zlacker

> Thankfully M$ didn't have control of the board

You never know. Remember Nokia?

>>two_in+(OP)
That still pisses me off.

>>smiles+l
The downfall of Nokia phones was seeded in it’s management culture. After one message from their CEO Elop Osbourned the market for Nokia phones faster than you can say ”burning raft”, the house of cards built on top of strong early brand history and increasingly commodotized radio technology, Micrsoft basically paid billions for an offering that would have required a heroic&legendary pivot (would have been possible with the talent and tech still in house).

Really really. You have two so-frigging-stereotypical samples of management ineptitude in running a strong commercial brand AND leadership (Osbourne:’guys our phones suck’ ; ’change management 101’: burning raft is literally the most commmon and mundane turn of phraze meant to imply you need to act fast. Using this specific phraze is a clear beacon you are out of way out of your depth by paraphrazing 101 material to your company). If the phones had been a strong product, none of this would have mattered. But they weren’t and this was as clear way to signal ”emperor has no clothes” as possible.

>>fsloth+c8
N9 was a work of art. Fuck Elop.

>>mlajto+Cd
In general software seems to be really hard for hardware companies. This was the main reason for the downfall IMO. The things that make you succeed in hardware do not suffice, and are partly wrong in software.

The N9 etc demonstrated there was enough talent for a plausible pivot. Was it business wise obvious this would have been the only and right choice?

>>mlajto+Cd
> Fuck Elop

It wasn't Elop who drove Nokia to the state it was in 2009. "Burning Platform" is from 2011.

>>35030334

>>fsloth+c8
When the iPhone 14 Pro came out, I was reminded of Nokia's supersampling 41MP camera, along with wireless charging, OIS, night mode, and other things Nokia shipped very early with Windows Phone. Now looking back, there was no guarantee that adopting Android would've given Nokia any enduring advantage. Where's HTC now? Does anybody even remember it? With Windows at least there's another chance of being bailed out by Microsoft. It's probably the better choice for shareholders.

>>fsloth+lk
Agree: Japanese and German manufacturing and materials know how? Lengendary. Software? Hmmmm.

>>fsloth+lk
I programmed for Symbian OS.

The dialect of C++ was pure hell, and the wanton diversity of products meant that there was no chance to get consistent UI over a chock-full of models whose selling potential was unknown in advance. Theoretically, there were standards such as Series 60. Practically, those were full of compatibility breaks and just weird idiosyncrasies.

Screen dimensions, available APIs, everything varied as if designed by a team of competing drunk sailors, and you could always plunge a week of work into fine-tuning your app for a platform that flopped. Unlike Apple, there just wasn't any software consistency. Some of the products were great, some were terrible, and all were subtly incompatible with one another.