3 ms·
I think it's more complicated than that. It seems like a lot of markets -- maybe most -- go through consolidation, and the more the market is one whose players
by chipotle_coyote 6y ago
I think it's more complicated than that.
It seems like a lot of markets -- maybe most -- go through consolidation, and the more the market is one whose players benefit from network effects -- like, say, incompatible computing platforms -- the more rapid this consolidation is. Look at the personal computing market: there were a lot of players in the late 1970s and early 80s, and nobody was an obvious winner. Yet by 1990, the IBM PC already had over 80% of the market, Apple was struggling, and other once-major players were on the verge of bankruptcy or had thrown in the towel and started making PC clones. And none of that happened because IBM was "crushing any attempt to take their turf".
Frankly, I really didn't expect a repeat of that in the mobile space. It was clear to me in 2007 that the iPhone was going to be a big deal, but it wasn't clear to me that Android was going to take off the way it did, in no small part because I didn't expect everyone else to dramatically collapse in three years. One of the other players was Microsoft, for heaven's sake. Nokia was a market leader and had MeeGo almost ready to go (right? right?). Blackberry had bought QNX and were surely going to leverage that talent into a next-generation OS (right? right?).
The market as it exists now is down to two players, but this is kind of the confounding factor here: neither Apple nor Google got to their position in the mobile phone market by "playing dirty." Apple got there because people keep buying iPhones; Google got there because just about everyone who isn't Apple went with Android.
So supernova87a is, I suspect, fundamentally correct that we got to where we are now because of market dynamics. It's arguable that because the market now is down to two players -- and is orders of magnitude larger than it was a decade ago -- that there are antitrust concerns around app stores, although I think that's actually even more complicated.
- pjmlp 6y agoMicrosoft and Nokia were victims of their own internal politics. As former Nokia employee, the whole Symbian vs Linux was a big deal to what happened, hence why the first Linux tablets lacked any kind of phone capabilities, despite us in internal road shows about future devices providing that as feedback. The Symbian dev community, despite not being in love with Symbian C++, what spoiled everything was the continuous reboot in dev tools (Metrowerks with Perl scripts, 2 Eclipse based IDEs, Qt) and then came the burning memo telling them that the efforts to go through all those Symbian reboots were in vain, and it was time to start from scratch with .NET (Silverlight/XNA). Microsoft, for rebooting the platform multiple times, PocketPC/Windows CE into the constrained Silverlight/XNA of WP7, followed up by a complete reboot for WP 8, yet another one in WP 8.1 to align a bit more the platforms (UAP), followed by the UWP rewrite once more when Windows 10 came out. Ah and in the process they failed to uphold to their promises of which devices would get the updates for the new OS versions. Yet, despite all the dev and consumer anger in the WP eco-system regarding those decisions, they managed to slow and steady arrive to 10% market in Europe, which could have kept increasing if they were willing to bleed a bit more, while sorting out their politics. Meanwhile Windows slowly owns the tablet market, at least here in Europe, everyone that wants a tablet with detachable keyboard and isn't willing to pay Apple prices, goes either with 2-1 laptops or convertible ones, which with the ongoing Reunion project roadmap means devs are back with a Windows 7 tablet programming model alongside an improved COM for the ride (yet another reboot to add up to the previous ones). And this mostly because how much Google tries, most apps for Android tablets are just phone apps running on bigger screen, while Microsoft has learned to take advantage of their market share in laptops as the hardware turns into better tablets.
- jariel 6y agoNokia failed for the same reason BlackBerry did - they never were able to make the leap to the new market. Nokia was optimized for another field entirely, it's rare that companies can pivot. The issues you highlight are side effects of that.
- pjmlp 6y agoWhat new market? App Stores? Not being a well received brand in US? They were already on Symbian before iPhone was even an idea. And in what concerns Android, their phones (yes manufactured via HMD) are one of the best in what concerns updates, with their traditional hardware. With one of the offices being the Espoo building that I visited so many times.
- jariel 6y agoNokia never made the full shift to smartphones and everything about it's early smart phone offers were derived from feature phones. BlackBerry was an 'in between' and was really good at the killer feature 'email' but nothing else. Microsoft was too late with a decent offer. Nokia was a feature phone company that died with the feature phone era.
- pjmlp 6y agoiPhone v1.0 was a toy when placed against any Symbian phone. Calling devices with touch screens, C++, Java (ME + Symbian extensions), Flash, Python and a Web Runtime a feature phone. Not only it is rediculous, it proves how little you understand Nokia's offering before iPhone was even an idea. Nokia not only is alive, it owns Bell Labs nowadays.
- girvo 6y agoI miss my Nokia N9. An amazing handset. I honestly hoped it would’ve been Nokia’s future.
- rdsnsca 6y agoThe big killer for Microsoft was Google totally refusing to do any app support for it.
- jariel 6y agoIt doesn't matter if they got there or not by 'playing dirty'. The entered smartphone market as it was starting with $50B in the bank and unlimited resources etc..