7 ms·

Sure, you could go back to 1996 and say the Nokia Communicator was the first smartphone. I think what he meant by "Apple created THE smartphone" is that Apple

Sure, you could go back to 1996 and say the Nokia Communicator was the first smartphone. I think what he meant by "Apple created THE smartphone" is that Apple created the first mass-market smartphone which was desired by regular consumers (rather than niche buyers).

pjmlp 7y ago
So Europeans and Asians using Symbian, J2ME and Docomo handsets weren't regular consumers?
- heyoni 7y ago
  Why are you pretending you don’t understand what he’s trying to say. Those aren’t phones most people have heard of, and when they did exist, living without them was easy.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Because everyone outside US have heard of them. US was the only market where Nokia had troubles selling their Symbian/J2ME phones for example. Should I start digging market shares figures of feature phones before iPhone came to be?
    - sbuk 7y ago
      > Because everyone outside US have heard of them. They really haven't. > Should I start digging market shares figures of feature phones before iPhone came to be? At this juncture, yes.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        By all means, is 64 million shippments in 2006, the year before iPhone came to the market enough? https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/64-million-smart-phones-shipped-worldwide-2006 https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/64-million-smart-phones-shi... Incredible how iOS fanbase tries to rewrite history.
        sbuk 7y ago
        You're moving the goalposts massively. No one is claiming that the first gen iPhone outsold anything or anyone. More importantly, that data is for 2006, the N95, of which you claim everyone and their dog knew about, didn't become available until march 2007. Your claim that the N95 was massively popular is also wide of the mark. Nokia had around 30 SKU's available to buy at the time, with the N95 being one of the very top end devices. All your link shows is that Nokia had the lions share of revenue and market share. Well, yeah. No one with half a brain would argue that. TL;DR: Look at how Nokia's revenue collaspsed post September 2007. Look at how Android and Nokia's decision to go all in on Windows Mobile accelerated it. Then tell me that the iOS fanbase is trying to rewrite history...
        pjmlp 7y ago
        You are the one making those claims as otherwise it weakens the iOS über all assertion. N95 was just one example of the millions of Symbian, J2ME and PocketPC/WindowsCE smartphones being shipped before iOS became reality. Nokia's revenue only collapsed due to the way Elop drove the company to the ground as means to get the bonus on his contract. As the Finn press later discovered.
        sbuk 7y ago
        > You are the one making those claims as otherwise it weakens the iOS über all assertion. Nonsense. > N95 was just one example of the millions of Symbian, J2ME and PocketPC/WindowsCE smartphones being shipped before iOS became reality. And none of them are around now. More to the point, all but a handful could be considered 'smart'. We could debate what smart is, but ultimately it's moot. Pre 2007, 'smart' devices were by and large business oriented, post September 2007, they started to become the norm; first with iOS, closely followed by Android. These facts are incontrovertible. The point you are trying to make is utterly wrong. The original assertion was that Apple 'invented' the smartphone is equally wrong. However, Apple did play a significant role in defining what a smartphone is, Nokia and Symbian not so much. The proof? Where are they now? > Nokia's revenue only collapsed due to the way Elop drove the company to the ground as means to get the bonus on his contract. As the Finn press later discovered. Elop merely dealt the final blow. Nokia's sales declined post 2008 when they peaked with a global share of ~40%. Elop Joined late 2010...
  - Crinus 7y ago
    Growing up everyone had a Nokia phone. The Nokia 6600 specifically (which had a multitasking, internet enabled OS with IMO the best J2ME implementation and also allowed you to install arbitrary native programs either from a PC or download them from the Internet) was a very popular device. To anyone who used this phone, smartphones were already a thing long before iPhone was introduced. Of course iPhone changed things a lot, though IMO many were for the worse (for example i really liked using the tiny joystick on my 6600 for playing games).
    - heyoni 7y ago
      All those things were cool about it, but those phones were going to remain business-y devices for a loooong time if someone hadn't come along and replaced resistive touch and add a decent UI.
  - p_l 7y ago
    When iPhone arrived in Europe it was disappointment for people who used smartphones. It had few things going for it (better web browser than default IE Mobile on PDAs, better screen than many), and long list of "works worse". Starting with the basic things that everyone who invested in smartphones at the time wanted, i.e. email, going through hilariously high cost (the reason behind it known only to insiders - Apple was in full rent-seeking mode, and required a portion of your phone bill as payment for being able to use iPhone. Not joking, that's why there were special iPhone-only tarriffs), it lacked physical keyboard, copy&paste, and a bunch of other things. iPhone 2G was also slower at running iOS 1.0 "applications" than higher end Nokia symbian phones (that used the same webkit core in browser). Symbian devices were well known, and were more commonly considered "smartphones", as "palmphones" generally only got interest from people who really needed the power (a bit of chicken&egg issue).
    - machello13 7y ago
      What is this weird narrative that pre-iPhone smartphones didn't exist in the US, and somehow only Europe and Asia had these "advanced" devices? We had smartphones too. All the negatives you mentioned (no physical keyboard, copy & paste, etc.) were brought up by lots of people when the iPhone was first released. Ultimately it didn't matter, and the iPhone was a breakout hit and every single smartphone on sale today is based on its core design.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Nokia and Sony failure to make an impact on US while the rest of the world was enjoying their Symbian and J2ME handsets.
      - marcoseliziario 7y ago
        Man, everybody had blackberrys in the US. It was a huge success. Apple took a risk decision of having a purely touch-based smartphone, and the bet paid awesomely. But by any other aspects, the blackberry was a more useful and powerful device for professionals than the IPhone.
        7y ago
- t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
  Docomo phones were(are?) a Japan-only irrelevance. Granted - Symbian was a thing back then, but can you buy a Symbian phone today? Consumers voted with their money, and they wanted iPhones, not Nokias. Fast forward to 2019, Nokia is nothing more than a trademark - making generic Android phones on one hand, and cashing in on nostalgia with their feature phones on the other hand.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    That doesn't change the fact that Apple did NOT create the smartphone.
    - htfu 7y ago
      But they wrote "Apple created THE smartphone.", not "Apple CREATED the smartphone." To me those mean entirely different things.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        A better marketed PDA with phone capabilities?
    - t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
      I didn't say they created the smartphone. They created THE smartphone - the definitive item.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        You mean the were more successful marketing a PDA with phone capabilities? I guess they got something out of Newton.
        t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
        Yes. Apple successfully marketed a product which was tested by Nokia engineers and deemed to be inferior. What part of 'consumers voted with their money' don't you understand?
Marazan 7y ago
The N95 sold more units than the original iPhone.
- t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
  And the iPhone is still around, whereas Symbian isn't. Possibly proving that iOS (and the hardware it runs on) was what consumers wanted in the mid-2000's and onward?
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Had Elop not destroyed Symbian business, history would have taken a different path, nothing to do with iOS. https://insights.dice.com/2013/09/25/a-timely-revision-of-elops-burning-platform-memo/ https://insights.dice.com/2013/09/25/a-timely-revision-of-el... Symbian with Qt was already on the right path to win the hearts of many developers.
    - t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
      Symbian was in trouble in 2008 - two years before Elop became CEO of Nokia. It wasn't user-friendly. Ditto for Blackberry. iOS and Android wiped the floor with Symbian and BB in terms of ease-of-use. "..the inscrutable difficulty of navigating menus on Nokia's Symbian phones": https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/10/10/how-apples-iphone-rapidly-destroyed-nokias-world-leading-symbian-platform https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/10/10/how-apples-iphone...
      - dijit 7y ago
        This is an infuriating topic to read about because everybody seems to be varying levels of uninformed. I worked at Nokia's R&D facility in Ruoholahti briefly in 2011, so I got inducted into the inner sanctum of history regarding the phones. Symbian was designed for very anemic hardware, there were very tight constraints it's a marvel that the thing ran on what it did. The iPhones first CPU was at least an order of magnitude (and then double it again) more powerful than what Symbian was designed on. the iPhone, famously did not meet any of the internal tests at Nokia, no drop test, battery life tests nor usability tests for blind people passed at all. Basically from all avenues it looked dead on arrival. However, it was obviously _not_ dead on arrival, and so Nokia started looking at things from a "UX first" perspective, the engineering culture was still around though, so, not a major "product" team or graphics design team to be found on the floors of the R&D facility. But they started this effort _after_ the iPhone had launched, and these projects take a long time. That's what Maemo was. And it was later merged with Intels efforts and named MeeGo. And everyone who used that system seemed to really enjoy it. It was, indeed, killed in its crib by Elop. Although to be truly fair, the iPhone and Android were very incumbent at that point. Symbian was considered obsolete or deprecated internally, not for lack of very intelligent design, but because people seemed to care for things other than that Nokia had believed people cared for.
marcoseliziario 7y ago
In which cave you were living before the iphone launch that you never heard about the blackberry?

pjmlp 7y ago

So Europeans and Asians using Symbian, J2ME and Docomo handsets weren't regular consumers?

heyoni 7y ago
Why are you pretending you don’t understand what he’s trying to say. Those aren’t phones most people have heard of, and when they did exist, living without them was easy.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Because everyone outside US have heard of them. US was the only market where Nokia had troubles selling their Symbian/J2ME phones for example. Should I start digging market shares figures of feature phones before iPhone came to be?
  - sbuk 7y ago
    > Because everyone outside US have heard of them. They really haven't. > Should I start digging market shares figures of feature phones before iPhone came to be? At this juncture, yes.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      By all means, is 64 million shippments in 2006, the year before iPhone came to the market enough? https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/64-million-smart-phones-shipped-worldwide-2006 https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/64-million-smart-phones-shi... Incredible how iOS fanbase tries to rewrite history.
      - sbuk 7y ago
        You're moving the goalposts massively. No one is claiming that the first gen iPhone outsold anything or anyone. More importantly, that data is for 2006, the N95, of which you claim everyone and their dog knew about, didn't become available until march 2007. Your claim that the N95 was massively popular is also wide of the mark. Nokia had around 30 SKU's available to buy at the time, with the N95 being one of the very top end devices. All your link shows is that Nokia had the lions share of revenue and market share. Well, yeah. No one with half a brain would argue that. TL;DR: Look at how Nokia's revenue collaspsed post September 2007. Look at how Android and Nokia's decision to go all in on Windows Mobile accelerated it. Then tell me that the iOS fanbase is trying to rewrite history...
        pjmlp 7y ago
        You are the one making those claims as otherwise it weakens the iOS über all assertion. N95 was just one example of the millions of Symbian, J2ME and PocketPC/WindowsCE smartphones being shipped before iOS became reality. Nokia's revenue only collapsed due to the way Elop drove the company to the ground as means to get the bonus on his contract. As the Finn press later discovered.
        sbuk 7y ago
        > You are the one making those claims as otherwise it weakens the iOS über all assertion. Nonsense. > N95 was just one example of the millions of Symbian, J2ME and PocketPC/WindowsCE smartphones being shipped before iOS became reality. And none of them are around now. More to the point, all but a handful could be considered 'smart'. We could debate what smart is, but ultimately it's moot. Pre 2007, 'smart' devices were by and large business oriented, post September 2007, they started to become the norm; first with iOS, closely followed by Android. These facts are incontrovertible. The point you are trying to make is utterly wrong. The original assertion was that Apple 'invented' the smartphone is equally wrong. However, Apple did play a significant role in defining what a smartphone is, Nokia and Symbian not so much. The proof? Where are they now? > Nokia's revenue only collapsed due to the way Elop drove the company to the ground as means to get the bonus on his contract. As the Finn press later discovered. Elop merely dealt the final blow. Nokia's sales declined post 2008 when they peaked with a global share of ~40%. Elop Joined late 2010...
- Crinus 7y ago
  Growing up everyone had a Nokia phone. The Nokia 6600 specifically (which had a multitasking, internet enabled OS with IMO the best J2ME implementation and also allowed you to install arbitrary native programs either from a PC or download them from the Internet) was a very popular device. To anyone who used this phone, smartphones were already a thing long before iPhone was introduced. Of course iPhone changed things a lot, though IMO many were for the worse (for example i really liked using the tiny joystick on my 6600 for playing games).
  - heyoni 7y ago
    All those things were cool about it, but those phones were going to remain business-y devices for a loooong time if someone hadn't come along and replaced resistive touch and add a decent UI.
- p_l 7y ago
  When iPhone arrived in Europe it was disappointment for people who used smartphones. It had few things going for it (better web browser than default IE Mobile on PDAs, better screen than many), and long list of "works worse". Starting with the basic things that everyone who invested in smartphones at the time wanted, i.e. email, going through hilariously high cost (the reason behind it known only to insiders - Apple was in full rent-seeking mode, and required a portion of your phone bill as payment for being able to use iPhone. Not joking, that's why there were special iPhone-only tarriffs), it lacked physical keyboard, copy&paste, and a bunch of other things. iPhone 2G was also slower at running iOS 1.0 "applications" than higher end Nokia symbian phones (that used the same webkit core in browser). Symbian devices were well known, and were more commonly considered "smartphones", as "palmphones" generally only got interest from people who really needed the power (a bit of chicken&egg issue).
  - machello13 7y ago
    What is this weird narrative that pre-iPhone smartphones didn't exist in the US, and somehow only Europe and Asia had these "advanced" devices? We had smartphones too. All the negatives you mentioned (no physical keyboard, copy & paste, etc.) were brought up by lots of people when the iPhone was first released. Ultimately it didn't matter, and the iPhone was a breakout hit and every single smartphone on sale today is based on its core design.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Nokia and Sony failure to make an impact on US while the rest of the world was enjoying their Symbian and J2ME handsets.
    - marcoseliziario 7y ago
      Man, everybody had blackberrys in the US. It was a huge success. Apple took a risk decision of having a purely touch-based smartphone, and the bet paid awesomely. But by any other aspects, the blackberry was a more useful and powerful device for professionals than the IPhone.
      - 7y ago
t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
Docomo phones were(are?) a Japan-only irrelevance. Granted - Symbian was a thing back then, but can you buy a Symbian phone today? Consumers voted with their money, and they wanted iPhones, not Nokias. Fast forward to 2019, Nokia is nothing more than a trademark - making generic Android phones on one hand, and cashing in on nostalgia with their feature phones on the other hand.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  That doesn't change the fact that Apple did NOT create the smartphone.
  - htfu 7y ago
    But they wrote "Apple created THE smartphone.", not "Apple CREATED the smartphone." To me those mean entirely different things.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      A better marketed PDA with phone capabilities?
  - t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
    I didn't say they created the smartphone. They created THE smartphone - the definitive item.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      You mean the were more successful marketing a PDA with phone capabilities? I guess they got something out of Newton.
      - t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
        Yes. Apple successfully marketed a product which was tested by Nokia engineers and deemed to be inferior. What part of 'consumers voted with their money' don't you understand?

Marazan 7y ago

The N95 sold more units than the original iPhone.

t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
And the iPhone is still around, whereas Symbian isn't. Possibly proving that iOS (and the hardware it runs on) was what consumers wanted in the mid-2000's and onward?
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Had Elop not destroyed Symbian business, history would have taken a different path, nothing to do with iOS. https://insights.dice.com/2013/09/25/a-timely-revision-of-elops-burning-platform-memo/ https://insights.dice.com/2013/09/25/a-timely-revision-of-el... Symbian with Qt was already on the right path to win the hearts of many developers.
  - t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
    Symbian was in trouble in 2008 - two years before Elop became CEO of Nokia. It wasn't user-friendly. Ditto for Blackberry. iOS and Android wiped the floor with Symbian and BB in terms of ease-of-use. "..the inscrutable difficulty of navigating menus on Nokia's Symbian phones": https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/10/10/how-apples-iphone-rapidly-destroyed-nokias-world-leading-symbian-platform https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/10/10/how-apples-iphone...
    - dijit 7y ago
      This is an infuriating topic to read about because everybody seems to be varying levels of uninformed. I worked at Nokia's R&D facility in Ruoholahti briefly in 2011, so I got inducted into the inner sanctum of history regarding the phones. Symbian was designed for very anemic hardware, there were very tight constraints it's a marvel that the thing ran on what it did. The iPhones first CPU was at least an order of magnitude (and then double it again) more powerful than what Symbian was designed on. the iPhone, famously did not meet any of the internal tests at Nokia, no drop test, battery life tests nor usability tests for blind people passed at all. Basically from all avenues it looked dead on arrival. However, it was obviously _not_ dead on arrival, and so Nokia started looking at things from a "UX first" perspective, the engineering culture was still around though, so, not a major "product" team or graphics design team to be found on the floors of the R&D facility. But they started this effort _after_ the iPhone had launched, and these projects take a long time. That's what Maemo was. And it was later merged with Intels efforts and named MeeGo. And everyone who used that system seemed to really enjoy it. It was, indeed, killed in its crib by Elop. Although to be truly fair, the iPhone and Android were very incumbent at that point. Symbian was considered obsolete or deprecated internally, not for lack of very intelligent design, but because people seemed to care for things other than that Nokia had believed people cared for.

marcoseliziario 7y ago

In which cave you were living before the iphone launch that you never heard about the blackberry?