Honestly it was a bad call on Nokia to switch to windows. They would have been in a different place of they capitalised on their market share and switched to android.
Nokia should have continued developing the Linux Qt system maemo/meego. I was working with it as subcontractor in Nokia, and it was awesome. The Qt/C++ was really fast to code, and you could basically port KDE apps into it with small effort.
If they would have continued with it, we could have had three major OS in phones.
I was leading architect in internal UI design tools, and the tools had features that android/apple toolsets not even now have. Mainly because you could run the Qt app with PC hardware without any emulation.
Sounds like it wasn’t really your area, but good lord the N810/N900 were some of the most beautiful pieces of industrial design I’ve ever used. Maemo was delightful to use too, don’t get me wrong, and I loved tethering it to my featurephone and getting a decent mobile experience, as well as doing my first practical in-car navigation with the GPS and the mapping software that was available, but those things were an overlooked gem of hardware, like something straight out of Star Trek.
Nokia was lead by engineers, which was it’s strength, but eventually also caused it’s downfall. This is why these things were so good.
Engineers told that the fullscreen displays without keyboard is never as good as physical keyboard.
Engineers told that 1 day battery life is not enough, the system need to be designed so that it can last a week.
They were right.
BUT apple’s marketing and slick design convinced the American market that you can give up on those features. Nokia could easily made the same design, but didn’t because engineers thought that users need those features. When they turned ship and accepted it, apple had its foot between the door already.
I always find it amazing when you hear these insights into the downfall of once huge companies. It’s incredible how terrible some people’s judgement can be and a lot of these successful people are riding on luck rather than intelligence it seems
Nokia only sold off their consumer mobile phone arm. It was the least profitable part of their business. They’re still a massive company and doing quite well.
Or they could’ve opened up their hardware so enthusiasts could make other stuff work. If Windows doesn’t work for them, someone will get Android running, or maybe something like Sailfish.
I’m going to buy a Google Pixel, not because of the software features, but because I can easily flash something else onto it. I’m definitely part of a niche, but people have been modding consoles and whatnot in the mainstream for decades, so I think the community could help a company survive bad software if they open up the hardware enough.
It ended up being a bad call but at the time Android only had 2 years in the market and trusting the leading OS company to manufacture a proper mobile product wasn’t a crazy idea. Microsoft just completely mismanaged the whole phone thing and took down Nokia with it.
If I remember correctly the approach was so anti-google that you couldn’t even watch youtube on Windows Phones.
Microsoft also had a decent credibility with mobile device OS’s. They made OS’s for PDA’s like Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC… those were all on some very capable devices.
God, I miss my Compaq Ipaq Pocket PC. That thing was a fucking beast.
Google sabotaged Windows Phone to protect Android. They refused to serve even standard Google web apps to the WP browser, instead relegating users to years-old mobile versions that looked and worked terribly. You could literally edit the user string on the Windows browser and get the modern, perfectly functional version. Then there was the constant YouTube fuckery where Google wouldn’t make a YouTube app for them, then wouldn’t let them make their own app either. The entire point was to starve the system to kill it in the cradle and on some level, it probably worked.
Looking at the fact that Google is under intense anticompetitive scrutiny now and has been egregiously destroying evidence every chance they get shows that this isn’t out of character for them.
Nokia sealed their fate when they spent $8bn on NavTeq. Switching to Android would have made the purchase valueless, and the people responsible for the acquisition were still in charge.
Honestly it was a bad call on Nokia to switch to windows. They would have been in a different place of they capitalised on their market share and switched to android.
Nokia should have continued developing the Linux Qt system maemo/meego. I was working with it as subcontractor in Nokia, and it was awesome. The Qt/C++ was really fast to code, and you could basically port KDE apps into it with small effort.
If they would have continued with it, we could have had three major OS in phones.
I was leading architect in internal UI design tools, and the tools had features that android/apple toolsets not even now have. Mainly because you could run the Qt app with PC hardware without any emulation.
Sounds like it wasn’t really your area, but good lord the N810/N900 were some of the most beautiful pieces of industrial design I’ve ever used. Maemo was delightful to use too, don’t get me wrong, and I loved tethering it to my featurephone and getting a decent mobile experience, as well as doing my first practical in-car navigation with the GPS and the mapping software that was available, but those things were an overlooked gem of hardware, like something straight out of Star Trek.
Nokia was lead by engineers, which was it’s strength, but eventually also caused it’s downfall. This is why these things were so good.
Engineers told that the fullscreen displays without keyboard is never as good as physical keyboard.
Engineers told that 1 day battery life is not enough, the system need to be designed so that it can last a week.
They were right.
BUT apple’s marketing and slick design convinced the American market that you can give up on those features. Nokia could easily made the same design, but didn’t because engineers thought that users need those features. When they turned ship and accepted it, apple had its foot between the door already.
I mean, it got a hit, but what ended it was the Elopian suicide.
Also about slick design … That’s subjective, but even Windows Mobile looked better than Apple stuff.
And Nokia UI design was just perfect.
I always find it amazing when you hear these insights into the downfall of once huge companies. It’s incredible how terrible some people’s judgement can be and a lot of these successful people are riding on luck rather than intelligence it seems
Nokia only sold off their consumer mobile phone arm. It was the least profitable part of their business. They’re still a massive company and doing quite well.
Or they could’ve opened up their hardware so enthusiasts could make other stuff work. If Windows doesn’t work for them, someone will get Android running, or maybe something like Sailfish.
I’m going to buy a Google Pixel, not because of the software features, but because I can easily flash something else onto it. I’m definitely part of a niche, but people have been modding consoles and whatnot in the mainstream for decades, so I think the community could help a company survive bad software if they open up the hardware enough.
Analysts are all about “product differentiation”. Everyone was Android, so the way to differentiate themselves was to go with windows.
It ended up being a bad call but at the time Android only had 2 years in the market and trusting the leading OS company to manufacture a proper mobile product wasn’t a crazy idea. Microsoft just completely mismanaged the whole phone thing and took down Nokia with it.
If I remember correctly the approach was so anti-google that you couldn’t even watch youtube on Windows Phones.
Microsoft also had a decent credibility with mobile device OS’s. They made OS’s for PDA’s like Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC… those were all on some very capable devices.
God, I miss my Compaq Ipaq Pocket PC. That thing was a fucking beast.
Google sabotaged Windows Phone to protect Android. They refused to serve even standard Google web apps to the WP browser, instead relegating users to years-old mobile versions that looked and worked terribly. You could literally edit the user string on the Windows browser and get the modern, perfectly functional version. Then there was the constant YouTube fuckery where Google wouldn’t make a YouTube app for them, then wouldn’t let them make their own app either. The entire point was to starve the system to kill it in the cradle and on some level, it probably worked.
Looking at the fact that Google is under intense anticompetitive scrutiny now and has been egregiously destroying evidence every chance they get shows that this isn’t out of character for them.
Nokia sealed their fate when they spent $8bn on NavTeq. Switching to Android would have made the purchase valueless, and the people responsible for the acquisition were still in charge.