Comment by benrutter
2 days ago
Like some other commenters, I'm amazed at how well thought out Nokia's insight into the iPhone was at the time. They seemed pretty aware it was a major threat, and a game changer that needed to be responded to.
I'd be curious about an alternative history where Nokia hadn't tied itself so strongly to the burning reckage that was Windows Phone. Would Nokia have wound up as a solid android phone producer somewhere similar to where Samsung are now? I guess we'll never know.
My understanding is that the microsoft partnership was more like a late last ditch effort.
The market was changing to one where hardware was produced in asia and phones are loaded with ecosystem-centric software from Google or Apple (the real game changer, the app store, was launched next year).
Nokia did not really have a place in either of those and did not manage to adapt to this fundamental change. They did actually manage to adapt to the UI revolution of the first iphone.