The Future Of Nokia?

[poutanen]

^^^ Fair enough, my original post had more to do with marketing being Nokia's downfall vs. it's actual products.

(Apple and HD were just examples of inferior products with VERY successful marketing)

[Arthur Dent]

Nokia became a victim of its hardware engineers' lobby. They were the people who saw the presentation of the first iPhone in 2007, circulated an internal memo that it doesn't t have 3G and MMS, its camera sucks, and therefore can't be considered as a challenge at all.The CEOs back then listened to them and everybody went about their business as usual. That's why Nokia is what it is today.
The complete failure to see that exquisite design and intuitive user interface is much more important for commercial success than running benchmarks tests better, is what has prevented that same engineering crowd from realizing why open source Linux has been destroyed by Windows, although being free, stable and so on. Rather than facing this simple truth, those otherwise intelligent people bring up conspiracy theories involving Satan's children Microsoft and Apple, and how they destroyed all good in the world by using the satanic weapon "marketing", as well as other black magic.
There's also another group that as of July 2012 still claims that iPhones are inferior products, but I'd rather not comment on that.

[Francois Caron]

Maybe the problem is that there was never a single leader who could grasp all of the individual elements required to design, manufacture and release a phone.

They don't have to be an engineer mind you. In fact, it's better that they NOT be an engineer at all! But you still need someone who has a basic understanding of what goes into the design, implementation, marketing and use of the product from beginning to end. Miss a step, and the future product may be doomed to failure.

What I've noticed about my N900 is that the software interface was a bit substandard, which is why in my video review of the N900 I recommended to the average user that they shop around. Someone missed couple of steps, and it had a domino effect on the failure of the phone.

[stampeder]

Remember that when hard working people have their livelihoods ruined because their profit-making line has been shut down by management blunder it is no matter for jokes or silly hyperbole. The loss to Nokia and its employees is staggering and unjustifiable. For long-time Nokia customers in the S40 line who would have been gently eased into the Meltemi future goodness this is an utter loss of choice of their preferred products. Customer loyalty (which has been legendary for Nokia) has been completely tossed by the wayside in Elop's mad quest to focus on a Windows smartphone for one of the world's smaller markets. It is obscene.