4 ms·
None of those former chat companies (or parent companies) were mobile-focused at the time. Yeah, Microsoft had Windows CE, but they (like all other competitors
by PakG1 11y ago
None of those former chat companies (or parent companies) were mobile-focused at the time. Yeah, Microsoft had Windows CE, but they (like all other competitors) were unable to predict the monsters that iOS and Android would become and how much phones would change because of their ability to run big-feature 3rd-party software.
So you have all these companies who don't expect phones to become powerful functional computers, seeing they have only crappy operating systems. Why would you make chat platforms for those crappy operating systems, especially when nobody saw any reason why SMS would die? Mobile bandwidth sucked too. Finally, in the case of Microsoft, if you're playing catchup, why make it for another platform instead of your own? You have to remember this is WAY before Microsoft changed its stripes and did things like release MS Office on iOS.
In hindsight, it's all so obvious. I don't know many people who thought it was obvious at the time; yes, some people thought about it, but none of them did anything about it. I think a perfect storm of factors, including better mobile networks, better phone hardware, and new phone operating systems all collided to take everyone who was PC-centric by surprise.
- digi_owl 11y agoFrankly both MS and Nokia was doing things with WCE/Mobile/Phone and Symbian that people are raving about doing today with iOS and Android. For example, i recall a video from a Symbian convention where Nokia was showing off a phone. It was hooked up to a TV, and had a keyboard and mouse paired. You could navigate the phone UI as if it was a computer, but also operate it as a phone at the same time. This was at a time when Android could barely do video out, and that would black out the built in screen for the duration. Similarly, MS were looking into selling WCE PDAs as cheap computers for the rural poor at one point. This by proving a way to hook up inputs and an analog video out (NTSC/PAL) so they could use an available TV as screen. Frankly to this day i am flabbergasted that iPhone got the attention it got. At launch there was no app store etc. The nearest thing you had to apps were special web sites that could leave a button in the phone's launcher. And they didn't even get a special instance of the browser, firing up one would clobber whatever you were browsing at the time. Instead the Jobs sales pitch was visual voice mail, anyone remember that one? I must really applaud whoever it was that managed to talk Jobs into not going sue happy on the jailbreakers, and instead co-opt their burgeoning apps ecosystem as Apple's own.
- Natanael_L 11y agoI anticipated it the moment I saw a Sony Ericsson P800i, a little over a decade ago. That one was a smartphone running Windows Mobile (not yet called smartphones back then). I saw a lot if this coming; GPS with location sharing, high speed mobile Internet, chat, video, handheld computers with full touchscreens, apps with custom advanced interfaces adapted for their own set of features. But back then I was teenager without the focus and motivation to learn programming, etc, so unfortunately I'm not much better off today for having spotted that trend early... If I had a time machine, I would have taken that time learning programming when I first thought about if I should or not (I guess I failed to anticipate the commercialization of it all!). On the other hand I've always been an early adopter with broad knowledge about everything technical, which is better than nothing.
- digi_owl 11y agoActually the P800 ran Symbian, using a UI called UIQ. And they were very much called smartphones back then. Hell, the media pundits had to contort the definition of the term massively so that the iPhone could fit for the first year or so.