6 ms·

The Old, Innovative Nokia Is Back

52 points by T-A 11y ago

superkuh 11y ago
>back with an innovative consumer product. It's not a consumer product. It's explicitly for businesses and will cost ten thousand dollars or more. This article completely misses the point and draws invalid conclusions.
camillomiller 11y ago
Interesting. Nokia was way behind in a market it used to lead. Shaving off the burden of past success thanks to the Microsoft acquisition was the only way for the company to freely pivot into an innovation company again. Let's see if they'll keep up with the expectations.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Nokia's problem was in large part "boardroom meddling", with a mix of "innovators dilemma" thrown in for good measure. The company executives were worried about Maemo eating into their fairly steady Symbian earnings, and so where reluctant to commit fully. At the same time they feared going Android would turn them into just another "me to" company (Samsung has done some serious advertisement binging to get their current position). And just as that seemed to clear up with buying Trolltech for their Qt library, aimed at using it for cross platform app development, the board ousted the CEO and brought in Elop. But shit didn't really hit the fan with Nokia until Elop's "burning platform" memo. Pretty much overnight retailer dropped outstanding orders etc, and the Nokia brand basically crashed.
  - spiralpolitik 11y ago
    Nokia was a hardware company, when the phone market was a battle of hardware Nokia excelled. Then the phone market changed, it became a battle of software. Nokia wasn't a software company, they didn't understand this new market and culturally couldn't deal with the changed market. By the time they realized this they had already lost. Now its a battle of ecosystems so unless Nokia can pull an entire ecosystem out of its hat then I don't hold out much hope for its future success.
    - atinoda-kestrel 11y ago
      > Then the phone market changed, it became a battle of software. Nokia wasn't a software company, they didn't understand this new market and culturally couldn't deal with the changed market. By the time they realized this they had already lost. I think that's kinda revisionist history. Maemo was already developed by the time the phone market turned into the software-driven smartphone market. Nokia was late to throw Maemo on a phone, true, but they had one ready in 2011. It had hardware that won all sorts of design awards and was cutting edge in both hardware specs and design, with classic Nokia durability and engineering. It ran a wonderfully-slick, open-source friendly, polished OS. It even had a "Retina-level" display before they were common. Nokia still had a major marketshare when it was ready for release and could have used their market presence to ensure a successful launch. The problem was, Elop was trying desperately to kill it. He couldn't quite kill it outright, as Nokia had contractual obligations to release it, but he ensured that it got minimal advertising time and prevented it from being distributed in many key markets. Despite that, people loved it. It swept design awards. Some reviewers called it the "best phone Nokia ever made." People in EU countries where it wasn't released were buying it via eBay from the countries that did have it. Elop's response? No matter how successful the phone was, no matter how much people liked it, Maemo would never be used again. Naturally, the aggression towards the platform by the CEO coupled with the limited release and minimal marketing did just fine to kill it, and he was free to continue molding Nokia into a target for an MS buyout. Nokia understood the market just fine. They were just betrayed.
      - sirkneeland 11y ago
        That's not entirely true. The MeeGo org was a mess. Paradoxically, telling them they were no longer the future enabled the team to stop focusing on politics and make one more amazing product. (source: I work at Nokia. Yes, still) That said I completely agree that the N9 was the best phone Nokia ever made and that Windows Phone was a catastrophic decision that should tarnish the career of every executive at Nokia who supported it and refused to change course when it was obviously failing. The demise of Nokia devices was entirely avoidable
        11y ago
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    is that where QT came from? I've used pyqt and liked it quite a bit.
    - sirkneeland 11y ago
      Qt actually originated in the early 1990s from a Scandinavian company called Trolltech. Nokia bought them in 2008.
      - xorcist 11y ago
        Perhaps not everyone knows, but Trolltech had a developer phone in the era (long predating iPhone) where it was obvious that smartphones were the future and it was a software company's game. Qt could have been a good strategy for Nokia, it provided the most important part of their puzzle, a clear migration path for their valuable customers from Symbian to a new Qt-based platform. Too bad they moved much too slowly to capitalize on that, and probably for many good reasons.
digi_owl 11y ago
Seems a bit early to really tell...
- sirkneeland 11y ago
  Gotta start somewhere! :)
rospaya 11y ago
Ah. Nokia used to spend more on R&D than Microsoft and Apple combined, and this was in the iPhone days. I've seen terrific innovations from Nokia that were never monetized and were never implemented in a product, phones created just to experiment or show that you're the first that later went nowhere. It was very sad to see Nokia fail.
- simi_ 11y ago
  Can we call this the Xerox PARC syndrome?
  - sirkneeland 11y ago
    PARC syndrome should definitely be a thing if it isn't already. That said I think it only covers a subset of what went wrong at Nokia, and that was only the first half, before a whole different set of things went wrong under Elop
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Not really. For one, Xerox PARC innovations DID change the world, even if they didn't appear in Xerox products. Second, I think the parent is much overstating the "innovations" that Nokia did. Nothing like Xerox PARC at all...
- adventured 11y ago
  That does not appear to be accurate. Nokia in 2006, near their peak, spent about $5.x billion on R&D per their annual report. The R&D figures are similar for 2005/07/08. Microsoft spent $6.5 billion on R&D in 2006 (and that was close to their average from 2002-2007). By 2009, Microsoft was spending $9 billion per year (now up to $11+ billion).
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Exactly. And nothing that impressive came out of Nokia's R&D -- this camera product included.
deleted 11y ago
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phantom_oracle 11y ago
VR is such a tiny niche compared to a market they once ruled throughout most of the world (except maybe USA?). Just like IBM, I guess their demise in consumer products was gradual, but went by a lot quicker than IBMs did. Some of their assets were pretty valuable (especially patent-wise), so that $7 billion MS write-off may not be completely telling (AFAIK, MS are making a tidy profit from phones running Android, through patent-infringements).
- function_seven 11y ago
  > (except maybe USA?) Even in the US, Nokia had a huge portion of the cell phone market. Maybe more than half? The 51xx and 61xx phones were all over the place. Can't find any sources for this, just my recollection.
  - adventured 11y ago
    It appears their peak US share was around 35%. [1] By contrast, that's about what Motorola's peak market share in the US was as well (in the early 1990s). Samsung at times has had 20-30% of the US cellphone market. I believe Apple likely holds the record for most dominant US market share. They're around 43% of the US smart phone market today (not sure how that would look if you blend in feature phones though). [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/technology/companies/19nokia.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/technology/companies/19nok...
- dools 11y ago
  In 1984, the mobile phone market was tiny compared to everything.
- sirkneeland 11y ago
  Nokia Technologies still owns all the patents. Microsoft got neither the brand nor the IP (though they were granted a license to it)
  - NonEUCitizen 11y ago
    For IP, Microsoft got more than just a license; it got "rights equivalent to ownership." http://allthingsd.com/20130904/from-can-we-talk-to-a-coffee-table-mishap-the-inside-story-of-microsofts-nokia-purchase/ http://allthingsd.com/20130904/from-can-we-talk-to-a-coffee-...
dharma1 11y ago
Great to see Nokia coming out with new products. I think this type of cameras will be commoditised within 1-2 years, I hope they are looking into light field tech. BTW - any sample footage available from this?
deleted 11y ago
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52 points by T-A 11y ago

>back with an innovative consumer product. It's not a consumer product. It's explicitly for businesses and will cost ten thousand dollars or more. This article completely misses the point and draws invalid conclusions.

camillomiller 11y ago

Interesting. Nokia was way behind in a market it used to lead. Shaving off the burden of past success thanks to the Microsoft acquisition was the only way for the company to freely pivot into an innovation company again. Let's see if they'll keep up with the expectations.

digi_owl 11y ago
Nokia's problem was in large part "boardroom meddling", with a mix of "innovators dilemma" thrown in for good measure. The company executives were worried about Maemo eating into their fairly steady Symbian earnings, and so where reluctant to commit fully. At the same time they feared going Android would turn them into just another "me to" company (Samsung has done some serious advertisement binging to get their current position). And just as that seemed to clear up with buying Trolltech for their Qt library, aimed at using it for cross platform app development, the board ousted the CEO and brought in Elop. But shit didn't really hit the fan with Nokia until Elop's "burning platform" memo. Pretty much overnight retailer dropped outstanding orders etc, and the Nokia brand basically crashed.
- spiralpolitik 11y ago
  Nokia was a hardware company, when the phone market was a battle of hardware Nokia excelled. Then the phone market changed, it became a battle of software. Nokia wasn't a software company, they didn't understand this new market and culturally couldn't deal with the changed market. By the time they realized this they had already lost. Now its a battle of ecosystems so unless Nokia can pull an entire ecosystem out of its hat then I don't hold out much hope for its future success.
  - atinoda-kestrel 11y ago
    > Then the phone market changed, it became a battle of software. Nokia wasn't a software company, they didn't understand this new market and culturally couldn't deal with the changed market. By the time they realized this they had already lost. I think that's kinda revisionist history. Maemo was already developed by the time the phone market turned into the software-driven smartphone market. Nokia was late to throw Maemo on a phone, true, but they had one ready in 2011. It had hardware that won all sorts of design awards and was cutting edge in both hardware specs and design, with classic Nokia durability and engineering. It ran a wonderfully-slick, open-source friendly, polished OS. It even had a "Retina-level" display before they were common. Nokia still had a major marketshare when it was ready for release and could have used their market presence to ensure a successful launch. The problem was, Elop was trying desperately to kill it. He couldn't quite kill it outright, as Nokia had contractual obligations to release it, but he ensured that it got minimal advertising time and prevented it from being distributed in many key markets. Despite that, people loved it. It swept design awards. Some reviewers called it the "best phone Nokia ever made." People in EU countries where it wasn't released were buying it via eBay from the countries that did have it. Elop's response? No matter how successful the phone was, no matter how much people liked it, Maemo would never be used again. Naturally, the aggression towards the platform by the CEO coupled with the limited release and minimal marketing did just fine to kill it, and he was free to continue molding Nokia into a target for an MS buyout. Nokia understood the market just fine. They were just betrayed.
    - sirkneeland 11y ago
      That's not entirely true. The MeeGo org was a mess. Paradoxically, telling them they were no longer the future enabled the team to stop focusing on politics and make one more amazing product. (source: I work at Nokia. Yes, still) That said I completely agree that the N9 was the best phone Nokia ever made and that Windows Phone was a catastrophic decision that should tarnish the career of every executive at Nokia who supported it and refused to change course when it was obviously failing. The demise of Nokia devices was entirely avoidable
      - 11y ago
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  is that where QT came from? I've used pyqt and liked it quite a bit.
  - sirkneeland 11y ago
    Qt actually originated in the early 1990s from a Scandinavian company called Trolltech. Nokia bought them in 2008.
    - xorcist 11y ago
      Perhaps not everyone knows, but Trolltech had a developer phone in the era (long predating iPhone) where it was obvious that smartphones were the future and it was a software company's game. Qt could have been a good strategy for Nokia, it provided the most important part of their puzzle, a clear migration path for their valuable customers from Symbian to a new Qt-based platform. Too bad they moved much too slowly to capitalize on that, and probably for many good reasons.

digi_owl 11y ago

Seems a bit early to really tell...

sirkneeland 11y ago
Gotta start somewhere! :)

rospaya 11y ago

Ah. Nokia used to spend more on R&D than Microsoft and Apple combined, and this was in the iPhone days. I've seen terrific innovations from Nokia that were never monetized and were never implemented in a product, phones created just to experiment or show that you're the first that later went nowhere. It was very sad to see Nokia fail.

simi_ 11y ago
Can we call this the Xerox PARC syndrome?
- sirkneeland 11y ago
  PARC syndrome should definitely be a thing if it isn't already. That said I think it only covers a subset of what went wrong at Nokia, and that was only the first half, before a whole different set of things went wrong under Elop
- coldtea 11y ago
  Not really. For one, Xerox PARC innovations DID change the world, even if they didn't appear in Xerox products. Second, I think the parent is much overstating the "innovations" that Nokia did. Nothing like Xerox PARC at all...
adventured 11y ago
That does not appear to be accurate. Nokia in 2006, near their peak, spent about $5.x billion on R&D per their annual report. The R&D figures are similar for 2005/07/08. Microsoft spent $6.5 billion on R&D in 2006 (and that was close to their average from 2002-2007). By 2009, Microsoft was spending $9 billion per year (now up to $11+ billion).
- coldtea 11y ago
  Exactly. And nothing that impressive came out of Nokia's R&D -- this camera product included.

deleted 11y ago

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phantom_oracle 11y ago

VR is such a tiny niche compared to a market they once ruled throughout most of the world (except maybe USA?). Just like IBM, I guess their demise in consumer products was gradual, but went by a lot quicker than IBMs did. Some of their assets were pretty valuable (especially patent-wise), so that $7 billion MS write-off may not be completely telling (AFAIK, MS are making a tidy profit from phones running Android, through patent-infringements).

function_seven 11y ago
> (except maybe USA?) Even in the US, Nokia had a huge portion of the cell phone market. Maybe more than half? The 51xx and 61xx phones were all over the place. Can't find any sources for this, just my recollection.
- adventured 11y ago
  It appears their peak US share was around 35%. [1] By contrast, that's about what Motorola's peak market share in the US was as well (in the early 1990s). Samsung at times has had 20-30% of the US cellphone market. I believe Apple likely holds the record for most dominant US market share. They're around 43% of the US smart phone market today (not sure how that would look if you blend in feature phones though). [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/technology/companies/19nokia.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/technology/companies/19nok...
dools 11y ago
In 1984, the mobile phone market was tiny compared to everything.
sirkneeland 11y ago
Nokia Technologies still owns all the patents. Microsoft got neither the brand nor the IP (though they were granted a license to it)
- NonEUCitizen 11y ago
  For IP, Microsoft got more than just a license; it got "rights equivalent to ownership." http://allthingsd.com/20130904/from-can-we-talk-to-a-coffee-table-mishap-the-inside-story-of-microsofts-nokia-purchase/ http://allthingsd.com/20130904/from-can-we-talk-to-a-coffee-...

dharma1 11y ago

Great to see Nokia coming out with new products. I think this type of cameras will be commoditised within 1-2 years, I hope they are looking into light field tech. BTW - any sample footage available from this?

deleted 11y ago

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