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Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

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Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#321

Post by dismalaf »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #93

I was there as this played out. Nokia had a lot of good software and software engineers but not the management structure to do anything good with that. Nokia was huge as an organization and parts of that organization recognized the threat early on. The problem was at the board and executive level. These people had a blind spot for software. They thought they were still in the electronics business. Lots of people with…

Ugh, Meego was so good. I still remember watching the presentation, then Nokia tanking when it was announced they were switching to Windows.

Imagine a world where Meego, a proper Linux, took over instead of Android. And I like Android as a product, but the software stack is so strange...

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#322

Post by kergonath »

bombcar wrote: post #228
Ensorceled wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who were at RIM at the time, including someone who was in the room when they passed around the first iPhone they got a hold of. They firmly believed the iPhone was dead on arrival both because the product was "terrible" (no keyboard, no battery life, etc. etc.) and, more importantly, because they were so confident Apple would not be able to pull off the networking required and people wouldn't be able to…

People forget just how powerful RIM was in the business world, and the keyboard WAS a real stickler (even today, you can go to any large conference and ask "who here misses the blackberry keyboard" and you'll get a decent show of hands). It was a real issue and a real opportunity - I remember for years after the iPhone came out the blackberry die-hards were insisting that they'd easily be able to make something that…

> I remember for years after the iPhone came out the blackberry die-hards were insisting that they'd easily be able to make something that was "iPhone like with a blackberry keyboard"

Part of the problem is that there were not enough of them to sustain a company the size of RIM. The vast majority of the market did not care and instead valued the other side of the tradeoff, the things you can do with a touch screen but not with a physical keyboard.

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#323

Post by GoToRO »

ryandrake wrote: post #274
agumonkey wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people had a blind spot for software. They thought they were still in the electronics business I believe Sony failed to transition for similar reasons. They really owned the hardware era with its own kind of ui, pattern ... but everything they did in software was lacking.

So many manufacturing companies fail at software. They think of software like it's any other component on the BOM. As if it's just like a screw or a piece of molded plastic: Build the cheapest "software part" that meets the requirements (or buy it from a "supplier"), and then bolt it onto the product some time during assembly. They don't think of software as a major component of their brand. They don't think of softw…

This is exactly how a german-car-maker manager put it: just an item on a BOM. Their cars have hilarious bad software.

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#324

Post by [deleted] »

cs702 wrote: post #59

2007. The presentation reads like an eerily accurate crystal-ball prediction of what actually happened in subsequent years. Evidently, Nokia executives knew well in advance what the iPhone could do to their company. Evidently, they knew they needed to do "something" to avoid an implosion of their mobile-phone business. Evidently, despite their prescience and best efforts, they were unable to avoid disaster. It's as i…

[deleted]

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#325

Post by aanet »

anshumankmr wrote: post #50
rukshn wrote: post #7

Alternative link to the presentation from a post on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hypponen_the-nokia-design-arc...

Post linked has one slide, the other commenter has shared this: https://nokia-apple-iphone-was-launched-presentation.tiiny.s...

uhh.. looks like the PDF has disappeared?

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#327

Post by jandrese »

unwiredben wrote: post #241

I was at Palm when the iPhone launched, and one note from this analysis summed up Apple's new power in the market and how they really changed the landscape. "Cingular has allowed Apple to launch a device with WLAN and inbuilt services" At that time, the carriers controlled so much of the cell phone experience. We certainly would have loved to have launched Palm Treo phones with WiFi radios, but our carrier partners w…

I read that as a failure of Palm's management, notably the ones that were negotiating with phone carriers. Jobs isn't the only guy who could have negotiated that kind of deal. Apple was a second run computer company that had almost no previous phone experience. They were not exactly negotiating from a position of strength, and the fact that only one carrier took them up on the offer shows just how tough it was.

It sounds like they really needed to say "Stop. We are the ones building the phone, you are the ones providing the service. We don't tell you how to build towers, you don't tell us how to build the handset, at least not the user facing part of the handset."

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#328

Post by dev_daftly »

Tommix11 wrote: post #253
masom wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia also had a ex-Microsoft exec ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop ) that had the goal of ensuring Windows Phone would succeed, and tanked Nokia with it. I was on the DVLUP project where Nokia and Microsoft attempted to inject energy into windows phone app development. We could see the tension between the two companies as we were a 3rd party contracted by Nokia to build the platform. The Nokia exec we we…

I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that they had hired Elop and was concentrating on Windows phones. I immediately knew that was the end. Unbelievably incompetent by the board.

I think it was actually a good idea. I think they correctly predicted the Android market and saw Windows Phone was a good way to differentiate their phones from everybody else. If you look at the history of Android manufacturers, it was a long slog of brands trading off popularity and hardly making any profit until Samsung eventually became the only mainstream player.

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#329

Post by atourgates »

unwiredben wrote: post #241

I was at Palm when the iPhone launched, and one note from this analysis summed up Apple's new power in the market and how they really changed the landscape. "Cingular has allowed Apple to launch a device with WLAN and inbuilt services" At that time, the carriers controlled so much of the cell phone experience. We certainly would have loved to have launched Palm Treo phones with WiFi radios, but our carrier partners w…

The Pre was absolutely rad - and to this day the only phone I miss from a UI perspective, and the only UX and hardware that I thought had a chance of "out Apple'ing Apple".

The hardware was very well done, and I could type faster on my Pre than I still can today on any screen. I was never a Blackberry person, but I expect it was a simlar experience.

Even at launch, WebOS was a pleasure to use, and the architecture of essentially easy-to-make installable web apps was revolutionary at the time. It's a damn shame it never made it further than it did.

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#330

Post by sangnoir »

afavour wrote: post #231
jorvi wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The iphone was solidly in charge by then Nit: the iPhone was only "in charge" for a brief year or two, and then Android ate its lunch in terms of marketshare. What is very interesting is that Apple has displayed twice over ( MacBooks and iPhones) that a minority marketshare can capture the vast majority of profits in that market. OEMs like HTC and LG made a few bucks profit off of any phone, sometimes even losing m…

I was a day one Android fan (got the Nexus One) but I'd actually debate what "in charge" means... to me it doesn't necessarily mean dominating market share. I think the iPhone defined the touch-based smartphone when it came out and continues to do so. These days Android has a much more cohesive concept (in the form of Material UI and so on) but in the early days it was just a hodgepodge mess of ideas, even if it domi…

> ...in the early days it was just a hodgepodge mess of ideas, even if it dominated the market.

and it was glorious; the intent-system and Notifications drawers were Androids calling card. Intents were a blessing and a curse: being able to replace apps was great, but the variety in design language, not so much.

Being able to reach into apps' storage was insecure, but freeing one's data from SQLite files was fantastic.

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