAP) side wasn't the greatest. To be fair, no one had a decent game and app experience until the iPhone and G1 (Android) hit.

Urban Asphalt on my Sony K300i was something else, Siemens MC60 was something else too

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#223

Post by acdha »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #122
pjc50 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the breakthrough happened when Apple shrunk the computer into a phone, not when Nokia grew the phone…? I think the true breakthrough was actually the iPod; the true "first" Apple phone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_ROKR#E1 was a flop, partly because they allowed the various collaboration partners to hamstring its features. The iPhone took everything in-house. > Even downloading an app or ringtone requir…

> Correct. People (rightly) hate on the restrictive and profiteering nature of the App Store, but the telcos were even worse. The now-hotly-debated 30% cut was seen as a reprieve from telco distribution and brick-and-mortar, where the retailer was taking 60-70% of the purchase price.

Not just 60+% of the price but also upfront access fees for the privilege of being listed. I worked for projects with some decent sized companies and they were interested in phone apps right up until what they saw as a proof of concept project was getting offered terms like $50-80k per carrier just for the privilege of being in the carrier’s store.

This is still better than when Qualcomm was hawking their mobile Java BREW platform around the turn of the century. We had a mid-tier brewery interested in trying a product locator but Qualcomm wasn’t willing to budge on terms which included a percentage of their total gross revenue – they were still insisting on seeing tax filings up until we walked away!

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#224

Post by seba_dos1 »

reisse wrote: post #211
usr1106 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Symbian, then called EPOC32, was developed there was no C++ standard library and no compiler that could handle exceptions without severe problems. So they had macro kludges. They were so unintuitive that some 75% of their coders could not handle strings without severe errors. It did not help that they hired coders directly out of the university (many without a degree yet) and every good coder was promoted to man…

> When Symbian, then called EPOC32, was developed there was no C++ standard library There was no standard to begin with (actually the first release of Symbian and the first C++ ISO standard are pretty close on the timeline), but STL and likes existed. Then again, Symbian was on the market until 2013, but programming for Symbian always sucked. Especially in the later years, when Nokia completely missed the advent of t…

At that point you would use Qt on Symbian though, which would be a great strategy if it was executed a few years earlier and if there was no Maemo.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#225

Post by dougSF70 »

pavlov wrote: post #19

Around 2003 I did the art direction (mostly pixel-pushing...) for a game that shipped on a Nokia model. I have no recollection of what the phone looked like, but it was part of the "lifestyle" category described in this article. It wasn't one of the craziest form factors, just a candybar phone in pretty plastic with one of those early square color screens. Nokia Design sent a massive moodboard PDF, something like 100…

I worked for a research firm that did research for Nokia Design, large scale immersion sessions in exotic locations. One project the deliverable was a set of cards 11" x 8" in a custom box. Each card depicted an insight from the research. I think Nokia Design were charged 25k for the production of these cards. For me this was peak-insanity and two years later Nokia imploded.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#226

Post by ajsnigrutin »

earnesti wrote: post #129
benedictevans wrote: post #127

Nokia thought that phones would be like cars. Most car companies have dozens of models with different characteristics and prices, and that's fine. Even BMW has 20(!) top-level model categories. Nokia was selling devices all the way from high-end camera/phones for $$$ right down to $10 (unsubsidised) with two week battery life for emerging markets. I think you can argue that 50 was too many, but 10 or 20 was reasonabl…

Personally, I think Nokia didn't really think anything. The management was just incompetent and they didn't have any real strategy. They had 100 teams of engineers each doing their own phone model, and were just too lazy to fire unnecessary teams and focus. Somewhere deep down they knew, that it is stupid way to do things. However the money kept flowing in, so who cares.

It was also slow and bloated... and china happened. Nokia guys would start making a mockup and a powerpoint for a new product, meetings, comittees, etc., and in that same time, the chinese would start selling the actual phone.

Also elop.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#227

Post by magnetowasright »

vitorgrs wrote: post #213

Nokia made a lot of failures, but having too many phones is not the one that affected them. Samsung makes like, the same amount. Xiaomi probably even more. The thing is, if you are in a developed country, you are not seeing half of Samsung phones. They launch a lot of cheaper/middle range phones on emerging market. If you want to be successful at emerging markets, you basically need a lot of phones. Because you can't…

I once had to deal with supporting a barely functional version of samsung internet browser so international users could access the product. Samsung internet's market share of the targeted international audience was mind boggling. It makes total sense for the reason you highlighted. Samsung knew their target markets for sure.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#228

Post by yen223 »

vitorgrs wrote: post #213

Nokia made a lot of failures, but having too many phones is not the one that affected them. Samsung makes like, the same amount. Xiaomi probably even more. The thing is, if you are in a developed country, you are not seeing half of Samsung phones. They launch a lot of cheaper/middle range phones on emerging market. If you want to be successful at emerging markets, you basically need a lot of phones. Because you can't…

Apple is the odd one in terms of how narrow their product lineup is. Every other electronics company have market-segmented their product into 100s of devices.

I have always wondered how a large company like Apple, with 161,000 employees operating in basically every market in the world, can maintain that level of focus.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#229

Post by magnetowasright »

HeckFeck wrote: post #76
neom wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right imo. I was a teen during peak Nokia, and I always thought it was very clever how they had a phone for everyone, and more importantly, they really signaled to the consumer via features and marketing. I was in the UK and there was a time for a couple of years when all we talked about was football and Nokia models, we all had phones, some of us had TWO phones because we inherited an old business de…

The closest competitor to Nokias during 2007-2009 I recall was the Sony Ericssons, especially the walkman phones or the slider phones. At least if you were like me and always had to have something different. I still wish I’d kept my W910i. Unreliable software that would reboot randomly, but a surprisingly sturdy piece of kit that survived many drops and skids. And it was the best camera I had for a while, delivering…

The best phones I have ever owned were Sony Ericssons. How I yearn for a slightly modernised phone from them! My favourite was one that had a slide-out play station controller. That thing was awesome for wasting time on.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#230

Post by nradov »

pavlov wrote: post #19

Around 2003 I did the art direction (mostly pixel-pushing...) for a game that shipped on a Nokia model. I have no recollection of what the phone looked like, but it was part of the "lifestyle" category described in this article. It wasn't one of the craziest form factors, just a candybar phone in pretty plastic with one of those early square color screens. Nokia Design sent a massive moodboard PDF, something like 100…

A similar type of thing has been happening to fashion wristwatch manufacturers, although at a slower pace. Customers no longer purchase as many wristwatches, and instead purchase a single Apple (or Garmin) a smartwatch plus different straps to change the look.

There is a still a strong market for luxury mens' mechanical wristwatches as jewelry. But I expect that will gradually die off as the population of men who grew up wanting a Rolex dies off.

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