Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

I believe this an interesting article for everyone

http://nokiamob.net/2017/07/22/weeke...e-phone-maker/

Re: Interesting article: DID HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT KILL NOKIA (THE PHONE MAKER)?
 

The paper referred to in the article can be downloaded from:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/...01839215606951

It paints Nokia as an organization with a high fear Level and a top management with low technological competecies.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Interestinf read for sure

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

I remember reading Nokia doing the No bad idea strategy and that just doesnt work

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Sounds like common Finnish working attitude. Army attitude is often transferred right into business culture in many places.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Interesting, although this is old news. At least it was (I think) well understood even back then that the whole incompetence of their organization was thanks to large-scale mis-management.

This same mis-management was the reason why Harmattan took so long to develop, and also the reason why MeeGo as a whole was too late to the market as well.

In my opinion, the transition to Harmattan should have been a gradual change, and they should have been more committed to Maemo / MeeGo than they turned out to be.

• They should have phased out Symbian right after the N900 launch
• There should have been more Maemo 5 devices, including a "more mainstream" one without the keyboard
• Instead of being such a giant change, Harmattan should have come as a series of gradual, smaller upgrades
• Maemo 5 devices should have been upgradeable to Harmattan as well.
• Harmattan should have been released sooner and by the time it was fully developed Symbian should have been fully phased out.

At least, those are my 20 cents.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

I believe if they would have switched to Maemo, there'd been no Harmattan, but Maemo, as it ought to be in the first place.
So actually the argument of Harmattan not being ready does not make sense kindof, cause Nokia *was* ready, with Maemo.
EDIT - this ineherently raises the question; why did they not stick with Maemo? Was it "only" symbian in-house politics?

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Harmattan is Maemo. More precisely, the codename of Maemo 6 was Harmattan.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Yes and no; harmattan is not *only* maemo. See for instance qt on harmattan vs gtk/osso on maemo.

Point being, if they had sticked with Maemo (and gtk), they would have been ready for the iPhone already back during N900 era.
What I mean is; given they were so "frightened" by the iPhone, as they knew it would be mortal for their business; the N900 got ignored. Totally. You'd think in desperate times, you resolve to desperate measures?

EDIT: I guess gtk's single-touch nature might have hindered their plans?

Some wood for the flaming :) :
https://blogs.gnome.org/carlosg/2010...-linuxxorggtk/
Basically in 2010, one year before N9, gtk had multitouch support already. With proper backup, it could have been done in even shorter timeframe. So much for the single vs multitouch argument. Next?

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

On the other hand proper backup behind GTK's multitouch would mean having to further endure Gobject's weird "dynamic object-oriented classes entirely done with C and macros". (Or would require an even bigger backup behind Vala).

Whereas switching to Qt basically switched to the much simplet "qt dialect of C++" - much cleaner and simpler. Which could have opened it to many more 3rd party developers.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

I don't think "phasing out" Symbian earlier would habe been better.
I thought it was quite a good strategy to develop on Qt for Symbian as well as Maemo/Meego.
I am not an app developer, but from what I understand it would have made transition form Symbian to Meego quite easy.
At that time there wer many (many many...) more Symbian developers than Android developers.

More important:
The reason for Nokia failing was not that they were not able to technically compete with the stripped-down and restricted iPhone OS, let alone ugly-as-hell and buggy Android of that time.

There was a series of terribly stupid management decisions (like ditching advanced and touch- optimised S90 and UIQ to go for much simpler S60) leading to first problems until Elop came and deliberately killed Meego and Symbian (I can't beleive he was so stupid not to see that this was what he was doing with hist "burning platform memo", Delaying release of N9 and N8 and releasing N7 on the very day he announced that Nokia would be going Windows-only from that day on).

Some points in that article seem to completely overestimate iOS' and Android's capabilities in their first years of existance.

Apple was great at marketing, and Android was a niche product until Nokia killed Symbian and its designated successor so millions of people switched from Nokia to Android phones.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

i do belive that maemo with some more development would actually wouldve been able of multi touch then again i am not a expert in this matter nor have i used a resistive touch screen with multiple touch points

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Having a (even if GTK-based) device meant for nokia they would have had firepower to compete on par with (at the time) iphone.
Im not saying they should have stayed with GTK; qt could have come to Maemo just as much as it went to harmattan. Wonder if efforts to harmonize qt for symbian and maemo (instead of harmattan) could have been fruitful

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

I would add that Nokia didn't only embrace Qt, they actually bought Trolltech in June 2008 !
So it didn't come as a surprise to see them pushing it on all their platforms.

It was during this time that a major push of Qt towards mobile was done, with things like QML to more easily handle modern UI with multitouch capabilities.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

You stand corrected : on all, except N900;
EDIT: I guess it made sense, considering N900 was single-touch.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Thanks. I don't own that device.

However, I can see at some place that Nokia released Qt for Maemo 5 (the one that runs on the N900 if I am correct). Not as the main UI toolkit (which only changed with Harmattan), but it was available and fully supported by Nokia (not a community port), according to those.
As an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo#Naming
"Maemo 5 : 25 October 2010 : PR1.3, Qt 4.7.0, full OVI-Suite support, updated kernel with kexec patches for MeeGo, bug fixes."

Is that right ?

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

That's right. Obviously, Nokia thought Qt was the way to go.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

This is actually not true. Qt 4.7 (the first version which had QML) was available on the N900 as well.

I know because I actually wrote an app that used it. :)

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Well what a surprise; I was totally unaware of this! Thanks!
What else stopped them then to back Maemo? they had everything in place; except multitouch, which would have been added latest by 2010, putting them ahead / on par with iphone, and full integration via qt with symbian apps. I mean, w0t? The magnitude of this patatrac (to use a nice word) just grew exponentially; this had all the numbers to be a slam dunk and instead turned into a smelly turd that doesnt want to flush down the toilet!

Does this prove that Harmattan per se was redundant and that maemo could have made it just as much?
EDIT: by backing i mean "release more devices with maemo"

EDIT#2: from a different angle.

Could jolla have ditched harmattan in favour of Maemo, upgraded gtk to latest to get the multitouch, replaced QT 4.7 with 5.1 on top of it, integrated libhybris, and released a device?

Assuming it'd be doable (then again what is not nowadays), it could have potentially yield quite a good experience.

Cant stop but think now; I wonder what it'd take to get maemo to work with libhybris?

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Playing the devil's advocate...

Symbian was born at the time when mobile phones were single purpose devices, running some proprietary firmware. Symbian brought something new to the table - compatibility! Developers could write an application that would work not only on Vendor1 ModelA, but also ModelB and, imagine that, Vendor2 ModelC and Vedor3 ModelD. It was new, it was exciting, it was something that both the vendors and the users welcomed with open arms.

However, by mid 2000s, it was showing its age and it was time to start planning for retirement.

Android did not offer anything new but it nevertheless offered something that Symbian did not: continuity. Everyone except some walking zombies in Nokia saw that Symbian was dead and everyone needed something that would offer a similar level of compatibility across a new generation of mobile devices. Android offered that.

iOS did not offer compatibility. It was, after all, a one vendor (actually, at that time, only one device) OS. But it was Apple and we all know that Apple is in a league of its own. And, although it did not offer compatibility with other vendors, it offered an excellent compatibility and integration with other devices from the same vendor. Something that everyone else can still only dream about.

Now, what does Maemo offer? A Linux command line. A big deal. Maybe for you and me but, hand on heart, who else? How about anything else any self-respecting OS should offer? Where is compatibility? Diablo apps only run on Diablo devices, Fremantle on Fremantle. I do have Gnumeric, only available in the Diablo repository, running on my N900, but that is a rare exception and I had to jump through hoops to make it happen. Running an N9 app on N900 or vice-versa? Keep dreaming.

I hear a lot of excuses about different versions of Qt, GDK or whatnot. Frankly, I do not give a flying duck. Why should I? Android has managed to get over that. The old Android 2.3 phone I gave to my daughter to trash can still install apps from the same source as her tablet running Android 5.0. Sure, only a small subset of them but still. There is no equivalent single installation source for Maemo, MeeGo and now Sailfish, only fragmentation. With a big red sign saying, "Hands off, geeks only!" No wonder it was a flop. Elop did not cause it, he merely recognized it.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

I believe everyone "saw it coming" in that sense; and you are right, N900 offers mainly a command line. But also a UI.

The talk about versions is a bit preposterous; it's too easy to say that now android 2.3 phones still run apps that are made for android 6.0, when the same could have happened if say Qt would have taken over the world instead of alien dalvik.. winners write history or wat ;)

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Agreed, of the three I have some experience with - N900, N9 and Jolla - the N900 has by far the best UI. By a huuuuuge margin. It is also by far the easiest to develop for.

In terms of usability, the best UI I have ever used on any mobile device was on Palm OS. I did not care much for the frankly appalling graffiti abomination but my phone had a QWERTY keyboard and was designed in such a way that I could hold it in one hand and thumb type while walking, without looking, holding a suitcase in the other hand. The size, spacing and layout of key bumps were optimized for that purpose, unlike any other phone I used before or since, including the N900. To such details that for example, in the numeric mode, you did not need to press Shift to enter a decimal point (unlike the N900). Black text on a white background made reading the text a doddle, despite a low screen resolution (only 300x300). Yet again, unlike on N900 or Jolla. Key shortcuts, a ringer switch, contacts grouping - you name it, everything was thought through to the last detail. It may not have been "pretty" by today's standards (just plain flat graphics, no frills), but it was functional. In a way, similar to Maemo. Sailfish, on the other hand, takes the opposite extreme - aesthetics above all, at the cost of function and usability.

Why oh why do "modern" UI designers have to reinvent the wheel when they have so many excellent examples from the past to use for inspiration? I suspect in most cases it is because they are not aware of them but then it is still their fault: one should always do some research first before jumping into designing anything.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

I wonder if that's the reason which got the Nokia guys into Harmattan / qt based ui in the first place :).

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

What's up with the gtk obsession? Maemo 5 UI could have easily been written on Qt, and it'd probably have resulted in less lines of code and better quality than the gtk version.

Maemo 5 was written in gtk because the whole push into Qt and QML came later than N900's development. Even if MeeGo didn't happen and Nokia would have continued with Maemo base, the push to Qt / QML would have happened anyway. And in my opinion quite rightly. Qt is much better and easier framework than gtk.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

AFAIK Harmattan UI was supposed to be an evolution from Fremantle/N900 UI but in the end something that was originally developed outside Nokia was used to simply get the device out in reasonable time. Personally I preferred the N9 UI, it was at the same time efficient, yet elegant and different in every day use (as my days of trying to actually do something productive on mini-size device are by far gone). Perhaps not for extreme multi tasking tough... also, there is strong NIH-attitude in most big corporations, so there may be cultural etc. reasons for not simply copying some UI paradigm to begin with.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Ex-colleague from harmattan team said that UI was done 3 times again. First one wasn't completely finished when they had to start again because of new UI lead person came to the company. They almost had finished the 2nd one when the new UI lead got fired(?) and then they let UI design be done by external company. That is now the harmattan UI.

From @n950 prototype pictures one can see UI of the unfinished harmattan UI. I should ask did Dali have 1st or 2nd version of harmattan UI. My Ex-colleague blames the UI lead guy, who came from m$ and went back there, that the initial harmattan release was late.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Its not about gtk vs qt, really. See it from the eyes of someone living in 2010. Bigger things are at play here, gtk was merely a temporary actor to keep things afloat until qt was mature enough. Nokia had it very well foreseen (to switch to qt) and planned already in that sense. And the fact hildon could be written in less code with qt could also be seen as a proof to it, perhaps.

I mean think about the madness of all of this.

Nokia had everything planned out. Multitouch, the platform for it (yes, Qt), and the devices (maemo / S90?). We are talking about
*billions* of euros (or dollars, if you prefer). Thousands of workers, relying on the company they trust in, an immense patent portfolio that was *way* ahead of their time (btw apple just agreed to pay royalties to Nokia kthxbye).

And what happened? They got cold feet. They chickened out in the most importand moment, when the whole development is in high gears, and any small disruption can break it. Steve Jobs striked with the iPhone, and the Finnish guys's sisu's shrank to a white dwarfs size, and the blackhole that resulted swallowed the whole mobile division. That plausible? Could they have gotten cold feet from android? Android was so limited back then, noone thought it would be able to grow where it is today.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

If we're thinking about 2010, then personally I think Nokia should have taken Android seriously. They probably did. Android was back then the "open" solution compared for example to iPhone and Symbian. I remember seriously considering one of the HTC devices back then. I remember also considering N900, but decided back then that perhaps I'll wait for the next iteration that I supposed would suit me better. And of course Nokia gave up on it, I got fooled :D.

But I don't think Android was anything to scoff at even back then. In fact considering the time, I thought it was one of the more promising and open mobile operating systems. I do wish the whole MeeGo alliance with Intel never would have happened, I think the progress would have been swifter with just maemo base and going to harmattan and beyond.

But I'm glad we have Sailfish, since it's currently really the only suitable choice for me. I fear for the day that I have only iOS and Android as practical choices.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

While all opinions here have probably at least some truth behind them and are good, it should be remembered that success and selection of OS's is much more than just libraries and lines of code and coding language. Sometimes what is "best" on coders or developers viewpoint does not justify the selection.

Sorry to say, but most often this is what is forgotten by developers. When making a phone for global markets, there is much, much more in play. Even with the company that Nokia was. Strategic alliances, investors, marketing and of course finally, the consumer. These just to name a few outside the actual tech realm.

Command line does not sell you phones. Period. It is a tool of only few when scaled to the magnitude of what Nokia was aiming to sell at those times. Added value of open boot loader or influence of Aegis or whatever, in grand scale does not matter when you are selling the phone to a consumer. Some say that n900 had great UI, and while I personally would agree to some extent, it was utter sh*t compared to even early iterations of iPhone when the phone was given to average user. This matter. The shine above the hood, not what is under them. It just needs to work well enough with others and shine for the customer.

Adding then to that, is what your OS can do for other companies that add to your, and theirs, revenue. Apple had all in place. Some say, they had the full ecosystem already. Android was already ahead of Symbian when it comes to opening your OS for added value, yes in expense of privacy, but U know, 90% of the consumers dont care. And the 10% doesn't matter.

If all cookies would have been put to same basket, could Nokia have made it with Maemo 5, Symbian or Meego? Impossible to say, of course, but if I had to quess gtk or qt would not have mattered. Maemo 5 UI definitely would not have made it. Marketing research was very clear of that. Meego was great on that side, but it would have needed so much more punch behind it. Android was already so far ahead and also backed up by Google. Could actually anything have compared with that?

All in all, I would really want to know what made them choose Win. Yes, I could see the potential of synergy with the de facto PC leader OS (kind of what Apple had done), but Win phone was SO MUCH behind all else, that in a situation where they also themselves were behind others, I can't see what were they really hoping to happen and what failed it?

Original opening of this thread is interesting. Stories we now hear of what was going on and how flawed development had become at Nokia sends shivers to your spine.

I personally like to have opinion that the management simply got too scared and froze/panicked. Result was terrible mistakes. Nokia had it all, but they simply didn't know/or manage what to do when things weren't going well.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Apart of the technical implementation, definitely the idea goes towards features (and how ready they were). Then how they are implemented might affect if they will be used or not. But then we talk in terms of usability. I do not remember the N900 being unusable (in terms of UI), to be fair rather the opposite, perhaps even more usable than n9 (im thinking basic usage here). Maybe the connectivity was limited; but when I got my n9, importing contacts from it was a breeze (and remember being extremely surprised by this btw).


Definitely as far as connections goes, Nokia must have been first. I mean, leading mobile supplier at the time and so. Everyone knows Nokia was known for its excellent operator relationships iirc.
What did the N900 not have compared to the iPhone? All that apple had ready was the fact that it was connectable with all the iMac series of products; plus the shiny chrome.

All in all, could it be Maemo was not being "well received" by operators? How open was Maemo? IIRC, Maemo was open to a certain extent. This is definitely a point where android succeeded better.

It is also in a way funny that a walled operating system is more succesfull that any which claimed to be "open". Except android, that is.

Which reminds me, android was perhaps (at the time) more speed-focussed (rather than chrome). I do not remember how well it was working w/r towards the surroundings (as in connectivity etc). Comparing it to jolla, which yes is shiny, but cant be connected to anything, is that a good match (think 2010)?

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

Well, we will never know now.....
But UI is just a matter of habbit. Sure, for those of us who tried everything we can debate and pick one over the other. But back then when average joe was introduced to iOS and android he would be equaly confused with maemo also. Middle aged people were affraid of smartphones then and now every grandma knows how to use them.
And nokia was betting on that fear and continued to push their worst UI, S60, that everybody was familiar with. And when they reilized that people do like touch UI they halfbaked it to S60 and we know how it ended.

Re: Interesting article: Did hostile environment kill Nokia (The phone maker)?
 

I remember an article where it was said that S60 advocates boasted that they can create touchscreen UI for S60 in matter of weeks. Probably the high management bought that lie and S60 became "sacred cash cow". Having read and heard some things from inside the company, I'd put Nokia's downfall to these reasons:

- Higher management was both arrogant and misinformed (as they didn't want to listen to any bad news from lower management), so they bet too much on S60 and changed that too late
- Nokia was in dysfunctional state. Middle management was so bloated that nothing could get done, new ideas could not get through and this was evident on MeeGo development when it was finally decided that MeeGo will replace aging S60. Suddenly the whole bloated middle management was behind it, every manager trying to make themselves important which hindered the development so that devices would be late and cancelled (for example, N8 was originally supposed to be Maemo/MeeGo device). WHen decision was finally made to switch to Windows Phone, MeeGo guys could finally do their job and release the N9.
- Nokia used to be a company driving the change and making the new innovations, but later that changed to cashing out and avoiding risk mindset. Want to kill a growing and innovating company? Put a bean counter to run things...
- Public image became so tarnished that at some point everything Nokia did was portrayed in negative way. When that drive was on, there was not much Nokia could do about it. Even if it had adopted Android, it would have been portrayed as "too little too late" or something like that. Group think is funny thing... now nostalgia has made it again possible to sell Nokia brand again as cheap Chinese stuff is not that new any longer and Apple has switched to bringing little evolutionary (though usually working and well executed) improvements over new versions.