Even years after the iPhone came out, Nokia outsold Apple, had a bigger R&D budget and a bigger foothold in practically every market except North America.
Smartphones outsold feature (dumb) phones only in 2013, five years after the iPhone came out. When did Nokia slip to 3rd place by number of sold devices? Q1 2015.
There was time, just no will.
Yes but who had higher profits? That's the real factor. Outselling by itself is meaningless if your margins are poor.
I can't agree more. Few people remember the Nokia 770 was released almost 2 years ahead of the iPhone. With a bit of polish it could have grown into a fantastic product line. In fact, the N9 was pretty much a masterpiece.
For some reason that I don't understand, they continued to push Symbian, and those phones were not good. I remember thinking, either push further on the MeeGo stuff or drop it and move to Android. They did neither and suffered for it.
Of course, as a platform for Web browsing, and particularly for app development, Symbian was not good.
But I still miss the phone functionality of my E71, or the Symbian devices I had before it.
So in other words - they were great phones, but terrible smartphones? I fully agree.
Android or iPhone could do the same technically, but my employer can no longer use it. The company would give all data about meetings to Google or Apple. It's an absolute no-no.
Thus I sometimes forget my meetings, as the phone no longer reminds me.
Also, the alarm clock of Symbian was great, and i could depend on it. Even if you turned the phone off, it would wake you up. I'm nervous about trusting any Android device to wake me up in the morning if I have to catch a plane or a train (and I understand it's the same with iPhone).
Talking is one of my least-used functions on my Android phone. I use it far, far more for texting, apps, internet, navigation, games, photos, and even visual voicemail than I do for talking. I might have a handful of calls a week on it. A phone that's great for talking and sucks for all the other things would be mostly useless to me.
I owned one of these. It was an ugly, slow, expensive brick. I'd much rather use a Treo from that period. The iPhone was a wonderfully svelte device compared to either. I don't think you're appreciating how badly Apple beat up the Palm and Nokia competition back then. It was absolutely no contest and a disruption that was badly needed. Holding up the 770 as some under-appreciated jewel is fairly ridiculous. It was comically out of touch with consumers.
Apple has 94% of the profits in mobile: http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/15/11/16/apple-inc-n...
We will never know for sure by Nokia shareholders might have gotten an amazing deal out of going Windows Mobile and getting acquired by Microsoft. As for the employees, this would have happened either way with how badly the company was prepared for smartphones.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/27/11523616/samsung-earnings-...
OTOH, nobody can copy an iphone because nobody but apple can put ios on a phone.
The other difference is quality. I have no faith Huawei can make a phone at Samsung's quality level. Where are they going to get the screen from anyway? Or the camera? Those components aren't easy to copy; those things are state-of-the-art.
Finally, even Apple can't copy Samsung. They still have crappy screens, though the next iPhone is finally supposed to be getting a superAMOLED screen. WTF took them so long? Simple: Apple isn't a hardware manufacturer, they have to contract stuff out, whereas Samsung is a hardware maker, and makes state-of-the-art screens themselves.
Updates. Updates, updates, updates.
I've come to trust Apple. Why? Because my iPad 2 still gets OS and security updates. Because my iPhone 5s still gets OS and security updates.
Apple has demonstrated that they support their tablets and phones at least 4 or 5 years. That's why I'll buy another Apple tablet. That's why I'll buy another Apple phone.
Why would I buy an Android phone or tablet that's unsupported and abandoned after less than two years in many cases? Where security updates (think Stagefright) take months and months to get patched, if they ever get patched at all on your device? Android devices simply aren't safe.
Even the Nexus devices can't compete with Apple on longevity of support.
Android manufacturers could convince me to try their products if they'd simply patch them in a reasonable time and update them for a reasonable amount of time. I would define reasonable as at least 4 full years after purchase. For that, I'd pay Apple like premiums.
Until that time comes, my only viable option is Apple.