5 ms·

Nokia were doing well developing their new platform Meego based on Linux, but then Stephen Elop came from Microsoft and decided to put a stop to it and instead

by chaz6 5y ago

Nokia were doing well developing their new platform Meego based on Linux, but then Stephen Elop came from Microsoft and decided to put a stop to it and instead concentrate on Windows Phone. I believe that is what ultimately killed Nokia's phone division.

tsjq 5y ago
it was widely alleged / believed that S.E was sent to Nokia with a specific goal that would benefit M$
pembrook 5y ago
While the “one outsider came in and ruined everything” narrative might be a soothing one (especially for the people of Finland), I’m not sure it’s actually true. Do we honestly think Nokia would have been able to compete in the same mobile OS space that not even Microsoft could carve out a space in? I don’t think it’s a mistake that the only true competitor to Apple ended up being Google. At the time, they were the most competent big player in web-based software. The acquisition of Android and integration with Google services like search, navigation, gmail, etc. is a value-add that Nokia could never have matched. Apple of course already had the value add of their entire ecosystem of computing and multimedia ecosystem (iPod, iTunes, etc). Windows phone failed because its value-add didn’t actually have much value, unlike the Google and Apple ecosystems. It turns out nobody needs excel, PowerPoint, etc integration on their phone. Nokia would have had even less value-add in the software space, given they had no software ecosystem at all!
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  > Do we honestly think Nokia would have been able to compete in the same mobile OS space that not even Microsoft could carve out a space in? At the time.. sure. Symbian was great back then, and in many many countries, there were no large data plans back then, and a phone that needed to be online for a lot of the gimmicky features to work was not something a lot of people wanted or needed, because of data costs... app support was probably most important to people then.
  - LightG 5y ago
    Symbian was great back then against feature phones ... but absolutely obliterated by todays competition. I have a hard time believe they would have stood a chance (even assuming the software was evens, organisationally they wouldn't have made it work).
    - Revenant-15 5y ago
      Well, good thing they didn't have to compete with today's mobile OS's back then. Android back then was abjectly terrible. They definitely had a shot at the second spot behind Apple, especially in low-income countries.
      - LightG 5y ago
        Agreed, Android was terrible back then, but you could see the trajectory and it was housed and organised under one roof (back when Google were doing some things right), as opposed to Symbian who just seemed too fragmented to get lift off.
        LightG 5y ago
        Lol at getting downvoted for this. I was there at the time in the middle of it. Any other view is the view of someone deluded by the fragmented promise of Symbian. It was a system that was managed into a situation of grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory. Thrown on the floor. And the stamped out of existence. Everyone involved at the leadership level should be ashamed ... ruined Symbian and dragged Nokia down with it.
- speeder 5y ago
  I am from Brazil, and Nokia was smashing it, they had a growing market share, the more smartphones got popular, the more Symbian got popular, not iPhone, not Android. Fans even somehow ported Valve's Counter-Strike to Symbian, along with a bunch of other games, it was really great. Then when Elop memo came out, stores took Nokia phones out of the shelf, all of them, 2 months later their market share dropped from 68% to something like 30%'s or so, and next year instead the dominant market share was chinese shitty phones, like hiOS, android with google services removed, and so on. hiOS in particular was hilarious, a lot of people bought it thinking it was iOS from Apple (and to my surprise with a quick googling, hiOS is still a thing). EDIT: just saw hiOS now is Android based, dunno where is information about old version, there was tons of hios phones here around 2011, thus preadating the 1.0 of current hios, that is from 2016.
gtirloni 5y ago
If Windows Phone couldn't compete with Apple, I don't think Meego would have done any better.
equalsione 5y ago
From my very limited interactions with them, Nokias saw mobile operators as their customers, not end-users. They were never going to do anything with it that would piss off the likes of the like of Verizon, Vodafone, Orange etc. I have an n800 and n810 - the n810 is a thing of beauty in my opinion, even now. But there's no way they could compete with Apple or Google because Nokia designed phones that kept the operators happy and didn't step on any toes. Apple and Google didn't care about any of that.

by chaz6 5y ago

tsjq 5y ago

it was widely alleged / believed that S.E was sent to Nokia with a specific goal that would benefit M$

pembrook 5y ago

While the “one outsider came in and ruined everything” narrative might be a soothing one (especially for the people of Finland), I’m not sure it’s actually true. Do we honestly think Nokia would have been able to compete in the same mobile OS space that not even Microsoft could carve out a space in? I don’t think it’s a mistake that the only true competitor to Apple ended up being Google. At the time, they were the most competent big player in web-based software. The acquisition of Android and integration with Google services like search, navigation, gmail, etc. is a value-add that Nokia could never have matched. Apple of course already had the value add of their entire ecosystem of computing and multimedia ecosystem (iPod, iTunes, etc). Windows phone failed because its value-add didn’t actually have much value, unlike the Google and Apple ecosystems. It turns out nobody needs excel, PowerPoint, etc integration on their phone. Nokia would have had even less value-add in the software space, given they had no software ecosystem at all!

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
> Do we honestly think Nokia would have been able to compete in the same mobile OS space that not even Microsoft could carve out a space in? At the time.. sure. Symbian was great back then, and in many many countries, there were no large data plans back then, and a phone that needed to be online for a lot of the gimmicky features to work was not something a lot of people wanted or needed, because of data costs... app support was probably most important to people then.
- LightG 5y ago
  Symbian was great back then against feature phones ... but absolutely obliterated by todays competition. I have a hard time believe they would have stood a chance (even assuming the software was evens, organisationally they wouldn't have made it work).
  - Revenant-15 5y ago
    Well, good thing they didn't have to compete with today's mobile OS's back then. Android back then was abjectly terrible. They definitely had a shot at the second spot behind Apple, especially in low-income countries.
    - LightG 5y ago
      Agreed, Android was terrible back then, but you could see the trajectory and it was housed and organised under one roof (back when Google were doing some things right), as opposed to Symbian who just seemed too fragmented to get lift off.
      - LightG 5y ago
        Lol at getting downvoted for this. I was there at the time in the middle of it. Any other view is the view of someone deluded by the fragmented promise of Symbian. It was a system that was managed into a situation of grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory. Thrown on the floor. And the stamped out of existence. Everyone involved at the leadership level should be ashamed ... ruined Symbian and dragged Nokia down with it.
speeder 5y ago
I am from Brazil, and Nokia was smashing it, they had a growing market share, the more smartphones got popular, the more Symbian got popular, not iPhone, not Android. Fans even somehow ported Valve's Counter-Strike to Symbian, along with a bunch of other games, it was really great. Then when Elop memo came out, stores took Nokia phones out of the shelf, all of them, 2 months later their market share dropped from 68% to something like 30%'s or so, and next year instead the dominant market share was chinese shitty phones, like hiOS, android with google services removed, and so on. hiOS in particular was hilarious, a lot of people bought it thinking it was iOS from Apple (and to my surprise with a quick googling, hiOS is still a thing). EDIT: just saw hiOS now is Android based, dunno where is information about old version, there was tons of hios phones here around 2011, thus preadating the 1.0 of current hios, that is from 2016.

gtirloni 5y ago

If Windows Phone couldn't compete with Apple, I don't think Meego would have done any better.

equalsione 5y ago

From my very limited interactions with them, Nokias saw mobile operators as their customers, not end-users. They were never going to do anything with it that would piss off the likes of the like of Verizon, Vodafone, Orange etc. I have an n800 and n810 - the n810 is a thing of beauty in my opinion, even now. But there's no way they could compete with Apple or Google because Nokia designed phones that kept the operators happy and didn't step on any toes. Apple and Google didn't care about any of that.