
The Old, Innovative Nokia Is Back - T-A
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-29/nokia-s-virtual-reality-ambitions-could-restore-its-tech-luster
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rospaya
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.

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simi_
Can we call this the Xerox PARC syndrome?

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sirkneeland
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

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camillomiller
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.

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digi_owl
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.

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spiralpolitik
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.

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atinoda-kestrel
> 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.

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sirkneeland
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

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atinoda-kestrel
>That's not entirely true. The MeeGo org was a mess.

Obviously you have an inside perspective that I don't, but from the outside it
just looked like y'all made an amazing phone. :) I can't say I heard much
about internal issues, but I believe it given other things I've heard about
Nokia internal management...

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digi_owl
The phone was perhaps amazing, but Meego the project was all over the place.
Sure, Intel and Nokia was supposed to cooperate. But just as Meego was
announced, Intel had moved from Moblin v1 (deb) to Moblin v2 (rpm).

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phantom_oracle
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).

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function_seven
> (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.

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adventured
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/19nok...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/technology/companies/19nokia.html)

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superkuh
>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.

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dharma1
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?

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digi_owl
Seems a bit early to really tell...

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sirkneeland
Gotta start somewhere! :)

