Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

The old Nokia crowd seem to have a tough time admitting that all of Nokia's old software operations were beyond salvage by 2010. Symbian had turned into a sprawling pile of crap, and Maemo/MeeGo was painted in a corner by internal politics that had marginalized its development. Nokia was spending ten times as much as Apple on R&D, yet had very little to show for it.

Having two competing OS teams was a bad choice made much earlier by Elop's predecessors, who didn't understand software (the previous Nokia CEO came to that position from the legal department — a terrible mismatch for a company about to be overrun by Apple and Google). Elop was fundamentally right in killing both of Nokia's operating systems. Symbian sales were collapsing in early 2011 because the devices just couldn't respond to user expectations anymore, not because of anything Elop did.

I can see why Elop picked Windows Phone over Android: it truly was a more innovative UI and Microsoft was willing to pay Nokia a billion USD per year for the partnership. Elop's grave mistake was not having a replacement ready to go. The Lumias shipped way too late. Playing "armchair CEO", I have no idea how I would have solved that either.

In any case, Nokia didn't end up too poorly. Microsoft bought the phone division that was bleeding cash, and that money gave Nokia the opportunity to buy back its network division that had been a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens. The outcome was probably better than if Nokia had tried to downscale itself into a commodity Android vendor.

Meego could have been killer, if they'd made the devices available, and shipped Alien Dalvik to bootstrap off of Android's app ecosystem.

I've been using a Xperia X running Sailfish for the last week, and can't get over how well Android apps run along side beautiful native Sailfish apps. While Google Play Services are kinda hacky to get up and running, if you can live out of F-Droid and/or the Amazon app store, everything Just Works. Even Prime Video and Netflix.

BlackBerry tried that exact strategy with BlackBerry 10: brand new OS with an Android app compatibility layer. It didn't work.

Nokia was coming from a similar position as BlackBerry, so I don't see how it would have worked for them either.

Having a compatibility layer alone is far from sufficient. BBOS 10 (at least on the Z30) was downright miserable to use. There was also a huge open source developer community surrounding Maemo/Meego that I'm not sure BBOS has ever seen.

I had multiple Maemo devices — the 770, 800 and N900 tablets.

I really tried hard to like the system, but let's not exaggerate its strengths. The open source software was mostly amateur ports from desktop Linux.

I remember back in 2008 demoing my Nokia 800 mini tablet to someone who had got a brand new iPhone 3G. There just wasn't any contest. The Maemo software felt like a product of the '90s, and the hardware clearly wasn't by Nokia's "A Team".

I completely agree about the software on Hildon based Maemo devices, but Meego on the N9 (Harmattan/QT based) was downright gorgeous, and managed to see some quality official apps for services like Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify.

I just switched from my final BlackBerry after 10 years in the B.B. ecosystem to an iPhone X. The Android app compatibility extended the life of my Classic for an extra year but was hamstrung by being painfully slow. I could run Spotify or Google Maps but only just so, and forget about multitasking.

I still miss the BB10 workflow. Messaging, multitasking, swiping was all perfected ahead of the mediocre implementation of those in iOS 11, but the X is so fast, I can just brute force my way around the UI gaps and get shit done more quickly.

Nothing will ever replace the Hub, though.

How is the Sailfish ecosystem now? Do they have nice native navigation, chat and browser applications?

Is it worth the switch over from F-Droid to Sailfish + F-Droid?

Sadly the Sailfish ecosystem very much feels like it's on life support at this point. Many of the applications I remember from Meego are still seeing light maintenance, but many others still exist and function, but no longer see maintenance.

Jolla seems to have no interest in markets outside of Europe (I had to use a UK prepaid bank card and vpn to urchase it from the US), so a great many folks who would like to develop for it can't even get ahold of a device without jumping over hurdles.

I'm to use this phone until either the Librem 5 or Pyra ship, but won't hold my breath.

I dont think Meego even have to bootstrap off Android app ecosystem at that time. I bet people would still be willing switch to Meego since its so good and intuitive, and dev(especially those symbian dev) naturally will fill in the gap created.

I'm pretty confident that the choice of Windows Phone over Android really didn't have to do with the UI, or even with Elop's past Microsoft connections: it had to do with services. Nokia wanted to bring their own services to the platform, especially relating to maps and navigation, and they wanted to have the new OS vendor be a full branded partner. With Google, that was an either/or choice: they could have used AOSP and their own services, but they wouldn't get the Android branding and Google's support. Microsoft was more willing to play ball.

Personally, I think they should have gone with AOSP and leveraged Qt: by the end of 2010, they'd already gotten their two operating systems (Symbian and MeeGo) to a point where it wasn't a lot of work to recompile applications for one to run on the other. (N.B.: I don't know how much of this work ever actually made it out of Nokia. I was working there in 2010, when all of this was going down.) Given that Qt already ran on Android, IIRC, it might not have been that much work to do the same thing on top of AOSP, producing a Nokia-specific release that could run Android software and provide a clear path forward for Symbian users and developers. I was a little shocked that they didn't release a Qt compatibility layer for Windows Phone, instead choosing to pretty much leave their existing developer community on that burning platform.

The Lumias did ship too late, but I think the previous commenter who referred to the "Osborne Effect" has it right; a Nokia that had appeared firmly committed to Symbian and forging a bridge from the existing to the forthcoming generation might have fared considerably better. The Nokia N8 and N9 should have been supported as flagships rather than sort of apologetically shoved out the door with "DEAD PHONE WALKING" written on the boxes. On a practical level, this might not have saved them (especially if they'd stuck with Windows Phone, which it turned out the market really hadn't been waiting for after all), but it might have given them a fighting chance.

I don't think Nokia would have tried to downscale itself either way, by the way -- they'd have kept their network equipment division, and might have even kept their mapping division. They'd balanced that with consumer mobile hardware for years before that, after all; I don't see why they couldn't have kept doing that with Android devices.

I like your explanation about services.

One thing -

> I was a little shocked that they didn't release a Qt compatibility layer for Windows Phone

Windows Phone 7, which was current at the time of the switch, was managed-code only (i.e. .NET). There was no way to port Qt to it and no way to leverage any experience that developers for their existing platforms already had. That was one reason the switch was so dramatic.

> Windows Phone 7...was managed-code only.

D'oh! I didn't know that. (I was laid off right before the Windows Phone switch was announced, so never had any reason to look into it.) Welp.

WP 7.5 let you run some native code if you tried hard enough. Manufacturer signing gave more permissions than developer signing, so it might have been possible? I'm not sure if native code (such as it was) was an addition to 7.5 or part of 7, though.

You're definitely right about services. Nokia wanted to be a full partner in the platform, rather than just another OEM as they would have been with Google.

> The Nokia N8 and N9 should have been supported as flagships rather than sort of apologetically shoved out the door with "DEAD PHONE WALKING" written on the boxes.

The N8 shipped in late 2010, before Elop had done anything. It had a huge marketing campaign and was Nokia's great Symbian hope. A poor market response was entirely due to the product itself.

The painfully visible shortcomings of the N8 probably were a factor in Elop's decision. Nokia's pipeline for 2011-2012 was filled with devices built on the N8's software and even older Symbian versions, and it was obvious those would not sell.

> I don't think Nokia would have tried to downscale itself either way, by the way -- they'd have kept their network equipment division, and might have even kept their mapping division

The phone division was losing money. Selling it to Microsoft gave Nokia the cash to buy out Nokia Siemens Networks. Selling maps gave the cash to expand those operations. If Nokia had kept phones and maps, they wouldn't have networks today.

>I'm pretty confident that the choice of Windows Phone over Android really didn't have to do with the UI, or even with Elop's past Microsoft connections

The book says otherwise. Elop met with Ballmer twice during the negotiations. He never once met with Google representatives even once.

Elop kept a physical distance from the negotiations. He and Schmidt had not met in a real negotiation even once. There were two or three phone negotiations, but there were only meetings at events, at the most. Elop was also not known to have met any of the other Google negotiators. This makes one wonder, when it is known that Elop met Microsoft’s Ballmer at least twice in direct negotiations.

>With Google, that was an either/or choice

No it wasn't. The book details how Google was prepared to make concessions for Nokia.

According to a source present, Google seemed to really want Nokia to join the Android world. The company assured that Android can be customized more than Nokia understood, especially compared with Windows Phone. Even if Google was criticized continuously for having Samsung, HTC and Sony Android phones differ from each other too much, Nokia would be given leeway to create its own user experience. Google saw that Nokia differentiated from these competitors in that it had a global area of operation. Nokia would be able to create better local services and user experiences for network providers and customers, one person present remembers being discussed. The Nokians also noticed that they had been living partially with misinformation. Nokia could continue with Android with its own maps side-by-side with Google’s maps. The same applied with the app store. Nokia’s music service as well as ovi.com could continue, as long as the phone had Google Play.

As the negotiations proceeded, a solution was found. Google offered Nokia, among other things, plenty of say in choosing the direction of Android development. By directing Android development to align with its own competitive goals, Nokia would gain some advantage, even if the changes would be available for everyone at the same time. Now Nokia was interested. Android and Nokia had an area where their interests converged in a brilliant way: Developing countries. If Android could be made to work on cheap hardware, Nokia would be best at getting in through in developing markets. The arrangement was enticing. Google would secure the position it was dreaming of in smartphones, and Nokia would become part of virgin Android markets. The precise details remained hidden, but Nokia was able to learn that Google worked Android into clearly cheaper models than Windows Phone.

Google made a substantial offer regarding distribution of income. Nokia would have gotten a portion of the income from Google’s search engine, app store, and other services which originate from Nokia phones, and the terms would be in relation to Nokia’s influence in the ecosystem. We don’t have information about precise percentages, but at any rate, Google’s promise was quite exceptional, considering that Nokia would still have been able to keep its own services in its phones.

Contrary to what Nokia has claimed, Google was ready for concessions. It was ready to flex as far as it could in the framework of OHA, and even then some more.

Interesting. That (obviously) contradicts what I heard at the time from folks I was still in contact with, but I'll take the book's word on it. What you quote doesn't entirely contradict the notion that Microsoft offered what Nokia considered a better deal, though, especially if Nokia wanted only their services rather than "side-by-side" services. (Although Nokia traded away a lot, anyway, as it played out.)

>Microsoft offered what Nokia considered a better deal, though, especially if Nokia wanted only their services rather than "side-by-side" services.

Then why were Nokia services side by side with Microsoft services on Nokia Windows Phones? Also, the Nokia app store was nowhere to be found.

Additionally, according to a review of the Lumia 800, by The Verge[1], there was almost nothing to differentiate the device from any other WP device produced by HTC or Samsung. The extent of the Nokia modifications amounted to nothing more than Nokia Drive, Nokia Music and sounds, ringtones and wallpapers. Is this what Nokia had in mind when selecting Windows Phone to showcase their services and USP? Unique Nokia sounds, ringtones and wallpapers?

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ZbwCI_nZY

IIRC, Windows Phone 7/8/8.1 defaulted to HERE Maps platform wide (not just Nokia devices, but certainly on Nokia devices) in the main Map app due to the partnership, despite Microsoft's large investments into Bing Maps. Maps on mobile I think only "recently" reverted to Bing in Windows 10 with the expiration of the deal with HERE Maps.

The Lumias always had a number of exclusive Nokia-only "accessory" apps like Glance that were so well embedded they seemed like built-in Windows Phone apps (and unsurprisingly subsequently became built-in platform-wide apps post-Nokia acquisition) that a lot of people didn't notice they were Nokia services/value adds. On the one hand, that was part of why the Lumias were so great at the time was how seamlessly they upgraded the platform as a whole, but on the other hand, it's a weird marketing failure that comparison shoppers may not have realized what was an important value-adding Nokia app/setting/feature and not a Microsoft app/setting/feature, and what value Nokia was adding on top of the platform.

> Personally, I think they should have gone with AOSP

It's certainly complex to armchair quarterback the idea, but I don't think Nokia would have had any more luck than Amazon's FireOS (or the failed/doomed commercial attempt at Cyanogen, for that matter) if they had attempted that. AOSP has long been a seemingly open carrot with far too many hidden and closed sticks in Google's control.

Do you mean the FirePhone specifically?

FireOS is still used on the Fire tablets, which appear to be one of the most successful non-Apple tablet around. At least successful enough for it to be on its 7th generation with yearly refreshes, anyway. Similarly FireOS continues to mostly track AOSP, with the Android 7.1-based FireOS 6 being the latest release.

I wouldn't be so quick to blame FirePhone's failings on FireOS vs. Google given the number of gimmicks FirePhone tried to do, like the weird 4 front-facing cameras doing pretend-depth on the UI. I think would be hard to definitively state FirePhone failed purely because of FireOS not being Google-certified. FireOS probably didn't help, sure, but I don't think it was FirePhone's exclusive failure point, either.

Only the 3rd generation Fire TV Stick runs Fire OS 6, based on Android 7.1. The latest Fire tablet runs Fire OS 5.6, based on Android 5.1:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_OS#List_of_Fire_OS_versio...

I include the Fire tablets in my assessment of AOSP: the app stores have diverged to the point where you increasingly often need different APKs for FireOS and Google Play, and that divergence will continue to grow as Google continues to expand the proprietary Play API surfaces.

Even before Google started moving most API investment out of AOSP and into Google Play directly, FireOS has never felt like a "real" Android. I'd wager most of its tablet users don't even realize the connection to Android. At this point, how much does Amazon really benefit from AOSP that aren't already handling themselves?

This is entirely my own supposition, but based on what I've seen of the entirely different apps platform and ecosystem for the Echo devices, especially the Echo Show "tablet", and how well it is currently doing in the market, it is very easy for me to imagine Amazon will also be getting out of the AOSP game eventually on its Fire tablets/sticks as well. It's easy to imagine Amazon would be happier to have an ecosystem it more directly owns (and doesn't have to keep fighting a cold war with Google Play).

I agree with you until the WP part. WP was always destined to be a failure in the context of that time. It didn't matter that Microsoft paid Nokia billions, because you can't fix everything by throwing more money at the problem. Microsoft learned that the hard way with its investments in the app stores, too, and in other markets, too.

People who followed the ecosystems very closely then knew that even Android was lucky to see the success it did against iOS, and that success was almost exclusively due to the fact that "it was there first" to allow the OEMs to unite against iOS as an ecosystem. But even that wasn't easy at all and the fans had to suffer through ~4 years of Android phones being "close, but no cigar" compared to the iPhone. This is why WP had no way of winning a significant portion of the market being multiple years behind in development, interest, and ecosystem.

If the roles had been reversed for WP and Android, and WP launched in 2008 and Android in 2011-2012, I don't think Android would've seen too much success either, even though it would be open source. Maybe it would've gotten like 20% of the market if Google played its cards right, but I think WP would have dominated.

But yes, the time to shine for Meego (Maemo actually) was immediately after they announced it. However, it was obvious the leadership didn't want to "rock the boat" for the Symbian cash cow. By the time they had to pick between WP and Android, it was of course way too late for Meego.

> I agree with you until the WP part. WP was always destined to be a failure in the context of that time.

WP's problem was in the length of time between flagship phones, and the length of time between updates.

WP7 came out, with a big marketing push, and it was an overall good OS. The initial wave of phones were received OK, but the platform had some warts that needed to be cleaned up.

What MS did is announce that they were going to release an update, and then do a huge rewrite. 7.5 came out, fixed all the obvious show stopper issues, and then all MS needed to do was keep iterating the platform.

But they didn't. They waited 2 years to release 8.0 instead. Which regressed features from 7.5, asked developers to learn a new API, and had features missing from that API that used to exist in 7.5.

At this point the platform has lost a lot of mind share, new phones need to come out yearly, not on some random scattershot schedule. iOS sees regular platform updates, and is iterating much faster. Android is still a dumpster fire at this point, and could have been eclipsed.

So then WP8 finally comes out. Android is in a much better spot, and iOS looks pretty damn spiffy.

New API, huge chunks of functionality are missing, making many types of apps not even possible to write.

But hey, the Lumia 1020 comes out and gains a TON of attention. The best mobile camera ever made!

And then Microsoft up and does nothing for another two years. They stop releasing flagship handsets, and basically let the brand die.

Finally 8.1 comes out, but by this time it is too late. No developers, the APIs finally aren't terri-bad but they are still miserable to develop for compared to anything else, and all mind share has been lost. 8.1 is actually a good OS (unless you are a developer), but 7.5 was also a good OS, 4 years earlier.

If MS had released updates to the 7.x line every 6 months, focusing on making the developer's lives easier, they could have won. 7.x required far fewer resources than Android, ran much smoother, and performed well on lower cost devices.

But instead someone in the MS engineering department won, and Windows Phone underwent a complete OS rewrite. The reason was merging the Mobile org and the Windows org together, and Engineers played politics instead of writing software, thus one of the kernel teams had to go.

That matches my perception as well. Nearly everyone I knew with a Windows phone was happy with it, you saw them around (hard to miss a brightly colored Lumina), at times they had really active developer outreach projects (if a bit scattered), but they didn't do much to expand on that. As much as the "new, new, new" of phones can seem pointless, at that point they'd needed consistent new offerings to always have attractive offerings and build trust in the platform.

(It's possible that my local perspective is overvaluing them though, German market shares often don't match what's going on e.g. in the US)

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