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Have you ever tried to code any non-trivial application for Symbian / S60? If you ever did, the business opportunity to build a mobile platform with any sort o

Have you ever tried to code any non-trivial application for Symbian / S60? If you ever did, the business opportunity to build a mobile platform with any sort of half-sane API will immediately scream very loudly at your face - and that's exactly what Apple did with iOS. The rest is History. A real sad story - the hardware was quite capable for the time.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
The thing is Nokia was not a software first company. It was a phone/electronics company so that's where the decision making was biased. Someone here posted that the Symbian repos were in such a mess that compiling the OS would take over 2 days and nobody in management saw a problem with that. It's easy now in hindsight to say they could have won the market with a software ecosystem but back then that was not clear for them. It was clear for Apple since they had the experience monetizing the iTunes ecosystem and they were a software focused company.
- DrNosferatu 4y ago
  It was very clear then for me! I had to professionally code an image processing application for Symbian in 2008/9, and that's when I formed this opinion. Apple & Android seemed to agree :) What's surprising is that there weren't more attempts at a sane mobile platform/API - and earlier.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    2008/2009 was pretty late in the game for such a large ship like Nokia to change course. Their financial situation back then was still good enough to no bother with a massive change of course. Sure, you saw it, but Nokia management was out of touch and more preoccupied with the next quarter rather than with the next 3 years, as it the case in many large old companies.
    - fifilura 4y ago
      The sad part was that they had the platform that could have competed with ios and android. A linux based platform that they had worked on since 2005. (Or 2004 even). For som reason the not-so-visionary mgmt decided to cut it, right when it should have started to scale up.
      - DrNosferatu 4y ago
        Was it that Nokia was run by engineers or more actually MBA-types?
        fifilura 4y ago
        I think so too. Nokia was still a hugely profitable company when they closed down the maemo/meego platform. I think they all recognised the threat from Android/iOS at the time. Just that closing it down was a way to continue showing good profit margins. I think it could have been the right platform at the right time, and I was very surprised they didn't at least give it an honest try.
  - throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
    > What's surprising is that there weren't more attempts at a sane mobile platform/API - and earlier. It's all about leadership, vision, and courage. Leadership that doesn't push new boundaries, has no vision, and lacks the courage to try new risky things, are doomed, unless they are monopolies. Nokia didn't have the market power to succeed in a changing world with its lackluster leadership.
- type0 4y ago
  Nokia owned TrollTech (Qt), so they had all the chances to become a software company, it baffles me still why they didn't.
jamesdhutton 4y ago
Yes. I made a game for S60, in 2004. I agree the SDK and the API were poor. But I think the real mistake they made was failing to build an app store. IIRC I think they might have had some kind of rudimentary app store but it wasn't accessible to mere mortals. The only way I could figure out how to distribute my game was to post it as a freely downloadable file on the web, which I did. I have no idea whether anybody ever downloaded it. If they had just made it easy for developers to distribute their apps then I think history might have been quite different.
- secondcoming 4y ago
  Nokia had Ovi which was an attempt at an app store.
  - seniorivn 4y ago
    all of it was a late reaction to iphone changing the market. Initially they didn't have any of it, and at the time when they got to a N9(an actually competitive device), their leadership already decided to do windows shenanigans(and alleged forced merge by microsoft executed by steven ellop as a Nokia ceo).

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

The thing is Nokia was not a software first company. It was a phone/electronics company so that's where the decision making was biased. Someone here posted that the Symbian repos were in such a mess that compiling the OS would take over 2 days and nobody in management saw a problem with that. It's easy now in hindsight to say they could have won the market with a software ecosystem but back then that was not clear for them. It was clear for Apple since they had the experience monetizing the iTunes ecosystem and they were a software focused company.

DrNosferatu 4y ago
It was very clear then for me! I had to professionally code an image processing application for Symbian in 2008/9, and that's when I formed this opinion. Apple & Android seemed to agree :) What's surprising is that there weren't more attempts at a sane mobile platform/API - and earlier.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  2008/2009 was pretty late in the game for such a large ship like Nokia to change course. Their financial situation back then was still good enough to no bother with a massive change of course. Sure, you saw it, but Nokia management was out of touch and more preoccupied with the next quarter rather than with the next 3 years, as it the case in many large old companies.
  - fifilura 4y ago
    The sad part was that they had the platform that could have competed with ios and android. A linux based platform that they had worked on since 2005. (Or 2004 even). For som reason the not-so-visionary mgmt decided to cut it, right when it should have started to scale up.
    - DrNosferatu 4y ago
      Was it that Nokia was run by engineers or more actually MBA-types?
      - fifilura 4y ago
        I think so too. Nokia was still a hugely profitable company when they closed down the maemo/meego platform. I think they all recognised the threat from Android/iOS at the time. Just that closing it down was a way to continue showing good profit margins. I think it could have been the right platform at the right time, and I was very surprised they didn't at least give it an honest try.
- throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
  > What's surprising is that there weren't more attempts at a sane mobile platform/API - and earlier. It's all about leadership, vision, and courage. Leadership that doesn't push new boundaries, has no vision, and lacks the courage to try new risky things, are doomed, unless they are monopolies. Nokia didn't have the market power to succeed in a changing world with its lackluster leadership.
type0 4y ago
Nokia owned TrollTech (Qt), so they had all the chances to become a software company, it baffles me still why they didn't.

jamesdhutton 4y ago

Yes. I made a game for S60, in 2004. I agree the SDK and the API were poor. But I think the real mistake they made was failing to build an app store. IIRC I think they might have had some kind of rudimentary app store but it wasn't accessible to mere mortals. The only way I could figure out how to distribute my game was to post it as a freely downloadable file on the web, which I did. I have no idea whether anybody ever downloaded it. If they had just made it easy for developers to distribute their apps then I think history might have been quite different.

secondcoming 4y ago
Nokia had Ovi which was an attempt at an app store.
- seniorivn 4y ago
  all of it was a late reaction to iphone changing the market. Initially they didn't have any of it, and at the time when they got to a N9(an actually competitive device), their leadership already decided to do windows shenanigans(and alleged forced merge by microsoft executed by steven ellop as a Nokia ceo).