I find it interesting that there is no Nokia Army overrunning this thread, four hours in.
What would you like people to say? There are numerous factual errors in Daniel's story, the biggest being, Apple didn't kill Symbian, Nokia killed Symbian.
To say that the iPhone destroyed Symbian would be an incredible over-simplification of what happened. The iPhone certainly destroyed Symbian in the UK and Australia but the picture in other countries is mixed. Symbian never had double-digit marketshare in the US for example. Other Symbian strongholds such as India and China haven't truly been conquered by Apple yet. If you look at where Symbian was dominant in terms of geography and price points, there's far more overlap with Android than iPhone. Ultimately, Nokia and Elop destroyed Symbian, ditched its well-reviewed successor and never found a viable alternative.
You say that Nokia had a "secret plan" to replace Symbian with MeeGo but it really wasn't all that secret. Nokia released its first internet tablet based on Maemo (the previous name for MeeGo) in 2005. It was already clear to smart commentators at that stage that ultimately Maemo/MeeGo would replace Symbian - an operating designed for low-powered hardware - as hardware advanced.
By "Symbian strongholds" you mean remaining markets for Nokia to sell its old, low end stuff. It is not exactly a living platform, and has been dead for a long time. Nokia canceled it. Remember that Windows Mobile continued to sell in Mexico long after it was toasted by the iPhone in markets where it was making money, too. Not exactly relevant.
The presence of Android/JavaME phones is also not material because those platforms have not increased share; they’ve just changed the name of the distro used by vendors who poop out low end devices that don’t really matter on an economic level. Android is simply a euphemism for "the remains of the mobile industry apart from Apple." It accounts for no more than a quarter of the industry’s profits.
Yes, Nokia never had significant share in the U.S., where Windows Mobile was strongest. But the iPhone destroyed both, very rapidly. Faster than any other transition in technology ever. Recall it took Microsoft ten years to sideline Apple with a copy of its Macintosh environment.
Apple pushed Microsoft and Nokia (and all of Nokia’s Symbian partners: DoCoMo, Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Matsushita and Samsung) off the map. While also kicking the stool from under Palm and Blackberry. You can try to revise history and assign all of Apple’s victories to Google and its chaotic mess of a "platform" simply because lots of products exist on the market, but the problem is that the industry failed before Android ever appeared.
Both Sony and Samsung introduced knee-jerk reactions to the iPhone in the form of a Symbian flagship followed by a Windows Mobile flagship. Well after both were in seriously deep trouble they moved to Android, but only because that was the only thing left.
Maemo wasn’t secret as a netbook project, but its role of replacing Symbian on smartphones wasn’t outed until late 2009 because Nokia was relying on Symbian and didn’t want to admit it was in serious trouble or advertise that its flagship platform needed replacement.
I can't merge them in here because they were made before the thread started so would appear at the top.
That has happened before, with TS. Yep, right here
I think that is when someone leaves a comment on the front page, before the thread has been created by Huddler. Then when some Huddler(?) script is run is takes the comments first and then the article itself. Or something. Whatever, no biggie. Anyhow, good to see thread #160032 back online lol
What would you like people to say? There are numerous factual errors in Daniel's story, the biggest being, Apple didn't kill Symbian, Nokia killed Symbian.
Hilarious. Please explain why Nokia killed Symbian if it wasn’t already slain by the iPhone. Symbian was regarded as great stuff in 2007. I had readers telling me that Apple would be stupid to introduce a mobile phone that wasn’t just Symbian with a personality layer on top. The whole industry was behind Symbian apart from North America’s Palm/WiMo/BBry.
Two years later Symbian was dead. I find your historical revisionism entertaining though.
That has happened before, with TS. Yep, right here
I think that is when someone leaves a comment on the front page, before the thread has been created by Huddler. Then when some Huddler(?) script is run is takes the comments first and then the article itself. Or something. Whatever, no biggie. Anyhow, good to see thread #160032 back online lol
We’re the same person. He lives inside me and has eidetic memory, so he’s able to pull stuff up immediately just by typing the remembered URL. I live outside me and can’t remember what happened five minutes ago. Which is great, since I’d suffer from a crippling depression otherwise; this way all I have to do is wait a little while to forget–not only that I was curled into a ball weeping–but why that was happening, too.
What were we talking about? " src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
That has happened before, with TS. Yep, right here
I think that is when someone leaves a comment on the front page, before the thread has been created by Huddler. Then when some Huddler(?) script is run is takes the comments first and then the article itself. Or something. Whatever, no biggie. Anyhow, good to see thread #160032 back online lol
How in the H E double sticks did you find that?
That's the beauty of the search engine on this site, it apparently wasn't created by Google as this one actually works. It's really very good. It also helps that I remember keywords from posts so am able to do a narrowed search, if you will.
The thread numbers are a bit pathetic to remember, guilty as charged.
the iphone did not kill nokia. nokia killed nokia. i used to work in nokia design for a number of years. from an insider's perspective, this article has nothing useful in it.
some journalist understood nokia's were hard to use after using an iphone? what insight! but, years too late. nokia's were hard to use before the iphone existed. the sad part was - they used to be great. then, color screens appeared, and engineer-lead novelty features started to crowd out the really useful stuff, needless complexity started setting in on top of plain ugliness. problem was, users still recognized the brand as easy to use. and, nokia being nokia - corporate leadership blindly continued to believe what consumers said, rather than what was right in their own hands - they were not easy to use, anymore.
design was never respected; compromised at every turn, slicing off pennies from production cost, seen as valueless on its own. *EVERYTHING* was decided by committees. lower level managers, upper level managers, executives; everything was decided by consensus. in other words, everything got boiled down to it's lowest common denominator. i remember when the N series was being launched - they used this absurd phrase "multimedia computer." they were so happy with this phrase. so dumb. no one seemed to realize - most people hate computers. computers define hard to use for most people who use them. well... maybe they had found the best word for it, after all, as it was hard to use... just like a typical pc.
there were so many problems at nokia, but one of the biggest shockers for me was when i found out how the bonuses worked for software engineers (and wow, did that company have too many software engineers). basically, causing bugs in their codebase brought down your bonus. this software guy i was working with came up with a fantastic solution to a problem - something that produced great results and was easy to use, too. then, he scrapped it. yes, it was likely to cause a bug somewhere. wow, software innovation causes bugs? go figure! but hey, we don't want innovation so let's make sure that never happens by penalizing their bonus.
that bonus scheme alone would be enough to erode the company down to nothing, much less everything else. that reporter was meaningless in the reality of things. but, i suppose that's what writers do - inflate their own egos, and write about it.
Maemo wasn’t secret as a netbook project, but its role of replacing Symbian on smartphones wasn’t outed until late 2009 because Nokia was relying on Symbian and didn’t want to admit it was in serious trouble or advertise that its flagship platform needed replacement.
Maemo wasn't a netbook project, it was an internet tablet project and a test bed for a new open source mobile platform. It was billed as Nokia's 'next-gen platform' way back in 2005. It didn't take a genius to work out that it was going to replace Symbian.
Just like OS X replaces Mac OS 9, Nokia had a long-term plan to replace Symbian with Maemo. Several Symbian devices (based on Series 90) even shared the same user interface. Operating systems become dated and need to be replaced. That's the way of technology.
Maemo wasn't a netbook project, it was an internet tablet project and a test bed for a new open source mobile platform. It was billed as Nokia's 'next-gen platform' way back in 2005. It didn't take a genius to work out that it was going to replace Symbian.
Just like OS X replaces Mac OS 9, Nokia had a long-term plan to replace Symbian with Maemo. Several Symbian devices (based on Series 90) even shared the same user interface. Operating systems become dated and need to be replaced. That's the way of technology.
The N770/N800/N900 may have looked remotely like a mini-tablet/iPod touch, but it worked like a netbook: a shrunken PC.
Nokia failed to do anything apart from reinvent the Linux PC wheel that several other groups were already busy reinventing in parallel, without adding anything really useful or valuable in the process. They were all just trying to recreate Windows to perpetuate the 90s.
Nokia did need to replace the crufty foundation of Symbian, but while they toiled with Linux and failed to deliver a Linux-Phone before the end of 2011, they were blown away by Apple’s far more rapid and competent efforts to not just repurpose a desktop OS for mobile use, but to also actually think about how to deliver that in a useful form that didn’t just shrink down the PC.
That’s why the iPhone destroyed Nokia’s Symbian, Nokia’s Linux, Microsoft’s WiMo, Palm OS, BlackBerry’s JavaME, Motorola’s Linux and everything else. The only thing that has remained in play is Google’s cleaned up version of JavaME with an iOS interface littered with desktop Linux holdovers. We’ll see how well that works out over the next two years.
Samsung got a lot of press this year, but delivered a series of duds. The GS4’s sales were massively disappointing. This has not yet even been reported yet. Once it starts sinking in, the landscape will change dramatically.
the iphone did not kill nokia. nokia killed nokia. i used to work in nokia design for a number of years. from an insider's perspective, this article has nothing useful in it.
some journalist understood nokia's were hard to use after using an iphone? what insight! but, years too late. nokia's were hard to use before the iphone existed. the sad part was - they used to be great. then, color screens appeared, and engineer-lead novelty features started to crowd out the really useful stuff, needless complexity started setting in on top of plain ugliness. problem was, users still recognized the brand as easy to use. and, nokia being nokia - corporate leadership blindly continued to believe what consumers said, rather than what was right in their own hands - they were not easy to use, anymore.
design was never respected; compromised at every turn, slicing off pennies from production cost, seen as valueless on its own. *EVERYTHING* was decided by committees. lower level managers, upper level managers, executives; everything was decided by consensus. in other words, everything got boiled down to it's lowest common denominator. i remember when the N series was being launched - they used this absurd phrase "multimedia computer." they were so happy with this phrase. so dumb. no one seemed to realize - most people hate computers. computers define hard to use for most people who use them. well... maybe they had found the best word for it, after all, as it was hard to use... just like a typical pc.
there were so many problems at nokia, but one of the biggest shockers for me was when i found out how the bonuses worked for software engineers (and wow, did that company have too many software engineers). basically, causing bugs in their codebase brought down your bonus. this software guy i was working with came up with a fantastic solution to a problem - something that produced great results and was easy to use, too. then, he scrapped it. yes, it was likely to cause a bug somewhere. wow, software innovation causes bugs? go figure! but hey, we don't want innovation so let's make sure that never happens by penalizing their bonus.
This is what makes AppleInsider great sometimes — the insider's view of how things really screw up. I'm sure a Microsoft designer could give a similar picture of what ails that company.
This Apple Insider's article is simply pure rubbish and lie. iPhone did not kill Symbian, the whole claim that it did is ridiculous. Symbian was killed by Elop and MicroSoft, not by Apple and iPhone. iPhone really has never been a threat to Symbian. iPhonr has never been capable of killing Symbian.
The blue line is Nokia's Symbian smartphone sales . The red line is Samsung's Android sales, and the green line is Apple's iPhone sales.
As you can see from the graph iPhone sales were NEVER even close to as high as Symbian's sales. And we are now talking about the global sales, not just sales in USA. USA is not the whole world.
You can also clearly see from the graph that betweeb Q1/2009 and february 2011 Apple's iPhone sales DID NOT grow any faster than Nokia's Symbian sales. Actually Symbian sales grew faster during that period.
Now, look at the graph, and especially look at the date when Nokia's problems started.
As you can see Nokia's problems started in february 2011 AFTER Elop's burning platform memo and Elop's stupid strategy change which moved Nokia from Symbian and MeeGo to Windows Phone..
As you can see Nokia's Symbianm sales were GROWING before febriuary 2011. Sales collapsed AFTER Elop's memo and strategy change.
So yes, some Americans DID destroy Nokia. Canadian MS -trojan horse called Elop and USA based MicroSoft DID kill Nokia. So yes, america is quilty as hell.
You should also note that Elop made his burbib platform memo and strategy change at the time when Symbuan Belle and Nokia N9 with MeeGo Harmattan were close to release, but not released yet. Elop KNEW that those products were coming to market, in the summer 2011 and still he killed both Symbian and MeeGo. That damaged wery badly sales of both Symbian Belle and MeeGo devices before those were even released yet!!! That also destroyed Nokia. And Elop did the samw with Meltemi. Meltemi was almost ready when Elop cancelled the project.
As I said Symbian Belle was released in summer 2011 and MeeGo Harmattan in september 2011. The reason why those were released so closely in time is that Nokia was developing completely new Qt based UI for both Symbian Belle and MeeGo Harmattan. The UI was finished and ready for use in early summer 2011. Soon after that Symbian Belle and MeeGo Harmattan were released. The new UI was designed both platforms in mind. That's why Symbian Belle is so similar to MeeGo Harmattan, and that's why the UI of Symbian Belle and MeeGo Harmattan applications are almost udentical.
Meltemi was akso gioing to have a new Qt based UI. Meltemi was going to replace Nokia's Series 40 platform, which is also known S40 and as Asha.. Nokia's cheap feature phones were giubg to run completely new Meltemi platform. But then Elop killed Meltemi too.
So actually Elop destroyed three platforms when those were almost ready: Symbian Belle, MeeGo Harmattan and Meltemi. Sales of Symbian Belle and MeeGo Harmattan were badly damaged by Elop and Meltemi was cancelled and was never released.
You can clealy see that Nokia's death and collapse of Symbian sales was caused by Elop and MicroSoft. It was not caused by iPhone or Apple. . What Elop abd NuxroSoft did can only br described as a industrial sabotage and hostile take over of Nokia.
By the way, in February 2011 Symbian's global market share was still almost 30%. What's iPhone's current global market share? Well it's about 8%. That's about 1/3 of Symbian's market share before february 2011.
Symbian was still the global market leader during Q4/2010. And yes, we are talking about global market share, not about marketshare in USA. Android did overtake Symbian in the late 2010. That DID NOT happen because Symbian popularity and sales would have been shrinking. As you can see from the graph Symbian sales were growing, not shrinking. Android overtook Symbian because the whole global smartphone market was growing rapidly and Android managed to grow it's sales faster than what Symbian did.
So Symbian was still market leader during Q4/2010. But what about iPhone? It has never been market leaser, not even close to that status. Currently Android's global marjet share is more than 80%, and iPhones just about 8%.
So it's ridiculous to claim that iPhone killed Symbian, IT DID NOT. And Symbian is still really not dead. There is still tens of millions active Symbian users worldwide, two years and 8 months after Elop officially destroyed Symbian market!!
To say that the iPhone destroyed Symbian would be an incredible over-simplification of what happened. The iPhone certainly destroyed Symbian in the UK and Australia but the picture in other countries is mixed. Symbian never had double-digit marketshare in the US for example. Other Symbian strongholds such as India and China haven't truly been conquered by Apple yet. If you look at where Symbian was dominant in terms of geography and price points, there's far more overlap with Android than iPhone. Ultimately, Nokia and Elop destroyed Symbian, ditched its well-reviewed successor and never found a viable alternative.
You say that Nokia had a "secret plan" to replace Symbian with MeeGo but it really wasn't all that secret. Nokia released its first internet tablet based on Maemo (the previous name for MeeGo) in 2005. It was already clear to smart commentators at that stage that ultimately Maemo/MeeGo would replace Symbian - an operating designed for low-powered hardware - as hardware advanced.
I would argue regarding lack of viable alternative to MeeGoo.
While it might have been well reviewed, I'd say that Windows Phone is well reviewed as well. Good reviews don't always transfer into huge sales, though - but we can only guess how well would N9 and other devices on the same platform sell.
I think no-one else did what Apple did because other companies are run by software geeks, shareholders, and business executives, not creative designers or representatives of end users. They also prefer quick fixes and 80/20 solutions. Doing it right first time is not in their vocab, but continuous improvement is (an excuse to fail). Believe me, every company I worked at is non-Apple-like, because the wrong people are running it.
The N770/N800/N900 may have looked remotely like a mini-tablet/iPod touch, but it worked like a netbook: a shrunken PC.
No, it didn't work like a netbook. I owned an N800. It was very much a mini-tablet. It used full-screen apps, an ARM CPU, a touchscreen with on-screen keyboard and was an always on device.
Quite where you get the idea that it was a netbook is anyone's guess. The first model came out several years before the first netbook was released. I very much doubt you ever used one of Nokia's internet tablets.
This Apple Insider's article is simply pure rubbish and lie. iPhone did not kill Symbian, the whole claim that it did is ridiculous. Symbian was killed by Elop and MicroSoft, not by Apple and iPhone. iPhone really has never been a threat to Symbian. iPhonr has never been capable of killing Symbian.
Symbian died because people stopped buying high end Nokia phones.
That happened as a result of the iPhone taking away that part of the market.
Nokia could not make money selling cheap phones at the bottom of the market.
That's what killed Symbian, a death of slow strangulation as the money ran out.
That's what killed Palm and BlackBerry.
That is what is happening to the majority of Android handset makers.
"Marketshare" is a fairly meaningless metric, it's all about the money.
Hilarious. Please explain why Nokia killed Symbian if it wasn’t already slain by the iPhone. Symbian was regarded as great stuff in 2007. I had readers telling me that Apple would be stupid to introduce a mobile phone that wasn’t just Symbian with a personality layer on top. The whole industry was behind Symbian apart from North America’s Palm/WiMo/BBry.
Two years later Symbian was dead. I find your historical revisionism entertaining though.
Daniel, the CEO of Nokia released a statement saying they were killing Symbian, the sales of Symbian phones basically died from this moment. The Sales of Symbian phones were still increasing up to this moment.
Symbian was a capable OS, which needed some work, but the mighty people from the USA (who, remember, only make up 4% of the worlds population decided they didn't like Symbian, so no one should), Nokia had options, they could have continued with it, they could have continued with Meego, but no, they announced they would stop development. This is what killed Symbian.
Comments
No they haven't
What would you like people to say? There are numerous factual errors in Daniel's story, the biggest being, Apple didn't kill Symbian, Nokia killed Symbian.
To say that the iPhone destroyed Symbian would be an incredible over-simplification of what happened. The iPhone certainly destroyed Symbian in the UK and Australia but the picture in other countries is mixed. Symbian never had double-digit marketshare in the US for example. Other Symbian strongholds such as India and China haven't truly been conquered by Apple yet. If you look at where Symbian was dominant in terms of geography and price points, there's far more overlap with Android than iPhone. Ultimately, Nokia and Elop destroyed Symbian, ditched its well-reviewed successor and never found a viable alternative.
You say that Nokia had a "secret plan" to replace Symbian with MeeGo but it really wasn't all that secret. Nokia released its first internet tablet based on Maemo (the previous name for MeeGo) in 2005. It was already clear to smart commentators at that stage that ultimately Maemo/MeeGo would replace Symbian - an operating designed for low-powered hardware - as hardware advanced.
By "Symbian strongholds" you mean remaining markets for Nokia to sell its old, low end stuff. It is not exactly a living platform, and has been dead for a long time. Nokia canceled it. Remember that Windows Mobile continued to sell in Mexico long after it was toasted by the iPhone in markets where it was making money, too. Not exactly relevant.
The presence of Android/JavaME phones is also not material because those platforms have not increased share; they’ve just changed the name of the distro used by vendors who poop out low end devices that don’t really matter on an economic level. Android is simply a euphemism for "the remains of the mobile industry apart from Apple." It accounts for no more than a quarter of the industry’s profits.
Yes, Nokia never had significant share in the U.S., where Windows Mobile was strongest. But the iPhone destroyed both, very rapidly. Faster than any other transition in technology ever. Recall it took Microsoft ten years to sideline Apple with a copy of its Macintosh environment.
Apple pushed Microsoft and Nokia (and all of Nokia’s Symbian partners: DoCoMo, Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Matsushita and Samsung) off the map. While also kicking the stool from under Palm and Blackberry. You can try to revise history and assign all of Apple’s victories to Google and its chaotic mess of a "platform" simply because lots of products exist on the market, but the problem is that the industry failed before Android ever appeared.
Both Sony and Samsung introduced knee-jerk reactions to the iPhone in the form of a Symbian flagship followed by a Windows Mobile flagship. Well after both were in seriously deep trouble they moved to Android, but only because that was the only thing left.
Maemo wasn’t secret as a netbook project, but its role of replacing Symbian on smartphones wasn’t outed until late 2009 because Nokia was relying on Symbian and didn’t want to admit it was in serious trouble or advertise that its flagship platform needed replacement.
That has happened before, with TS. Yep, right here
I think that is when someone leaves a comment on the front page, before the thread has been created by Huddler. Then when some Huddler(?) script is run is takes the comments first and then the article itself. Or something. Whatever, no biggie. Anyhow, good to see thread #160032 back online lol
What would you like people to say? There are numerous factual errors in Daniel's story, the biggest being, Apple didn't kill Symbian, Nokia killed Symbian.
Hilarious. Please explain why Nokia killed Symbian if it wasn’t already slain by the iPhone. Symbian was regarded as great stuff in 2007. I had readers telling me that Apple would be stupid to introduce a mobile phone that wasn’t just Symbian with a personality layer on top. The whole industry was behind Symbian apart from North America’s Palm/WiMo/BBry.
Two years later Symbian was dead. I find your historical revisionism entertaining though.
How in the H E double sticks did you find that?
We’re the same person. He lives inside me and has eidetic memory, so he’s able to pull stuff up immediately just by typing the remembered URL. I live outside me and can’t remember what happened five minutes ago. Which is great, since I’d suffer from a crippling depression otherwise; this way all I have to do is wait a little while to forget–not only that I was curled into a ball weeping–but why that was happening, too.
What were we talking about?
" src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
That's the beauty of the search engine on this site, it apparently wasn't created by Google as this one actually works. It's really very good. It also helps that I remember keywords from posts so am able to do a narrowed search, if you will.
The thread numbers are a bit pathetic to remember, guilty as charged.
the iphone did not kill nokia. nokia killed nokia. i used to work in nokia design for a number of years. from an insider's perspective, this article has nothing useful in it.
some journalist understood nokia's were hard to use after using an iphone? what insight! but, years too late. nokia's were hard to use before the iphone existed. the sad part was - they used to be great. then, color screens appeared, and engineer-lead novelty features started to crowd out the really useful stuff, needless complexity started setting in on top of plain ugliness. problem was, users still recognized the brand as easy to use. and, nokia being nokia - corporate leadership blindly continued to believe what consumers said, rather than what was right in their own hands - they were not easy to use, anymore.
design was never respected; compromised at every turn, slicing off pennies from production cost, seen as valueless on its own. *EVERYTHING* was decided by committees. lower level managers, upper level managers, executives; everything was decided by consensus. in other words, everything got boiled down to it's lowest common denominator. i remember when the N series was being launched - they used this absurd phrase "multimedia computer." they were so happy with this phrase. so dumb. no one seemed to realize - most people hate computers. computers define hard to use for most people who use them. well... maybe they had found the best word for it, after all, as it was hard to use... just like a typical pc.
there were so many problems at nokia, but one of the biggest shockers for me was when i found out how the bonuses worked for software engineers (and wow, did that company have too many software engineers). basically, causing bugs in their codebase brought down your bonus. this software guy i was working with came up with a fantastic solution to a problem - something that produced great results and was easy to use, too. then, he scrapped it. yes, it was likely to cause a bug somewhere. wow, software innovation causes bugs? go figure! but hey, we don't want innovation so let's make sure that never happens by penalizing their bonus.
that bonus scheme alone would be enough to erode the company down to nothing, much less everything else. that reporter was meaningless in the reality of things. but, i suppose that's what writers do - inflate their own egos, and write about it.
Maemo wasn’t secret as a netbook project, but its role of replacing Symbian on smartphones wasn’t outed until late 2009 because Nokia was relying on Symbian and didn’t want to admit it was in serious trouble or advertise that its flagship platform needed replacement.
Maemo wasn't a netbook project, it was an internet tablet project and a test bed for a new open source mobile platform. It was billed as Nokia's 'next-gen platform' way back in 2005. It didn't take a genius to work out that it was going to replace Symbian.
Just like OS X replaces Mac OS 9, Nokia had a long-term plan to replace Symbian with Maemo. Several Symbian devices (based on Series 90) even shared the same user interface. Operating systems become dated and need to be replaced. That's the way of technology.
Maemo wasn't a netbook project, it was an internet tablet project and a test bed for a new open source mobile platform. It was billed as Nokia's 'next-gen platform' way back in 2005. It didn't take a genius to work out that it was going to replace Symbian.
Just like OS X replaces Mac OS 9, Nokia had a long-term plan to replace Symbian with Maemo. Several Symbian devices (based on Series 90) even shared the same user interface. Operating systems become dated and need to be replaced. That's the way of technology.
The N770/N800/N900 may have looked remotely like a mini-tablet/iPod touch, but it worked like a netbook: a shrunken PC.
Nokia failed to do anything apart from reinvent the Linux PC wheel that several other groups were already busy reinventing in parallel, without adding anything really useful or valuable in the process. They were all just trying to recreate Windows to perpetuate the 90s.
Nokia did need to replace the crufty foundation of Symbian, but while they toiled with Linux and failed to deliver a Linux-Phone before the end of 2011, they were blown away by Apple’s far more rapid and competent efforts to not just repurpose a desktop OS for mobile use, but to also actually think about how to deliver that in a useful form that didn’t just shrink down the PC.
That’s why the iPhone destroyed Nokia’s Symbian, Nokia’s Linux, Microsoft’s WiMo, Palm OS, BlackBerry’s JavaME, Motorola’s Linux and everything else. The only thing that has remained in play is Google’s cleaned up version of JavaME with an iOS interface littered with desktop Linux holdovers. We’ll see how well that works out over the next two years.
Samsung got a lot of press this year, but delivered a series of duds. The GS4’s sales were massively disappointing. This has not yet even been reported yet. Once it starts sinking in, the landscape will change dramatically.
the iphone did not kill nokia. nokia killed nokia. i used to work in nokia design for a number of years. from an insider's perspective, this article has nothing useful in it.
some journalist understood nokia's were hard to use after using an iphone? what insight! but, years too late. nokia's were hard to use before the iphone existed. the sad part was - they used to be great. then, color screens appeared, and engineer-lead novelty features started to crowd out the really useful stuff, needless complexity started setting in on top of plain ugliness. problem was, users still recognized the brand as easy to use. and, nokia being nokia - corporate leadership blindly continued to believe what consumers said, rather than what was right in their own hands - they were not easy to use, anymore.
design was never respected; compromised at every turn, slicing off pennies from production cost, seen as valueless on its own. *EVERYTHING* was decided by committees. lower level managers, upper level managers, executives; everything was decided by consensus. in other words, everything got boiled down to it's lowest common denominator. i remember when the N series was being launched - they used this absurd phrase "multimedia computer." they were so happy with this phrase. so dumb. no one seemed to realize - most people hate computers. computers define hard to use for most people who use them. well... maybe they had found the best word for it, after all, as it was hard to use... just like a typical pc.
there were so many problems at nokia, but one of the biggest shockers for me was when i found out how the bonuses worked for software engineers (and wow, did that company have too many software engineers). basically, causing bugs in their codebase brought down your bonus. this software guy i was working with came up with a fantastic solution to a problem - something that produced great results and was easy to use, too. then, he scrapped it. yes, it was likely to cause a bug somewhere. wow, software innovation causes bugs? go figure! but hey, we don't want innovation so let's make sure that never happens by penalizing their bonus.
This is what makes AppleInsider great sometimes — the insider's view of how things really screw up. I'm sure a Microsoft designer could give a similar picture of what ails that company.
I recommend that you take a look at this graph
http://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/...
The blue line is Nokia's Symbian smartphone sales . The red line is Samsung's Android sales, and the green line is Apple's iPhone sales.
As you can see from the graph iPhone sales were NEVER even close to as high as Symbian's sales. And we are now talking about the global sales, not just sales in USA. USA is not the whole world.
You can also clearly see from the graph that betweeb Q1/2009 and february 2011 Apple's iPhone sales DID NOT grow any faster than Nokia's Symbian sales. Actually Symbian sales grew faster during that period.
Now, look at the graph, and especially look at the date when Nokia's problems started.
As you can see Nokia's problems started in february 2011 AFTER Elop's burning platform memo and Elop's stupid strategy change which moved Nokia from Symbian and MeeGo to Windows Phone..
As you can see Nokia's Symbianm sales were GROWING before febriuary 2011. Sales collapsed AFTER Elop's memo and strategy change.
So yes, some Americans DID destroy Nokia. Canadian MS -trojan horse called Elop and USA based MicroSoft DID kill Nokia. So yes, america is quilty as hell.
You should also note that Elop made his burbib platform memo and strategy change at the time when Symbuan Belle and Nokia N9 with MeeGo Harmattan were close to release, but not released yet. Elop KNEW that those products were coming to market, in the summer 2011 and still he killed both Symbian and MeeGo. That damaged wery badly sales of both Symbian Belle and MeeGo devices before those were even released yet!!! That also destroyed Nokia. And Elop did the samw with Meltemi. Meltemi was almost ready when Elop cancelled the project.
As I said Symbian Belle was released in summer 2011 and MeeGo Harmattan in september 2011. The reason why those were released so closely in time is that Nokia was developing completely new Qt based UI for both Symbian Belle and MeeGo Harmattan. The UI was finished and ready for use in early summer 2011. Soon after that Symbian Belle and MeeGo Harmattan were released. The new UI was designed both platforms in mind. That's why Symbian Belle is so similar to MeeGo Harmattan, and that's why the UI of Symbian Belle and MeeGo Harmattan applications are almost udentical.
Meltemi was akso gioing to have a new Qt based UI. Meltemi was going to replace Nokia's Series 40 platform, which is also known S40 and as Asha..
Nokia's cheap feature phones were giubg to run completely new Meltemi platform. But then Elop killed Meltemi too.
So actually Elop destroyed three platforms when those were almost ready: Symbian Belle, MeeGo Harmattan and Meltemi. Sales of Symbian Belle and MeeGo Harmattan were badly damaged by Elop and Meltemi was cancelled and was never released.
You can clealy see that Nokia's death and collapse of Symbian sales was caused by Elop and MicroSoft. It was not caused by iPhone or Apple. . What Elop abd NuxroSoft did can only br described as a industrial sabotage and hostile take over of Nokia.
By the way, in February 2011 Symbian's global market share was still almost 30%. What's iPhone's current global market share? Well it's about 8%. That's about 1/3 of Symbian's market share before february 2011.
Symbian was still the global market leader during Q4/2010. And yes, we are talking about global market share, not about marketshare in USA. Android did overtake Symbian in the late 2010. That DID NOT happen because Symbian popularity and sales would have been shrinking. As you can see from the graph Symbian sales were growing, not shrinking. Android overtook Symbian because the whole global smartphone market was growing rapidly and Android managed to grow it's sales faster than what Symbian did.
So Symbian was still market leader during Q4/2010. But what about iPhone? It has never been market leaser, not even close to that status. Currently Android's global marjet share is more than 80%, and iPhones just about 8%.
So it's ridiculous to claim that iPhone killed Symbian, IT DID NOT. And Symbian is still really not dead. There is still tens of millions active Symbian users worldwide, two years and 8 months after Elop officially destroyed Symbian market!!
I would argue regarding lack of viable alternative to MeeGoo.
While it might have been well reviewed, I'd say that Windows Phone is well reviewed as well. Good reviews don't always transfer into huge sales, though - but we can only guess how well would N9 and other devices on the same platform sell.
I think no-one else did what Apple did because other companies are run by software geeks, shareholders, and business executives, not creative designers or representatives of end users. They also prefer quick fixes and 80/20 solutions. Doing it right first time is not in their vocab, but continuous improvement is (an excuse to fail). Believe me, every company I worked at is non-Apple-like, because the wrong people are running it.
The N770/N800/N900 may have looked remotely like a mini-tablet/iPod touch, but it worked like a netbook: a shrunken PC.
No, it didn't work like a netbook. I owned an N800. It was very much a mini-tablet. It used full-screen apps, an ARM CPU, a touchscreen with on-screen keyboard and was an always on device.
Quite where you get the idea that it was a netbook is anyone's guess. The first model came out several years before the first netbook was released. I very much doubt you ever used one of Nokia's internet tablets.
Hey, this is a DED article/ editorial. You should say 'this has all happened before'!
This Apple Insider's article is simply pure rubbish and lie. iPhone did not kill Symbian, the whole claim that it did is ridiculous. Symbian was killed by Elop and MicroSoft, not by Apple and iPhone. iPhone really has never been a threat to Symbian. iPhonr has never been capable of killing Symbian.
Symbian died because people stopped buying high end Nokia phones.
That happened as a result of the iPhone taking away that part of the market.
Nokia could not make money selling cheap phones at the bottom of the market.
That's what killed Symbian, a death of slow strangulation as the money ran out.
That's what killed Palm and BlackBerry.
That is what is happening to the majority of Android handset makers.
"Marketshare" is a fairly meaningless metric, it's all about the money.
Daniel, the CEO of Nokia released a statement saying they were killing Symbian, the sales of Symbian phones basically died from this moment. The Sales of Symbian phones were still increasing up to this moment.
Symbian was a capable OS, which needed some work, but the mighty people from the USA (who, remember, only make up 4% of the worlds population decided they didn't like Symbian, so no one should), Nokia had options, they could have continued with it, they could have continued with Meego, but no, they announced they would stop development. This is what killed Symbian.