That time when Microsoft bought and killed Nokia phone unit - eviltoast

When bad management meets bad software, even great hardware is useless

  • umbraroze@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    It wasn’t really Microsoft that killed Nokia’s cell phone division, but gave it the final blow that made the house of cards fall.

    Nokia was basically getting super arrogant. “Oh, trust us, we’re the #1 phone manufacturer on the planet. We know what’s best for the market”. They got caught completely pants down when iPhone came out. Despite the fact that they had already made successful smartphones (Nokia Communicator line). Despite the fact that there was this one small Finnish company that had made a touchscreen based phone and Nokia just laughed them off when they offered to help.

    Every move Nokia made after iPhone was basically playing catch-up with some really strange decisions.

    I believe that Nokia could have salvaged themselves if, instead of going with Windows Phone, they had just announced they’ll be Yet Another Android Manufacturer. But Nokia had to be special about it. They had invested in Ovi (app store) and Here (map service) and they just had to be special. (And even more ironic is that HMD Global is doing just fine as a maker of Nokia-branded Android phones these days.)