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I disagree. The N770-N9 saga could have competed with the iPhone. Some of these devices came to the market earlier. But the company treated it as a side projec

by nextos 1y ago

I disagree. The N770-N9 saga could have competed with the iPhone. Some of these devices came to the market earlier. But the company treated it as a side project due to internal politics. They didn't want to bother Symbian. A classic innovator's dilemma problem. Then Microsoft (Elop) came in, killed the N9, and shifted to Windows.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
>I disagree. The N770-N9 saga could have competed with the iPhone. Says you, not the market. You are free to disagree, but history proves you wrong. If N770-N9 were such good devices for the gen-pop, they would have beaten iPhone sales to the moon and show Apple that they were wrong, but they weren't. The average user is not your tech savvy HN user who likes to tinker with mobile FOSS Linux devices, and iPhone's success proved this. >[...] due to internal politics. That's exactly what I said. Having better tech is useless if your corporate management, product execution and marketing is shit. That's why Apple and Google won, and Nokia, Motorola, and et-al lost on the free market.
- nextos 1y ago
  I agree with your point about politics. But marketwise, the N9 sold very well despite the project received no support, and also got glowing reviews [1]. The N900 still enjoys cult status. Posts about this device pop up in HN every now and then. Maemo/MeeGo could have >10% marketshare in some EU countries, just like desktop Linux does right now. The N9 was a very elegant device, ready for the masses, and good enough to become a third mobile platform. The N9 was incredibly elegant and easy to use. The hardware was well crafted, and the card-based UI was outstanding. All applications were well integrated. For example, any messaging application would add its protocol to your contact list, instead of having everything fragmented in apps. Offline maps were second to none. It took a decade for iOS and Android to catch up. It shipped with native support for a variety of VoIP protocols, including Google Talk (Jingle) and Skype. The OLED screen was stunning on the dark mode UI. Mozilla provided a great mobile Firefox port, and there was a native terminal just in case you wanted to ssh to machines or do something from your phone. Tethering or even using Linux running on your phone from a bigger screen worked really well, in 2011. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review https://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >The N9 was incredibly elegant and easy to use. Who cares, is nobody bought it? You need sales to make money because you need money to pay wages and shareholders. Otherwise you're preaching to the choir. The graveyard of history if full of great products and great ideas that didn't catch on for various reasons related to sales, timing, marketing and execution. It doesn't matter if the N9 was good or not in the minds of the tech savvy HN crowd, what matters is that the iPhone beat them on the free market. "The market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent" and Steve Jobs understood this better than anyone.
    - nextos 1y ago
      > Who cares, is nobody bought it? The N9 was sold out in Scandinavia, and it was outselling Lumia (Windows) in Q4 '11. That's fairly good for something that had no marketing and it had already been labeled as a dead platform. Around 2 million N9 devices were sold. That's on the same order of magnitude as any Google Pixel generation. What could have happened if the device had been phased out is something we can only hypothesize about, but I don't think it's fair to claim it was a fringe device nobody cared about.
      - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        >The N9 was sold out in Scandinavia If only Scandinavia was as relevant as the US, UK, Asia and rest of the EU for a product to stay in development and in production to remain internationally relevant and competitive to the iPhone. >Around 2 million N9 devices were sold. My LLM research says 1-1,5 Million MeeGo powered Nokia N9 devices were sold by 2011, versus 93 Million iPhones and 237 Million Android devices out of which Samsung had 94 million, similar to Apple at the time. The N9's 1,5 Million wasn't even close, it was orders of magnitude less than Apple or Samsung. So the writing was on the wall by then. How can you even think that they had a chance to be competitive after the numbers of 2011? Based on those numbers they were right to pull the plug back then at the time, the finances spoke for themselves, there was no way for Nokia to turn the ship around in their favor. The line was just going down and even more down.

by nextos 1y ago

FirmwareBurner 1y ago

>I disagree. The N770-N9 saga could have competed with the iPhone. Says you, not the market. You are free to disagree, but history proves you wrong. If N770-N9 were such good devices for the gen-pop, they would have beaten iPhone sales to the moon and show Apple that they were wrong, but they weren't. The average user is not your tech savvy HN user who likes to tinker with mobile FOSS Linux devices, and iPhone's success proved this. >[...] due to internal politics. That's exactly what I said. Having better tech is useless if your corporate management, product execution and marketing is shit. That's why Apple and Google won, and Nokia, Motorola, and et-al lost on the free market.

nextos 1y ago
I agree with your point about politics. But marketwise, the N9 sold very well despite the project received no support, and also got glowing reviews [1]. The N900 still enjoys cult status. Posts about this device pop up in HN every now and then. Maemo/MeeGo could have >10% marketshare in some EU countries, just like desktop Linux does right now. The N9 was a very elegant device, ready for the masses, and good enough to become a third mobile platform. The N9 was incredibly elegant and easy to use. The hardware was well crafted, and the card-based UI was outstanding. All applications were well integrated. For example, any messaging application would add its protocol to your contact list, instead of having everything fragmented in apps. Offline maps were second to none. It took a decade for iOS and Android to catch up. It shipped with native support for a variety of VoIP protocols, including Google Talk (Jingle) and Skype. The OLED screen was stunning on the dark mode UI. Mozilla provided a great mobile Firefox port, and there was a native terminal just in case you wanted to ssh to machines or do something from your phone. Tethering or even using Linux running on your phone from a bigger screen worked really well, in 2011. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review https://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >The N9 was incredibly elegant and easy to use. Who cares, is nobody bought it? You need sales to make money because you need money to pay wages and shareholders. Otherwise you're preaching to the choir. The graveyard of history if full of great products and great ideas that didn't catch on for various reasons related to sales, timing, marketing and execution. It doesn't matter if the N9 was good or not in the minds of the tech savvy HN crowd, what matters is that the iPhone beat them on the free market. "The market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent" and Steve Jobs understood this better than anyone.
  - nextos 1y ago
    > Who cares, is nobody bought it? The N9 was sold out in Scandinavia, and it was outselling Lumia (Windows) in Q4 '11. That's fairly good for something that had no marketing and it had already been labeled as a dead platform. Around 2 million N9 devices were sold. That's on the same order of magnitude as any Google Pixel generation. What could have happened if the device had been phased out is something we can only hypothesize about, but I don't think it's fair to claim it was a fringe device nobody cared about.
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      >The N9 was sold out in Scandinavia If only Scandinavia was as relevant as the US, UK, Asia and rest of the EU for a product to stay in development and in production to remain internationally relevant and competitive to the iPhone. >Around 2 million N9 devices were sold. My LLM research says 1-1,5 Million MeeGo powered Nokia N9 devices were sold by 2011, versus 93 Million iPhones and 237 Million Android devices out of which Samsung had 94 million, similar to Apple at the time. The N9's 1,5 Million wasn't even close, it was orders of magnitude less than Apple or Samsung. So the writing was on the wall by then. How can you even think that they had a chance to be competitive after the numbers of 2011? Based on those numbers they were right to pull the plug back then at the time, the finances spoke for themselves, there was no way for Nokia to turn the ship around in their favor. The line was just going down and even more down.