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From the outside it looked like a setup. Nokia had all sorts of structural issues, true, and a bewildering array of self-competing products, but it also had a
by Nursie 6y ago
From the outside it looked like a setup.
Nokia had all sorts of structural issues, true, and a bewildering array of self-competing products, but it also had a lot to work with and the brand recognition was absolutely enormous. He effectively flushed it all down the toilet for a punt on Windows Mobile, which was already looking like an "also-ran" by that point. When it (predictably) didn't work out, MS took the brand and some of the company, then ran it into the ground.
A sad end to what had been a huge success story.
(I'm not challenging the idea that nokia was on a downward slope by the point he came along, but he just accelerated it, see e.g. the burning platforms memo)
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoI'd argue Nokia sunk Windows Mobile and not the other way around. Hardware was hard to come by, countless models were never released despite the OS being light years ahead of Android. Around the official death of Windows Mobile, most of us just wanted them to launch hardware that wasn't a joke.
- swebs 6y agoI know many people that loved Nokia phones, but I don't know a single person that wanted a Windows phone. Windows is a toxic anti-brand associated with viruses, instability, bloat, and forced restarts. Meanwhile iPhone is seen as the hip brand, and Android was marketing itself as the choice for user freedom.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago> a toxic anti-brand associated with viruses, instability, bloat, and forced restarts This is Android based on my eight years with them. I won't argue with you on iPhone, it's a great "I just want it to work" option. And since there's no other alternative, it's what I carry today. But Windows Mobile was a breath of competency in a market of basically all bad Google phones.
- sellyme 6y ago> But Windows Mobile was a breath of competency in a market of basically all bad Google phones. The first modern Windows Mobile phone launched in November 2015. The market of Google phones at that point in time was the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 5X, and Nexus 6. Now I'm not a huge fan of the Nexus 6 (though I certainly wouldn't call it "bad"), but the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 are still to this date the best value smartphones ever released.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoI think you misunderstand: All Android phones are Google phones. You had two options to avoid Google's terrible software, iPhone and Windows Mobile. Everything else outside of the Chinese market has Google Play Services with root access to the system and as controlled by Google's MADA agreement with manufacturers which has already been found illegal in multiple jurisdictions across the globe.
- sellyme 6y ago> All Android phones are Google phones. Convention dictates that "Google phones" specifically means e.g., Nexus/Pixel devices. Fortunately, if you're unwilling to distinguish between hardware and software, there's already a very convenient and unambiguous term for mobile devices that run Google's OS. In fact, you just used it in the same sentence!
- macintux 6y ago2015 is when Windows 10 Mobile phones arrived, but Windows Mobile devices were around for a long time before that.
- sellyme 6y agoHence the "modern". I thought it was a fairly safe bet that no-one was talking about the Pocket PC.
- 6y ago
- 1996 6y agoIn 2020, WP8 still is the pinnacle of smartphone usability - with WP10 a close second.
- ciabattabread 6y agoWhat good is usability when there’s no support?
- 1996 6y agoWell, you need no one to support you in the first place :) I like not having apps pester me for updates or pollute my notifications, when all I care about is email, websites and phonecalls (oh and offline maps, I almost forgot) I guess I am a very boring person!
- neogodless 6y agoOwned and loved several Windows Phones, 7, 8 and 10. Nokia 920 was my favorite. No viruses, no instability, no forced restarts. That's the problem with anecdotes... they only represent your very narrow window of experience while ignoring literally every other person on the planet.
- Miraste 6y agoFor marketing purposes, it doesn’t matter if the phone actually has those problems, just whether people associate the brand with them.
- varvar 6y agoThat's the problem with anecdotes... they only represent your very narrow window of experience while ignoring literally every other person on the planet.
- neogodless 6y agoFor those that need it, I'll point out the comment I disagreed with: > but I don't know a single person that wanted a Windows phone I only represent a single person, and I make no claims about anyone else!
- swebs 6y ago>No viruses, no instability, no forced restarts >That's the problem with anecdotes I'm not saying those problems affected Windows phone, but that's the association customers have with Windows as a brand due to decades of facing those problems with desktop Windows.
- sangnoir 6y ago> No viruses, no instability, no forced restarts ...no apps. Windows Mobile just couldn't attract quality developers to its platform. After witnessing that - I fully understood why Android went with Java (the language): there was already a deep pool of seasoned Java developers.
- 6y ago
- megablast 6y agoPlenty of ms fanboys swear by windows phone. Unfortunately they are not enough.
- sn41 6y agoWindows phone had the most sensible mobile UI I have used. Not all decisions made by a losing brand are wrong. I comparison, Android UI seems ill-thought out.
- pjmlp 6y agoFormer Nokia employee, I had two Lumias, still use my 650 as travel phone. On its heyday (approaching 10% in Europe), Windows Phones were seen as the alternative for those that wanted an Android alternative and didn't care about iPhone.
- achow 6y agoMicrosoft’s control over the hardware specs and the behavior of the software allowed it to run smooth as silk on older, single-core processors. I’ve always thought that Windows Phone looked particularly good (as mobile platforms go) at lower pixel densities.. With each new generation of Windows Phone, Microsoft not only closes the gap with iOS and Android in important ways, but it also differentiates in important ways WINDOWS PHONE 8 REVIEW https://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3570494/windows-phone-8-review https://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3570494/windows-phone-8-...
- hakfoo 6y agoI did. I got a Lumia 1020 because it made a clear setting point other than "it's 5% faster" with the insane camera design. I think it replaced a Galaxy SII LTE variant which was a quivering mess software wise. I then got a 635 when the screen broke and it was too costly to repair locally, and a 640 when they were selling them for like 30 bucks on Black Friday one year. I appreciated the consistency in design and that even the cheap devices like the 635 felt quite snappy. They also seemed a bit more coherent with update support. Yes, the no WP7->8 update path was a huge mistake, but I think by the end they were updating the OS for all WP devices (capable of being updated) centrally, rather than relying on the OEMs; the WP10 update betas I tried seemed competent enough but there was a growing sense their heart wasn't in it.
- rvschuilenburg 6y agoI had a non-nokia windows phone; the HTC 8X. It was a blast to use the windows phone UI. Everything just felt "right". In addition, even compared to phones today, the HTC 8X was a beauty in my opinion. What killed the experience, was the ongoing app revolution. And apps weren't being released on Windows Phone.
- MarkusWandel 6y agoI had a Lumia 520 running WP8 for several years. If there's one word for this OS, it's "disciplined". It was easy on battery, it was totally stable (in my experience anyway) and it was absolutely miserly with mobile data. For example the email client still used ActiveSync, a protocol which was designed when every byte still counted, and there was virtually no unexplained "operating system" mobile data usage. The discipline also extended to heavy sandboxing of the apps so a lot of functionality was simply unimplemetable, such as reminders for missed notifications. But the phone worked, the UI was intiutive and responsive, and the only reason to move on, other than general phone obsolescence like the 5MP camera, was the lack of mainstream apps. We had a brief experience with WP10 on another phone, and it seemed spiffier but less stable. WP8 was the high point.
- burnte 6y agoBallmer let old WinMo hang around too long, was too arrogant to take Apple seriously, and thought MS could just bully their way into consumers' hands like they did PC makers. By the time WinPhone came around, it was too late, iOS and Android had too much of a head start.
- whereistimbo 6y agoI have read a developer complained that Windows Phone/Mobile development was the most annoying one (foobar2000 developer, he was developing for Windows 10 Mobile). Also the closed source nature of Windows (Microsoft only open Windows Phone source code to Nokia with Windows Phone 8) makes Nokia phones hard to differentiate, the gap between Windows Phone releases, as the usual Windows releases was 3 years apart while Android was improving every year.
- harikb 6y agoNokia had a fairly successful Mobile operating system, Symbian, which had decent multi-tasking way before even Palm OS or Windows CE attempted such things. However there was a huge learning curve and it wasn’t for everyone. I guess abandoning Symbian to switch to Microsoft should be considered a significant misstep, even if motivated by the then financial motives.
- scooble 6y agoI may be misremembering, but I believe that at the time Elop joined, Symbian was still the largest smartphone OS by the number of devices. And (my memory is shaky here), the fact that Symbian and Maemo both used QT meant that there was a path for existing Symbian app developers to transition to the new platform. Maemo was slow coming, but killing it at launch still seems like an odd move.
- jononor 6y agoThe Qt SDK was released for Symbian just a few months before Elop joined. Symbian applications and developers were not yet using Qt when Elop killed off both Symbian and Meego, just a few months later. It was part of a long-term strategy that did not have any time to play out. Quite possibly it would have been too late anyways.
- pessimizer 6y agoKilling off Symbian in a speech while shipping more phones than any company on earth was, generously, not part of any strategy but a horrific blunder, less generously, it was sabotage. I've got no love for Symbian, but when you're selling that many phones, you phase it out, you don't announce to the world that there's no reason to buy the phones you're still trying to sell. Porting Symbian UI to Qt meant that they could at least merge surface-level stuff and have core apps that ran on both Maemo/Meego and Symbian, then retire Symbian when no one would care or notice.
- sangnoir 6y ago
- nextos 6y agoAnd remember Nokia had Qt and Navteq. The former gave a great migration path from Symbian. The latter made offline navigation and routing possible in the late 2000s at a standard that is still unmatched by Google or Apple Maps in 2020. I often use my N9 as a car navigator as it's exceptional.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago> I often use my N9 as a car navigator as it's exceptional. Are you updating the maps manually or is it still being updated through some web app interface?
- loosescrews 6y agoMy 2013 model year car has maps from 2011, so even if no map updates were installed after Nokia killed support, it is probably pretty modern by automotive standards.
- AlotOfReading 6y agoAnnual map updates (typically with a subscription) are already standard across all the major automakers. Most are also developing continuously updated maps as part of other initiatives like SDC.
- thunderbong 6y agoThis is an interview by Om Malik back in October 2009 with a Symbian executive. In my opinion, the complacency was obvious even then - https://gigaom.com/2009/10/23/symbian-executives-rips-into-googles-android/ https://gigaom.com/2009/10/23/symbian-executives-rips-into-g...