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Nokia made too many phones

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Re: Nokia made too many phones

#291

Post by panick21_ »

Erratic6576 wrote: post #6
kakoni wrote: post #4

> It’s interesting to see how Nokia succumbed to the bad strategy that had almost killed Apple in ‘97. Well, here is one take; > Nokia’s ultimate fall can be put down to internal politics. In short, Nokia people weakened Nokia people and thus made the company increasingly vulnerable to competitive forces. When fear permeated all levels, the lower rungs of the organisation turned inward to protect resources, themselve…

I like to think that it was Microsoft which destroyed Nokia from the inside in order to make Windows phone great at last https://slate.com/technology/2013/09/microsoft-nokia-deal-a-...

Not really. It was the Nokia board that wanted to be taken over. They were looking for a mark, and Microsoft walked right into it. Nokia dropped the phone division on Microsoft and Microsoft then had to write it down.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#292

Post by panick21_ »

Zigurd wrote: post #172

This is debatable for a couple reasons: First, it is similar to saying Toyota makes too many cars. Nokia, like Toyota, made phones that fit a wide range of markets, and in each Nokia series, the insides and software were the same. Second, Nokia's problems crescendoed with Stephen Elop and the not-ready-for-prime-time Windows phone OSs that Elop insisted replace viable alternatives Nokia developed in-house. In light o…

Elop was invited by the board. The Nokia board saw the end of the phones and wanted to dump the whole thing, and Microsoft was their mark. This wasn't a hostile takeover, rather a invited takeover.

While I love the N9, by that point it would have been hard to compete with Android. Just as it was hard for Microsoft.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#293

Post by guappa »

shp0ngle wrote: post #280
guappa wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also didn't support MMS, so you couldn't send your photos. Unlike every other phone with a camera that existed at the time.

hacker news was already around back then. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1187049600&dateRange=custom&... funny to read today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16394

Odd that people were concerned about typing in phone numbers.

I had written a visual basic program when I was a school kid to dial using the modem and avoid having to remember phone numbers. Smartphones didn't exist at the time.

Also I had a friend who had an iphone and claimed that the assisted writing was as fast as typing on a computer keyboard. So we raced. I won, by far.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#294

Post by strken »

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.

Late J2ME apps were quite good. I remember having Opera Mini (which was a surprisingly good browser), Google Maps, an ebook reader, a GBA emulator, and even a video player which could play down-converted video at reasonable framerates.

This wasn't Nokia, but I believe the experience on their phones was about the same.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#295

Post by pjc50 »

scarface_74 wrote: post #201
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…

People could care less about the app stores 30% cut. Developers care. Even then 90% of App Store revenue comes from pay to win games and whales buying loot boxes and coins. You’ll have to excuse me if I can’t manage a tear for them.

I can't believe I have to write "developers are people too" on Hacker News.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#297

Post by StephenJGL »

This is a proven method of market discovery used by companies like Sony. If you watch Sony in early market entry they make a lot of different models. Then they let the market tell them which features sell. Then they collapse the models. Yes, it's expensive. It's also incredibly effective.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#298

Post by pjc50 »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #161
hasmanean wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They brought a plastic case to a machined metal fight.

Unlike Apple Nokia built their devices to resist breaking and be 100% serviceable down to the smallest parts. Apple uses metal because it's significantly heavier than plastic and makes phones heavy enough to shatter glass screens and damage their internals when dropped. Any iPhone could replace its metal housing with an equally strong polymer and become exponentially more difficult to break.

The scratchproof "gorilla glass" (a Dow Corning invention) is extremely shatter resistant. Metal is of course more shatter resistant than polymer.

There was a tragic brief era when we might have had synthetic sapphire / "transparent aluminium" screens: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/3/18528920/sec-charges-apple... (sapphire is aluminium oxide)

The 3210 era devices had easily replaceable polymer covers; they definitely did break and scratch, but these operated as disposable ablative shielding for the phone itself. Which also had a much smaller screen that was away from the corners of the device. So what people do nowadays on all of these devices is add third party cases to absorb the everyday wear .. but you can always take the case off for a "dress" phone, which like party or formalwear trades durability for looking good.

The Nokia 1040 (Windows, glass screen) was also pretty good at damage resistance. My wife stuck with hers until the Flash started wearing out round about five years in.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#299

Post by baud147258 »

I remember somewhere in the late 00s/early 10s a blog post that was saying exactly the same thing, putting the blame on a market segmentation that was too agressive (and contrasting with Apple's direction, ofc)
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