Ex-Nokia employee here - I used to work directly for the CTO of Nokia. It's amazing, but unsurprising, to me the strength of Nokia's phone brand after all these years. There's a lot longer of a story to Nokia's decision not to use Android than most people realize. For example, Intel figured prominently, the Symbian vs. Maemo debate raged internally, discussions with Google were marred by massive cultural differences and arrogance on both sides. I'm surprised no one has written a book.
For what it's worth, Windows Phone was actually an amazing platform for both users and developers, and shows a fundamental rule of technology: There Is No Third Ecosystsm. The most dominant hardware maker (at the time) and software/os maker teamed up with a really great product, but couldn't break the established smartphone duopoly, even though it was only a few years old by that point. I wasn't a Microsoft fan by any stretch (the opposite actually), but even I agreed with the decision at the time, especially after using Windows Phone. First mover advantage is huge, and developers only have so much bandwidth.
Edit: Heh. Apparently someone did write a book. See comments below. Wow.
> For what it's worth, Windows Phone was actually an amazing platform for both users and developers, and shows a fundamental rule of technology: There Is No Third Ecosystem
I don't think this is fundamental. Microsoft really dropped the ball on Windows 10 Mobile. Building a third ecosystem is very hard, and it's a long term commitment. Microsoft had made good inroads on cheap phones with reasonable performance, and they didn't follow through with that for W10M; instead they were focusing on flagship phones. Flagship phone buyers are a lot more discriminating about everything including OS polish, app marketplace, and upgrade experience (edit to add, and a browser that doesn't suck).
Windows Phone 7 was horrible. No native apps, no background tasks, no globally accessible storage, no serious graphics API, no API for audio streaming, no API for anything!
It got slightly better in WP8, but bad impression remained.
Windows phone was a great platform, but the constant abandonment of hardware made many people really angry. First WP7 phones could not get WP8, then WP8 phones could not get WP10. Both times the users were promised years of upgrades and support when they bought the devices.
There was already an established duopoly when iOS and Android first shipped.
But what happened was that for some reason the focus shifted from the well established European market to the backwaters American market, rolling back some 2 decades of progress in mobile tech in the process.
Nokia was demoing Symbian phones that could operate as a pocket computer (just hook up to a TV a keyboard and a mouse) while Android barely could show a video on a external screen by blanking the internal one.
Yet the established players flinched, bought into the MSM hype, and ran their ships aground, leaving themselves wide open to be overtaken by upstarts.
> For what it's worth, Windows Phone was actually an amazing platform for both users and developers
Inability of Nokia/Microsoft to see that it wasn't amazing at all - in my opinion is the reason they got destroyed by iOS and Android. Windows Phone 7 was far from amazing, and by the time windows phone 8 came out - everybody already realized that and were not going to purchase another phone with WP8 that will be bricked by a new update again like all the WP7 phones did.
Windows phone was the worst thing ever. You could only open 4 tabs in your browser. Give me a break. The floor of stacking everything on top of each other was a mess where once you popped off an app you couldn't go back. I used windows phone via proxy, first thing I did was to get everyone to give it up and switch to Android.
What office you worked in? I used to meet a lot of Nokia refugees in Vancouver and Seattle. Almost all retell the same story: C-Levels spending more time flying than on the ground, complete sturpor with platform development, internal sabotage in between internal symbian teams
I agreed with y'all as well at the time. Anytime someone hated on windows phone I would show it to them and it wasn't at all uncommon for them to go out and buy it later. The PDF viewer is the only thing I've ever had an issue with.
I was choosing between that and a Moto G5 Plus in the price bracket. Perhaps the Moto has better features, but the Nokia has a solid steel plate running through its entire body[1].
So, I could have had a better camera and battery on a Moto, or I could get the assurance that if I end up in a Star Wars garbage compactor scenario, I'd have something I could wedge into the damn doors to avoid being crushed completely flat.
Every single time there is an article about Nokia I cannot believe how little people actually know about Nokia, the company.
* The cellphone division was entirely sold to Microsoft ages ago.
* The cellphones coming out today is just a branding agreement with HMD.
* The Nokia of today is a huge company (more than 100.000 people) that focuses on backbone networks and telecom services. Almost every single ISP and provider in the world is using Nokia tecnology. Every other core router or service router on Internet is a Nokia router (or Alcatel-Lucent router that was bought by Nokia couple years ago).
I know the Name Nokia is not Hype like an Apple or Google, but there is very cool stuff happening in the Backbone telecom business.
Pretty well done considering that they were in very deep troubles before selling the (worthless) mobile phone business to Microsoft for quite a nice price.
Apparently HMD is across the street from Nokia and is run be former Nokia execs. HMD gets the brand, Nokia gets the royalties. Almost like a step-subsidiary. Not sure what the agreement was with MSFT but certainly a great save of their IP and brand given the circumstances.
They should have also stayed with Maemo. A dual Android and Maemo strategy could have been very successful. IMHO the Nokia 770-900 series is the best mobile saga in history.
I would still carry out that strategy. Android for the masses, and a real Linux as a different product aimed at enthusiasts, privacy aware and governments. That market is growing. Even Apple is focusing on privacy-aware people.
My Nokia N9, which is inferior to the N900 in some ways, is still ahead of many smartphones of 2018 in a few key aspects. The UI is incredibly elegant. Furthermore, its a real Linux machine, with a real terminal and a regular userland. And offline navigation is amazing.
I still use it often. The hardware is beautiful in a way very few products are.
Same here, even though they are a bit more expensive than the Google branded phones from two years ago and earlier.
Nokia also sounded quite sad about not being able to put project Treble on the Nokia 8. Maybe because they now have to put in more effort into putting out Android updates but I welcome their strategy of bringing those updates to the consumer very fast. Sometimes even faster than Google.
For perspective. Apple shipped 77.3 million smartphones in Q4 2017. Samsung shipped 74.1 million. Huawei shipped 41.0 million. Xiaomi shipped 28.1 million. OPPO shipped 27.4 million. And everyone outside the top 5 shipped 151.3 million. So these figures mean that Nokia shipped roughly 3% of the not-top-five-brands in Q4.
Nice to see people choose phones that get security updates.
I've had an opportunity to try Nokia 8 and Nokia 3. Basically go for the highest model number that you can afford.
Nokia 8 is very good. No complaints that wouldn't apply to Pixel, too.
Nokia 3 is remarkably good _for its €150 price_ (camera underwhelming, screen blue-tinted and unreliable wifi [at least with November software] compared to flagships, but in Europe unreliable wifi doesn't matter since you can stay on mobile data all the time, so better choose the security updates than a competitor with better wifi).
Nokia used to be where apple is today. They had a majority of the smartphone market share. It was a smaller market. They also dominated the feature phone market. It just shows you how fast things can change.
This graph is pretty awesome in showing how big Nokia was:
I remember the old "cool" cell phone platform cycles are 3-5 years. StarTac, Moto Razor, Nokia, Blackberry, etc.
The current smartphone platforms probably will last a lot longer - probably because of the App ego systems. I was thinking that IPhone might drop off around 6 years after it was introduced.
Who would have guessed that pairing the most popular mobile phone brand, with the most popular smartphone OS in the world would have led to success. Especially if they maintained the hardware quality the brand was renowned for?
Clearly what they should have done is paired with a new OS with basically no base from a company that had failed in almost every consumer venture it embarked upon.
The shocking thing here is that Google sold less than 4.4 million smartphones in a quarter. Why is that? I thought with Google's brand name, they should be selling a good number of them. Don't they have affiliations with carriers? Can people only buy them on their site?
The Google phones start around $900 in most countries, they only sell to like 5 countries, and they only partnered with a single carrier in the US.
So, first of all, they don't sell in most countries where people would buy such expensive phones, and in the countries where people would buy these, Google either only sells through a single carrier, or through a web shop that requires a credit card.
Which, for example, in Germany almost no one has (I think last time we discussed this @germanier linked a study showing 22% CC ownership?)
Either way, they're limiting the people they sell to to a tiny market, and then they don't actually offer something special.
The Pixel devices are some of the most expensive smartphones ever, but both special. They have the same waterproofing and features as a normal mid range phone, they have no exceptional warranty such as apple, they have no special software or hardware features like the Samsung Galaxy Note Series' Stylus.
> The shocking thing here is that Google sold less than 4.4 million smartphones in a quarter. Why is that?
Google sells a couple flagship phones, no downmarket phones (they don't, AFAIK, even still sell their older flagships), and doesn't really market them heavily compared to the big players in the handset industry. I don't know if they have any carrier deals besides VZW.
Compare this to Samsung, who currently has four flagships (S8/S8+/S8 Active/Note 8) and a dozens of downmarket phones plus still selling older flagship generations. Google isn't trying to compete across the whole spectrum of feature preferences and price sensitivity the way, say, Samsung is, and their unit sales reflect that.
I bought myself a new Nokia phone on the weekend, wanted a second handset so got myself a Nokia 3310 (the new model). Maybe some of that decision was based on nostalgia (my first phone was the original model), but I haven't regretted it. The funny thing is I found a new use for it after I bought it... it allows you to use a 32GB SD card in it, and has an MP3 player app. No big deal there. However, the battery life when just playing back MP3s is allegedly 51 hours! I'm pretty lazy when it comes to charging my devices so I was pretty happy to find that out. :-)
Nokia has no ownership in HMD Global who licensed Nokia brand for 10 years to make phones. Nokia gets license and patent fees from the deal.
The future prospects of Nokia stock are tied to 5G network deployments. 5G deployments start already this year, but they will be slow at first. Things start move along 2019 when first 5G networks and devices (including phones) start to appear. 2020-2022 will show if Nokia is the winner in the battle for market share.
I have an ailing 1020 that I'm dreading replacing.
Are there any new user-serviceable phones on the market? or should I just keep doing the Ship of Theseus thing with Amazon greymarket parts until the phone market shakes out into less of a nightmare for users?
I'm glad to hear they're doing well in the featurephone market. It's nice to have a phone that has great call quality, long battery life, and can actually play FM radio. I hope they keep selling in the US market.
So will these phones ever support CDMA or is that just going to be ignored? I wonder how they're doing in the US specifically considering their phones can't be used on two of the larger carriers in the country.
We're already seeing this transition happen in other markets - in Japan, while KDDI is still running their 3G CDMA network, new iPhone models are not being provisioned to connect to it, using solely LTE (thanks to the LTE coverage being superior as they can use the low spectrum freed up by analog TV).
What does LTE-only coverage look like on Verizon? Do you miss out on much if you pop a Verizon SIM in a device without CDMA? And do they support VoLTE?
Strictly speaking Nokia isn't selling smartphones, HMD is. Nokia itself it primarily an IP company, the Nokia brand being part of that IP. Nokias business-model is about licensing their precious IP to other companies, in this case to HMD.
[+] [-] russellbeattie|8 years ago|reply
For what it's worth, Windows Phone was actually an amazing platform for both users and developers, and shows a fundamental rule of technology: There Is No Third Ecosystsm. The most dominant hardware maker (at the time) and software/os maker teamed up with a really great product, but couldn't break the established smartphone duopoly, even though it was only a few years old by that point. I wasn't a Microsoft fan by any stretch (the opposite actually), but even I agreed with the decision at the time, especially after using Windows Phone. First mover advantage is huge, and developers only have so much bandwidth.
Edit: Heh. Apparently someone did write a book. See comments below. Wow.
[+] [-] torpedo|8 years ago|reply
They have. Help yourself:
https://medium.com/@harrikiljander/operation-elop-6f2b043f52...
https://asokan.org/operation-elop/
[+] [-] toast0|8 years ago|reply
I don't think this is fundamental. Microsoft really dropped the ball on Windows 10 Mobile. Building a third ecosystem is very hard, and it's a long term commitment. Microsoft had made good inroads on cheap phones with reasonable performance, and they didn't follow through with that for W10M; instead they were focusing on flagship phones. Flagship phone buyers are a lot more discriminating about everything including OS polish, app marketplace, and upgrade experience (edit to add, and a browser that doesn't suck).
[+] [-] garaetjjte|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikanj|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digi_owl|8 years ago|reply
There was already an established duopoly when iOS and Android first shipped.
But what happened was that for some reason the focus shifted from the well established European market to the backwaters American market, rolling back some 2 decades of progress in mobile tech in the process.
Nokia was demoing Symbian phones that could operate as a pocket computer (just hook up to a TV a keyboard and a mouse) while Android barely could show a video on a external screen by blanking the internal one.
Yet the established players flinched, bought into the MSM hype, and ran their ships aground, leaving themselves wide open to be overtaken by upstarts.
[+] [-] usaphp|8 years ago|reply
Inability of Nokia/Microsoft to see that it wasn't amazing at all - in my opinion is the reason they got destroyed by iOS and Android. Windows Phone 7 was far from amazing, and by the time windows phone 8 came out - everybody already realized that and were not going to purchase another phone with WP8 that will be bricked by a new update again like all the WP7 phones did.
[+] [-] segmondy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway7645|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] romwell|8 years ago|reply
I was choosing between that and a Moto G5 Plus in the price bracket. Perhaps the Moto has better features, but the Nokia has a solid steel plate running through its entire body[1].
So, I could have had a better camera and battery on a Moto, or I could get the assurance that if I end up in a Star Wars garbage compactor scenario, I'd have something I could wedge into the damn doors to avoid being crushed completely flat.
I went with the Nokia.
[1] https://youtu.be/0M3Budnl3aI?t=186
[+] [-] ironjunkie|8 years ago|reply
* The cellphone division was entirely sold to Microsoft ages ago.
* The cellphones coming out today is just a branding agreement with HMD.
* The Nokia of today is a huge company (more than 100.000 people) that focuses on backbone networks and telecom services. Almost every single ISP and provider in the world is using Nokia tecnology. Every other core router or service router on Internet is a Nokia router (or Alcatel-Lucent router that was bought by Nokia couple years ago).
I know the Name Nokia is not Hype like an Apple or Google, but there is very cool stuff happening in the Backbone telecom business.
[+] [-] jpalomaki|8 years ago|reply
Pretty well done considering that they were in very deep troubles before selling the (worthless) mobile phone business to Microsoft for quite a nice price.
[1] http://www.bell-labs.com
[+] [-] bahmboo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digi_owl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petepete|8 years ago|reply
Google's last few phones have been plagued with problems, and them withholding software from their niche hardcore fans was the last straw.
If only Nokia had got in on the Android action earlier and realised that Symbian/Ovi wasn't up to it.
[+] [-] nextos|8 years ago|reply
I would still carry out that strategy. Android for the masses, and a real Linux as a different product aimed at enthusiasts, privacy aware and governments. That market is growing. Even Apple is focusing on privacy-aware people.
My Nokia N9, which is inferior to the N900 in some ways, is still ahead of many smartphones of 2018 in a few key aspects. The UI is incredibly elegant. Furthermore, its a real Linux machine, with a real terminal and a regular userland. And offline navigation is amazing.
I still use it often. The hardware is beautiful in a way very few products are.
[+] [-] Nokinside|8 years ago|reply
1. It's solid Android phone.
2. It's vanilla Android with frequent updates. No crapware and up to date.
[+] [-] foepys|8 years ago|reply
Nokia also sounded quite sad about not being able to put project Treble on the Nokia 8. Maybe because they now have to put in more effort into putting out Android updates but I welcome their strategy of bringing those updates to the consumer very fast. Sometimes even faster than Google.
[+] [-] jazoom|8 years ago|reply
Me too. Why will your next be a Nokia?
[+] [-] cwyers|8 years ago|reply
https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS43548018
[+] [-] hsivonen|8 years ago|reply
I've had an opportunity to try Nokia 8 and Nokia 3. Basically go for the highest model number that you can afford.
Nokia 8 is very good. No complaints that wouldn't apply to Pixel, too.
Nokia 3 is remarkably good _for its €150 price_ (camera underwhelming, screen blue-tinted and unreliable wifi [at least with November software] compared to flagships, but in Europe unreliable wifi doesn't matter since you can stay on mobile data all the time, so better choose the security updates than a competitor with better wifi).
[+] [-] samfisher83|8 years ago|reply
This graph is pretty awesome in showing how big Nokia was:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8GCu9SVwAE_n4N.png:large
[+] [-] srcmap|8 years ago|reply
The current smartphone platforms probably will last a lot longer - probably because of the App ego systems. I was thinking that IPhone might drop off around 6 years after it was introduced.
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] addicted|8 years ago|reply
Clearly what they should have done is paired with a new OS with basically no base from a company that had failed in almost every consumer venture it embarked upon.
[+] [-] Nokinside|8 years ago|reply
HMD Global is essentially Nokia - Foxconn partnership.
Nokia never sold it's R&D division or patents to Microsoft. HMD global has full IPR access to everything from Nokia Research and all patents.
Foxconn wants to reduce its dependence from Apple. 46% of Hon Hai's (Foxconn) revenue comes from Apple.
[+] [-] yalogin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuschku|8 years ago|reply
So, first of all, they don't sell in most countries where people would buy such expensive phones, and in the countries where people would buy these, Google either only sells through a single carrier, or through a web shop that requires a credit card.
Which, for example, in Germany almost no one has (I think last time we discussed this @germanier linked a study showing 22% CC ownership?)
Either way, they're limiting the people they sell to to a tiny market, and then they don't actually offer something special.
The Pixel devices are some of the most expensive smartphones ever, but both special. They have the same waterproofing and features as a normal mid range phone, they have no exceptional warranty such as apple, they have no special software or hardware features like the Samsung Galaxy Note Series' Stylus.
[+] [-] hsivonen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|8 years ago|reply
Google sells a couple flagship phones, no downmarket phones (they don't, AFAIK, even still sell their older flagships), and doesn't really market them heavily compared to the big players in the handset industry. I don't know if they have any carrier deals besides VZW.
Compare this to Samsung, who currently has four flagships (S8/S8+/S8 Active/Note 8) and a dozens of downmarket phones plus still selling older flagship generations. Google isn't trying to compete across the whole spectrum of feature preferences and price sensitivity the way, say, Samsung is, and their unit sales reflect that.
[+] [-] paulddraper|8 years ago|reply
Google offers only one or two (differing in size not features) phones every year or so.
A huge number of phone sales are not flagship phones, but <$300 ones.
[+] [-] monkeydust|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZenoArrow|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diggernet|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noureen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] romwell|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu
[+] [-] dejv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nokinside|8 years ago|reply
The future prospects of Nokia stock are tied to 5G network deployments. 5G deployments start already this year, but they will be slow at first. Things start move along 2019 when first 5G networks and devices (including phones) start to appear. 2020-2022 will show if Nokia is the winner in the battle for market share.
[+] [-] alexdumitru|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bcoates|8 years ago|reply
Are there any new user-serviceable phones on the market? or should I just keep doing the Ship of Theseus thing with Amazon greymarket parts until the phone market shakes out into less of a nightmare for users?
[+] [-] dqv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djhworld|8 years ago|reply
Really nice little phone I thought, perfectly servicable for light usage and felt nice to hold. A bargain for the £100 or so that I paid for it.
[+] [-] taoistextremist|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuschku|8 years ago|reply
CDMA is only used in a single country, one where Android is massively underrepresented, and it binds you to a single SoC vendor.
[+] [-] kalleboo|8 years ago|reply
We're already seeing this transition happen in other markets - in Japan, while KDDI is still running their 3G CDMA network, new iPhone models are not being provisioned to connect to it, using solely LTE (thanks to the LTE coverage being superior as they can use the low spectrum freed up by analog TV).
What does LTE-only coverage look like on Verizon? Do you miss out on much if you pop a Verizon SIM in a device without CDMA? And do they support VoLTE?
[+] [-] abimaelmartell|8 years ago|reply
EDIT: added the still
[+] [-] icebraining|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zokier|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smnrchrds|8 years ago|reply