alt Hacker NewsI think browsing this gives you a good idea of why Nokia failed. they really thought they had it all figured out and it was now time to lay back and just try out random shit.
they would never have the same kind of focus or philosophy as Apple, nor the willpower to pivot to real smartphones and a proper OS for them
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> they really thought they had it all figured out and it was now time to lay back.
You mean like Apple today ?
The Apple watch is from 2015.
What new product Apple produced since Tim Cook took over ?
The iPhone Duo ? Ironically it has quite a smell of Nokia N95 all over again.
> and it was now time to lay back and just try out random shit
To be fair we hadn't yet decided that phones should be a flat tablet with a screen on one side that ran apps - they were mostly for calling (possibly sending messages) and were being sold to everyone from subsistence farmers to western teenage girls who had vastly different requirements/desires - there were bricks, clamshells, flip-phones, camera phones, phones with changeable coloured covers.
As a consumer I enjoy when companies try out random shit in such a user friendly way.
Apple’s focus and philosophy sure gives them an advantage. At the same time users who like e.g. smaller screens have to suffer or go elsewhere.
It all comes down to where top management puts its best resources. Apple's leadership focused theirs on designing a more useful music device, one that could also serve as an internet navigator. Once they had the prototype, they moved to a higher-level vision: a truly personal computer, where music, the internet, and the phone were just apps.
Nokia, the giant at the time, was designing a better phone. And then a better phone. And another phone after that. Their design and engineering were in no way inferior to Apple's, but they were designing phones, not a personal computer.