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Nokia was long gone when they were acquired. They were beaten by RIM/BB They tried gaming, didn’t succeed. Later on messaging, but didn’t have the platform (ping)
Blackberry come nowhere close to beating Nokia. It was Apple.
Nokia was incredibly political. But they were comfortably smug too. When we made games for Nokia platforms, we'd hear horror stories from engineers. Extreme management to engineer ratio (like 1 for 5 or less), non stop meetings and slide decks. One strategy that the engineers came up with to have peace was to get two or more project managers involved, so they could sest in meetings and calls all day and let people de…
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I think Apple succeeded because they were outsiders. I worked for a telco 2 years after the iPhone came out and for years I met a lot of people who denied what was happening while it was happening. Because “we know how this works”. 15 years ago a lot of telco execs thought smart phones would be a small niche for the next 10 years. And would play only a minuscule role in “emerging markets”.
Nokia N900 was pretty awesome and Maemo was a great OS. Unfortunately killed by internal politics.
But then it just sort of died. There was one more release but by then it was clear where it was going. It wasn't even released widely.
Such a sad end.
There was also conventional wisdom which had to be abandoned before the iPhone came out. Nokia phones had 1 week battery life. They were extending it to one month. The iPhone had a given the app experience available on the iPhone they could live with that. This was a bet Nokia would have never made—-they were not in the user interface business. The fact that Apple—who was not in the phone business—-entered their mark…
I think Apple succeeded because they were outsiders. I worked for a telco 2 years after the iPhone came out and for years I met a lot of people who denied what was happening while it was happening. Because “we know how this works”. 15 years ago a lot of telco execs thought smart phones would be a small niche for the next 10 years. And would play only a minuscule role in “emerging markets”.
And Apple just pushed the idea threw and got it done.
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…
Quite a humbling experience
It is easy to find such reasons now that Nokia has failed. But they ruled for a decade in part because of too many phones. They had phone at each budget range and demographic. What they missed was a move from hardware centric world to software centic. The attempts with Linux etc were too little too late.
Hardware problems are low dimensional ones…”optimize this variable (usually clock speed), make this block functionally correct.”
Software problems are high dimensional ones, especially the problem of designing an API the community will adopt. “What set of functions can I provide that will do X…and a subset of X…and a potential superset of X, on hardware generation H and H+1 and so on…all while taking security and OS privilege levels into account…” Oh and we must bow to aesthetics and programmer fashion as well as getting stuff into their hands as fast as possible…plus tools and documentation…plus outcompete everybody else in the world trying to steal the same devs as us.
Sw is what it is because it has so many degrees of freedom.
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…
Form that did not follow function, phones that looked liked some flashy "original-but-not-really-original" design study straight out of a bachelor's Product Design class.
They could never have invented the iPhone, even if they were organised differently. The culture just wasn't there. The herculean drive to simplify, beautify and improve and NOT ACCEPT HALF-BAKED CRAP that propels Apple is impossible to replicate if it is not part of your DNA and vigorously enforced from the very top.
Nokia wanted to "segment markets", Apple wanted to build the perfect phone.
Their legacy for ever will be the unbreakable and no need to charge phone.
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…
> Of course the implication with these fashion devices was that they were almost disposable, and you'd buy a new one for the next season. This would be great for Nokia's business. Unfortunately their design department seemed consumed by becoming a fashion brand and forgot that they're still a technology company. Everyone knows what happened next. Maybe Nokia was simply too early for the vision, or the execution was s…