Yesterday the dream ended. Nokia's total handset business was sold, at ridiculously bottom-barrel price, to Microsoft. Well, it was good while it lasted. My first mobile phone was a Nokia branded phone (2110, in 1995). Since that time there has never been a day in my life, that at least one of the phones I have had in my pocket(s) has not been a Nokia. Still today, I walk around with an 808 Pureview. Often both of my phones have been Nokias and in some of the brief times that I've strutted around with three phones (yes, mostly just to show off how much I'm a geek) I've even had all three as Nokia brands. I have owned almost every flagship phone Nokia has produced. I am from Finland, I used to be employed by Nokia. If you cut me, my blood doesn't run red, I bleed Nokia blue. I loved that brand.
This is a love-letter to the world's most favourite phone brand, ever. Nokia you may be gone but you are not forgotten. First of all, the astonishing numbers. Over its lifetime manufacturing mobile phone handsets under the Nokia brand, the Finnish phone giant sold an unbelievable 3.8 Billion handsets. 3.8 Billion. The planet has 7.1 Billion people. So cumulatively, Nokia's handset production would reach more than half of the human population alive. This was in 20 years.
It gets even more astonishing in the peak Nokia installed base. At its peak, there were 1.4 Billion Nokia branded phones in use on the planet in 2011. It meant, that for every human alive, not adults, not only in the affluent world, but from babies to great grandparents, globally, there was a Nokia branded phone in the pockets of 1 out of every 5 humans alive. 1.4 Billion simultaneous owners of a Nokia branded phone. This is an unprecedented number and nothing comes close. Microsoft celebrated shipping 1 Billion cumulative Windows operating systems a few years ago. Nokia had 1.4 Billion current users. Timex shipped lifetime 1.1 Billion wristwatches. Nokia had 1.4 Billion active users of its portable gadget. Coca Cola doesn't have 1 Billion customers planet-wide. There are many regions in Africa for example where Coke is not served because there isn't electricity to keep the soft drink cold. But there are mobile phones - because their batteries are sent to neighboring villages to be recharged. What brands are these phones - almost exclusively Nokia brands, often second-hand Nokia phones from the Middle East and Europe.
If you called a phone number in use, in 2011, in one case of five, it would ring on a fixed landline phone. But in one case of four, the phone number would be a mobile number, ringing on a Nokia-branded mobile phone. The way to connect the planet - indeed Nokia's corporate slogan 'Connecting People' was never more apt, than the more than 400 million Nokia basic mobile phone owners living in the Emerging World who had no other communciation or media technology, not landline, not computers, not internet, not television - not even radio - but had a Nokia branded basic phone. Nokia truly came to the world, and helped 'Connecting People.' Nokia was in more pockets than the Levi's branding. No tech or brand ever was so widely spread as Nokia. What an achievement. This alone is cause to celebrate the iconic phone brand.
What do we do with the phones? You might suggest we make phone calls - that was what original telephone networks were designed for. But it might surprise you, that today more actual telecommunications made on mobile phones are messages than voice calls - most of those are SMS text messages - and more surprisingly, there is a larger number of mobile phone users, who use messaging on their phones, than who use voice calls! Yes, voice calls now are used only by 87% of all mobile phone subscriptions but messaging has reached 90% penetration rate of all mobile subscriptions. Many especially youth accounts are messaging-only, and other users don't want to 'waste' money and time on voice calls, and just use messaging. Especially on their second and third accounts. This incidentially is a global phenomenon, first observed in Finland.
Because SMS text messaging was invented by the Finnish telecoms exec working for Telecom Finland at the time, Matti Makkonen (who later would be hired by Nokia and a little before he retired, would become my last mentor when we both were employed by Nokia). Matti won the Economist award for inventing SMS, while the standard and development of SMS was then handled by a committee - Matti didn't actually create the first SMS, that was others. And yes, the first SMS text message was sent in the UK, but that was a computer-generated message. The first SMS text message as we understand it, from a mobile phone to a mobile phone - that was sent in Finland by Nokia employee Riku Pihkonen, on a Nokia handset. Did you know Nokia was the first GSM handset brand to make all its handsets fully SMS compliant, every phone could both receive and send SMS text messages. Nokia didn't invent SMS, but it was instrumental in promoting the early adoption of SMS texting - the first 'data' service for mobile. The start of the mobile data revolution. The first step in mobile phones growing past the landline metaphor of being just a 'phone' for 'voice calls'. Thank you Nokia.
And that brings me to the screen. Nokia made that radical innovation - driven by SMS text messaging - that it expanded the display from one line, to three line display - a massive gain over all rivals at the time. You could see 3 lines of text on the phone screen - read much of a text message on one screen without scrolling all the time. Helps with things like reading addresses. That is where Nokia's passion with obsessing about excellence in messaging stems from. They offered superior messaging phones in Finland where SMS texting first took off (I learned to SMS text message back in 1995 and have been addicted ever since. My personal tutor to train me to text, was a mobile data expert, Taina Kalliokoski then with Elisa/Helsinki Telephone, now with Fujitsu of Finland)
Nokia kept pushing the abilities of the phone screen. The 9000 Communicator featured the first 'giant' screen for a phone. The 9210 Communciator had the first color screen for a smartphone. That is by the way when mobile TV was invented - to work on that spectacular superphone that had such a fast processor it could actuallly process video (in a tiny picture on the wide screen, but still, this was the genesis of mobile TV). By the time Apple gave the Americans the 'magnificent' original iPhone, with the 'huge' 3.5 inch screen, Nokia had gone well beyond that and from a year before, had been selling the biggest screen of any phone ever, a full 4 inches on the E90 Communicator, one of the most amazing superphones of all time. Unfortunately the American carriers hated the power of this device, WiFi and all, and insisted Nokia has to cripple it for their market. As Nokia of course refused to cripple phones - that is bad for consumers, the American carriers/operators refused to offer the E90 Communicator to US consumers. British comparisons to the first iPhone rated the Communicator the far better phone and recommended it, even as it was more expensive than Apple's first iPhone.
If you like watching your YouTube videos on your phone today, you can thank Nokia for that evolution, for pushing ever bigger screens for us, and the processing power and even separate video processors at the top video phones, to give us jitter-free videos. Yes today Samsung's phablets run gargantuan screen sizs, but the evolution to big screens? Thank you Nokia.
Color! Can you imagine that as recently as 1997, no handset maker anywhere dared to offer us any colors. Every phone was either black or some shade of gray. Imagine going to a department meeting where everyone used the same brand phone. Whose phone is which? Well, some Nokia engineers came up with a novel solution to that 'problem' - what if we give replacable covers in .. colors. The first colored removable phone covers were introduced by Nokia and today even Apple will give us two colors for the iPhone. If you want others, you can of course buy the iPhone cases in almost any design and color combination.
Then there is Gran Vals by Francisco de Asis Tarrega y Eixea. Whatwasthatagain? Yes, Gran Vals. You know. THE song. No. Yes you do. YES you DO. You know this song. EVERYBODY knows Gran Vals by Tarrega. Except you don't know it by its original name. That piece of classic Spanish guitar music is better known as the 'Nokia Tune'. A-ha! That song. Yes. The Gran Vals has shipped more than 3.7 Billion copies (as the default ringing tone of Nokia phones). How monsterously massive is that? Take all records (vinyl and CD, plus all other recorded music ie cassettes, 8-tracks, MP3 files etc - sold of all songs by the Beatles. Yes, Love Me Do and Yesterday and Hey Jude and Back in the USSR. Add to all the Beatles songs, every recording sold of every Elvis song. And add to that, every recording of Michael Jackson's music. Add all those together. Nokia Tune has shipped more than all those, combined. Tarrega's Gran Vals is the most recognized song on the planet, the only song recognized in every country and every language, and yes, is more recognized than the James Bond theme or White Christmas or Happy Birthday. Gran Vals by Tarrega. The Nokia Tune. Most played, most recognized song on the planet. Who knew? Thank you Nokia. Oh, and a personal anecdote. The exact passage of that song, the short snippet which is the Nokia tune, that snippet was selected out of the guitar song, by my former colleague at Nokia, now the CEO of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), ex Nokia VP Lauri Kivinen.
Talking of those ringing tones. A truly massive, radical innovation also happened in Finland, in 1998, when the first downloaded over-the-air paid content was delivered to a mobile phone. Yes, the mobile media was invented. It wasn't Nokia execs who came up with this, it was a loss-making internet service provider in Finland called Saunalahden Serveri (later Jippii Group). They invented the downloadable ringing tone, delivered via the concept of premium SMS, and only initially functional on five premium Nokia phone models. The ringing tone business was invented. That blossomed to its peak of over 5 Billion dollars per year in ringtone busines (and the horrible annoying sounds like Crazy Frog) but yes, a commercial business so big, up to today, Apple's iPod iTunes business has never generated 5 Billion dollars of revenues in any one year. Ringing tones. Wow. Yes. And from those humble beginnings the whole mobile internet and mobile data revolution grew, which today is worth 200 Billion dollars in value. Pretty cool, that it was those 5 Nokia premium phones that had that ability to install user-generated ringing tones, and have those delivered over the air. I should mention that I created my first ringing tone that very first week this was possible. Not because I was that interested in ringing tones, but because one of my former colleagues from the Finnet days, a lady named Sara Melkko, had joined Saunalahden Serveri and was on that team that invented the downloadable ringing tone. She would later join me in co-authoring my third book, 3G Marketing. Thank you Nokia for enabling the invention of the mobile data industry.
Nokia did publish the world's first white paper on the mobile internet (co-authored by my dear friend Jouko Ahvenainen who would later run Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's telecoms consulting 3G competence, when CGEY was the world' largest telecoms consultancy - and yes, me.) Nokia would then help build that mobile internet not just with hardware but helping run the first conference on the mobile internet, where the chairman was also from Nokia (me). And Nokia would further help spread the mobile data services knowhow by sponsoring the first ever book written about mobile data services, called Services for UMTS. That book, written by a dozen of Nokia's best mobile data services experts was edited by my friend Joe Barrett - and yes, me. This was the very core ethos of Nokia - not going it alone. But sharing. Helping everyone grow. Nokia didn't hide insights, it shared them.
Like Symbian. I mean, who else does this in technology? But when Nokia set up the Symbian partnership, it literally invited every other handset maker to join in the Symbian partnership, to co-develop and co-own the smarpthone OS. Who in their right mind does this? Nokia that is who. Yes, they invited their biggest rivals, Motorola, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Ericsson, etc etc etc all to join in owning and developing Symbian. Why? So there would not be technology race and war about the smartphone operating systems. Nokia even convinced the Japanese giant carrier/operators NTT DoCoMo - the inventor of the mobile telecoms industry - to join in Symbian (and NTT DoCoMo would for more than a decade specify Symbian to its premium phones as the OS). Unfortunately some Americans didn't want this happy collaboration. A company called Palm refused, and a company called Microsoft decided to launch its own, Windows version instead of joining Symbian. Later a Canadian company called RIM would do its own Blackberry OS and eventually Apple did its iOS and Google launched Android. But Symbian was a noble attempt to prevent fragmentation - and allowing all to share equally - as owners and developers - in Symbian. Is this not the very quintessential European tech company, who thinks this way. Thank you Nokia. While in the end, Symbian was too old and heavy to maintain, and had to be killed, it was a noble effort indeed and Nokia never got the recognition and credit for how far-sighted this was. Very modern 'open source' thinking for its time. (and lets not now blame our American cousins for wrecking this concept)
Are you bored already? Are you sneaking into your pocket to sling some Angries at some nasty Pigs? Yes Finland's Angry Birds additiction has now hit every major country and it the company that developed the world's most-downloaded videogame of all time, Rovio is not Nokia. But who first put a videogame on a phone as pre-installed software? That truly 'silly' idea was from Nokia, and the Snake - the first videogame to have had more than 1 Billion gamers. Thank you Nokia for taking those bold risks, innovating and creating. Gaming on phones. Who isn't looking to use some game when bored.
Apple did yes, revolutionize the smartphone space, so much so, that the iPhone got the nickname Jesusphone (a term that originates from a mistaken reference to my blog, talking of the two eras in smarpthones, before the iPhone and after the iPhone). But contrary to most recent converts to smartphones, Apple didn't invent smartphones. The original iPhone wasn't even a smartphone. Apple didn't even introduce its app store until the following year and the second version of the iPhone. No, smartphones were invented literally ten years before the iPhone - by Nokia. Not Nokia alone, the original Communciator 9000 project was a collaboration with the biggest PDA maker of that time, Hewlett-Packard the computer giant. HP pulled out of the project and left it to Nokia. The outrageously expensive 9000 Communciator was released and the rest is history. This past quarter, Q2 of 2013, was the tipping point when more than half of all new phones sold, were now smartphones. Nokia invented the smartphone. For all those Facebooking, YouTubing, Instagramming, Twittering, Grouponing you do with your Android or iPhone today, thank Nokia for the first smartphone, to create this market.
So you say, but those were like the Blackberry, business-oriented smartphones. Yes, that is true. And the iPhone was revolutionary because it was a consumer smartphone. Ok, yes, the iPhone was indeed a consumer-focused (smart)phone but not the first. Not by miles, not by years. The first consumer-oriented smartphone came from Nokia. The N-Gage gaming smartphone. Incidentially had an app store five YEARS before Apple gave its app store for us. Nokia took lessons from the N-Gage to proceed to launch N-Series smarpthones that were 'multimedia computers' yes, with music players, video players, full internet web browers, and great cameras. You like your WiFi and think this was awesome by Apple. Yeah, copied Nokia who put WiFi on the smartphones four years prior (and again, American carriers/operators screamed bloody murder and refused to sell those models). Do you love your WiFi on the smartphone. Thank Nokia for that.
What of the microSD data cards? Nokia offered the first data cards on the Nokia 9110 Communicator model. A way to transfer data easily and without any network charges, and to store large files like music, videos and pictures easily. Unfortunately some (mostly North America-based) smartphone makers and operating systems do not want to support this idea that consumers love. Nokia pioneered it for us. Thank you Nokia for helping us have more user-friendly technology that helps us avoid unnecessary costs.
And what of that usability? Nokia invented the full QWERTY keyboard for phones. Not the narrow QWERTY which was Blackberry's response, but the full width QWERTY, such as on the Communciator series. And again, Nokia obsession with user-friendliness, they had dual keyboard inputs on most models of the Communcator series, because why? A traditional T9 keypad is easier to operate single-handed, but a full QWERTY is far faster if you have both hands available such as sitting at a Starbucks. Thank you Nokia for creating user-friendly phones. Yes, eventually Apple would out-do Nokia on this, but seriously, is there any tech ever, where Apple was NOT the best in user friendliness? If you come second to Apple, that is still pretty darn good. And until the iPhone appeared, you readers remember this, Nokia phones of any price range were the most user-friendly devices of their generation. Miles ahead of contemporary Motorolas or Siemenses or Ericssons etc.. Thank you Nokia for obsessing about usability and helping make this complex technology more user friendly.
User friendly? Try planetary-friendly? Which handset brand has won almost every year the Greenpeace award for most green handset manufacturing and packaging? Nokia thats who. Thank you Nokia not just for helping Connecting People but also helping save the planet too. Gosh Nokia, so often I felt you never got the credit for what you did and how you lived. No wonder you were the most admired tech company of Europe for almost the full decade. And no surprise then that the Nokia brand was nearly ten years one of the ten most valuable brands on the planet. Not handset brands or tech brands. Brands. Yes, with Coca Cola and IBM and McDonalds and yes, Nokia. Gosh, you were so much a part of our lives, how can we live without you in the future?
I am a camerabuff (or used to be, once, long ago, in a a galaxy far far away..). Sharp invented the cameraphone in Japan. But it was Nokia who popularized the cameraphone for the rest of the world. By 2006 Nokia had become the world's most used camera brand. Not the bestselling new camera brand, the world's most used camera brand. Today, out of all people who have ever taken a picture, 9 out of 10 people have never used a 'stand-alone' type of camera, either digital or film-based 'real' camera. And of those 9 who only know cameraphones, the majority have used a Nokia branded cameraphone. How this incredible rate of success? Because Nokia was a big believer in the camera as a new behavior for consumers. Nokia partnered with Carl Zeiss for premium camera optics. Nokia innovated and delivered ever more astounding cameraphone innovations, from the first megapixel cameraphone to the first true optical zoom to the first true Xenon flash to the massive 41 megapixel camera sensor on the 808 Pureview. A survey of Nokia consumers in 2012 found that the number 1 feature loyal Nokia owners ask for when buying a new phone - is a good camera. Oh, and the other reason why Nokia is so widely used is that it is by far the bestselling second-hand phone model worldwide. You didn't know that, did you? That there is a strong, vibrant hundreds-of-millions of phones sold per year - size 'used phone' market that is disproportionately Nokia branded handsets. Thank you Nokia for safeguarding our memories. For being not the best camera ever made but rather, the best camera we always carry with us when the sudden opportunity to take that picture arises.
What of video recording. Surely not, you might think. Yes. Nokia's revolutionary N93 was the first cameraphone that shot DVD quality video (and had TV out too, so you could watch those videos on your plasma screen TV). Those top-line video cameras kept getting better, so much so, that the first full-length Hollywood movie shot only on cameraphones - not for a short film festival, a Hollywood movie released in theaters and full-length, was shot on the Nokia N8 by professional cinematographer. Yes, today whichever brand flagship smartphone you use, it will have at least 8mp camera and shoots DVD quality video. When Nokia first did this, most thoughts its a daft idea and would never catch on. Nobody would bother to shoot 'real video' on a pocket toy like a phone. Today we all do it.
So you go on Facebook or Twitter to do some social networking. Yeah. We all do. And we do that increasingly on our mobile phones. But what was the first international social media launched on mobile phones. It was Nokia's LiveBlog. Now, LiveBlog wasn't that successful and eventually after some upgrades, was discontinued. But once again, Nokia pioneered the way for us. Before Lifeblog the only social media experiments on mobile were all some national services in some advanced countries like South Korea and Japan. Nokia brought the idea to the masses. (oh, I had the privilege to be a test user for LifeBlog..)
So of the masses? What do we all do? We all use money. No, Nokia didn't invent mobile payments but mobile payments were invented in Finland. By... Coca Cola. They decided to install two vending machines that you could buy Coke cans by paying with SMS text messages. Mobile money was invented. Then the innovations bounced around the world, Smart Money in the Philippines full money payments from one account to another. Osaifu Keitai in Japan on NTT DoCoMo the first full mobile wallet etc. And then you know what? Nokia launched Nokia Money in India and a few other Asian countries. Yes. Nokia Money. A mobile payments solution on Nokia phones that soon took second place in the India mobile money market (it was eventually killed by Elop but lets not talk about that). Yes. Check this out. Google's Chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in Harvard Business Review that one of Google's highest priorities was mobile money. Nokia had already launched it and was second biggest in India haha. Who beats Google to the future? Nokia, our darling European tech giant. Thank you Nokia for constantly innovating and exploring.
Yes, after the iPhones and Galaxies and Sony Xperias, the Nokia phones were starting to feel quite dated and often had the association of 'your parents' phones' not really the coolest or most desirable. But for very many of us, some Nokia model was our first phone. The first love. There is a very special place we hold for the Nokia brand, even as it no longer is the coolest kid on the block.
I could tell you stories about what all Nokia did for our industry, from sharing literally the world's most thorough end-user surveys of mobile services covering over 60,000 consumer surveys over several years and over a dozen countries on all ihabited continents. I could tell you how Nokia helps students learn better in South Africa or help heal people better in India or farmers have better yields in Nigeria. I meet these kinds of Nokia experts at the various conferences where I speak all the time. They take great pride in being able to work for a company that takes its social responsibility this literally. But that is not why you would buy a phone. Still, it is something we should be proud of, as the kind of tech company all should aspire to be. True definition of the Google philosophy of 'do no evil'.
Recently Nokia gave us wireless charging, yet another usability innovation. In some markets Nokia offers dual SIM phones - Nokia didn't invent this idea but is offering it widely in those markets where these are popular. In other markets Nokia is offering NFC. Nokia introduced QR code readers as far back as 2006 (although, unfortunately in the penny-pinching years of the global economic downturn, Nokia stopped shipping it as a preinstalled app. That may be part reason why the QR code boom seemd to stall). GBut yes, I've had a QR code on my business cards since 2006.
So then that mobile internet. The first billion internet users, for most of them, their first intenet experience was on a PC. For the next billion internet users, almost all of them will only know a mobile phone based internet - on a modest 'feature' phone, not a top end iPhone or Android. Nokia was the first phone brand to offer the real internet on the original 9000 Communicator. Then Nokia helped bring internet browsing experiences to the masses with the WAP standard and its modest performance browsers. Yes, I know what you think 'WAP is crap' which perhaps was true in much of the Western world but in the emerging world still today, WAP is the primary internet browsing experience. The primary web browsing experience. Because the phones are cheap and basic and the networks are patch and 3G is very rare and the data prices are heavy. WAP was designed to be a 'lite' version of the internet. But look what Nokia has been doing consistently, for years. Bringing the real HTML internet to basic 'featurephones' such as the Asha series now. Ever lower prices to ever more masses. Can you remember how much the internet changed your life? Now try to imagine living in Africa in a village with no electric lighting. No television. No radio. But you save your money and buy an 80 dollar Asha featurephone from Nokia - and for the first time, you have the full internet in your pocket!!!! How radical an improvement this is in your standard of living. I love Apple but come on, when was Apple interested in bringing low cost iPhones to Africa? Nokia was there for more than a decade, doing just that. In India just now again, the latest brand survey found that India's number 1 brand is Nokia. Across all brands ahead of Mercedes Benz and Toyota and McDonalds and Coca Cola. That is the love Nokia has from its users.
Our lives were comprehensively changed from those of our parents' generation due to mobile phones. For most of us, that first phone was a Nokia phone. For many of us, our most favored phones over the years have all been Nokia branded. More than any other tech brand, Nokia has brought digital connectivity and bridged the digital divide on the planet. Connecting People. One Nokia phone at a time. And we loved you for it.
We will miss you Nokia as a consumer brand. Please fare well as the networks provider and if the gods of technology have any sense of justice, they will let our Nokia return one day to again live with us, in our pockets ...and in our hearts.
This is a love-letter to the world's most favourite phone brand, ever. Nokia you may be gone but you are not forgotten. First of all, the astonishing numbers. Over its lifetime manufacturing mobile phone handsets under the Nokia brand, the Finnish phone giant sold an unbelievable 3.8 Billion handsets. 3.8 Billion. The planet has 7.1 Billion people. So cumulatively, Nokia's handset production would reach more than half of the human population alive. This was in 20 years.
It gets even more astonishing in the peak Nokia installed base. At its peak, there were 1.4 Billion Nokia branded phones in use on the planet in 2011. It meant, that for every human alive, not adults, not only in the affluent world, but from babies to great grandparents, globally, there was a Nokia branded phone in the pockets of 1 out of every 5 humans alive. 1.4 Billion simultaneous owners of a Nokia branded phone. This is an unprecedented number and nothing comes close. Microsoft celebrated shipping 1 Billion cumulative Windows operating systems a few years ago. Nokia had 1.4 Billion current users. Timex shipped lifetime 1.1 Billion wristwatches. Nokia had 1.4 Billion active users of its portable gadget. Coca Cola doesn't have 1 Billion customers planet-wide. There are many regions in Africa for example where Coke is not served because there isn't electricity to keep the soft drink cold. But there are mobile phones - because their batteries are sent to neighboring villages to be recharged. What brands are these phones - almost exclusively Nokia brands, often second-hand Nokia phones from the Middle East and Europe.
If you called a phone number in use, in 2011, in one case of five, it would ring on a fixed landline phone. But in one case of four, the phone number would be a mobile number, ringing on a Nokia-branded mobile phone. The way to connect the planet - indeed Nokia's corporate slogan 'Connecting People' was never more apt, than the more than 400 million Nokia basic mobile phone owners living in the Emerging World who had no other communciation or media technology, not landline, not computers, not internet, not television - not even radio - but had a Nokia branded basic phone. Nokia truly came to the world, and helped 'Connecting People.' Nokia was in more pockets than the Levi's branding. No tech or brand ever was so widely spread as Nokia. What an achievement. This alone is cause to celebrate the iconic phone brand.
What do we do with the phones? You might suggest we make phone calls - that was what original telephone networks were designed for. But it might surprise you, that today more actual telecommunications made on mobile phones are messages than voice calls - most of those are SMS text messages - and more surprisingly, there is a larger number of mobile phone users, who use messaging on their phones, than who use voice calls! Yes, voice calls now are used only by 87% of all mobile phone subscriptions but messaging has reached 90% penetration rate of all mobile subscriptions. Many especially youth accounts are messaging-only, and other users don't want to 'waste' money and time on voice calls, and just use messaging. Especially on their second and third accounts. This incidentially is a global phenomenon, first observed in Finland.
Because SMS text messaging was invented by the Finnish telecoms exec working for Telecom Finland at the time, Matti Makkonen (who later would be hired by Nokia and a little before he retired, would become my last mentor when we both were employed by Nokia). Matti won the Economist award for inventing SMS, while the standard and development of SMS was then handled by a committee - Matti didn't actually create the first SMS, that was others. And yes, the first SMS text message was sent in the UK, but that was a computer-generated message. The first SMS text message as we understand it, from a mobile phone to a mobile phone - that was sent in Finland by Nokia employee Riku Pihkonen, on a Nokia handset. Did you know Nokia was the first GSM handset brand to make all its handsets fully SMS compliant, every phone could both receive and send SMS text messages. Nokia didn't invent SMS, but it was instrumental in promoting the early adoption of SMS texting - the first 'data' service for mobile. The start of the mobile data revolution. The first step in mobile phones growing past the landline metaphor of being just a 'phone' for 'voice calls'. Thank you Nokia.
And that brings me to the screen. Nokia made that radical innovation - driven by SMS text messaging - that it expanded the display from one line, to three line display - a massive gain over all rivals at the time. You could see 3 lines of text on the phone screen - read much of a text message on one screen without scrolling all the time. Helps with things like reading addresses. That is where Nokia's passion with obsessing about excellence in messaging stems from. They offered superior messaging phones in Finland where SMS texting first took off (I learned to SMS text message back in 1995 and have been addicted ever since. My personal tutor to train me to text, was a mobile data expert, Taina Kalliokoski then with Elisa/Helsinki Telephone, now with Fujitsu of Finland)
Nokia kept pushing the abilities of the phone screen. The 9000 Communicator featured the first 'giant' screen for a phone. The 9210 Communciator had the first color screen for a smartphone. That is by the way when mobile TV was invented - to work on that spectacular superphone that had such a fast processor it could actuallly process video (in a tiny picture on the wide screen, but still, this was the genesis of mobile TV). By the time Apple gave the Americans the 'magnificent' original iPhone, with the 'huge' 3.5 inch screen, Nokia had gone well beyond that and from a year before, had been selling the biggest screen of any phone ever, a full 4 inches on the E90 Communicator, one of the most amazing superphones of all time. Unfortunately the American carriers hated the power of this device, WiFi and all, and insisted Nokia has to cripple it for their market. As Nokia of course refused to cripple phones - that is bad for consumers, the American carriers/operators refused to offer the E90 Communicator to US consumers. British comparisons to the first iPhone rated the Communicator the far better phone and recommended it, even as it was more expensive than Apple's first iPhone.
If you like watching your YouTube videos on your phone today, you can thank Nokia for that evolution, for pushing ever bigger screens for us, and the processing power and even separate video processors at the top video phones, to give us jitter-free videos. Yes today Samsung's phablets run gargantuan screen sizs, but the evolution to big screens? Thank you Nokia.
Color! Can you imagine that as recently as 1997, no handset maker anywhere dared to offer us any colors. Every phone was either black or some shade of gray. Imagine going to a department meeting where everyone used the same brand phone. Whose phone is which? Well, some Nokia engineers came up with a novel solution to that 'problem' - what if we give replacable covers in .. colors. The first colored removable phone covers were introduced by Nokia and today even Apple will give us two colors for the iPhone. If you want others, you can of course buy the iPhone cases in almost any design and color combination.
Then there is Gran Vals by Francisco de Asis Tarrega y Eixea. Whatwasthatagain? Yes, Gran Vals. You know. THE song. No. Yes you do. YES you DO. You know this song. EVERYBODY knows Gran Vals by Tarrega. Except you don't know it by its original name. That piece of classic Spanish guitar music is better known as the 'Nokia Tune'. A-ha! That song. Yes. The Gran Vals has shipped more than 3.7 Billion copies (as the default ringing tone of Nokia phones). How monsterously massive is that? Take all records (vinyl and CD, plus all other recorded music ie cassettes, 8-tracks, MP3 files etc - sold of all songs by the Beatles. Yes, Love Me Do and Yesterday and Hey Jude and Back in the USSR. Add to all the Beatles songs, every recording sold of every Elvis song. And add to that, every recording of Michael Jackson's music. Add all those together. Nokia Tune has shipped more than all those, combined. Tarrega's Gran Vals is the most recognized song on the planet, the only song recognized in every country and every language, and yes, is more recognized than the James Bond theme or White Christmas or Happy Birthday. Gran Vals by Tarrega. The Nokia Tune. Most played, most recognized song on the planet. Who knew? Thank you Nokia. Oh, and a personal anecdote. The exact passage of that song, the short snippet which is the Nokia tune, that snippet was selected out of the guitar song, by my former colleague at Nokia, now the CEO of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), ex Nokia VP Lauri Kivinen.
Talking of those ringing tones. A truly massive, radical innovation also happened in Finland, in 1998, when the first downloaded over-the-air paid content was delivered to a mobile phone. Yes, the mobile media was invented. It wasn't Nokia execs who came up with this, it was a loss-making internet service provider in Finland called Saunalahden Serveri (later Jippii Group). They invented the downloadable ringing tone, delivered via the concept of premium SMS, and only initially functional on five premium Nokia phone models. The ringing tone business was invented. That blossomed to its peak of over 5 Billion dollars per year in ringtone busines (and the horrible annoying sounds like Crazy Frog) but yes, a commercial business so big, up to today, Apple's iPod iTunes business has never generated 5 Billion dollars of revenues in any one year. Ringing tones. Wow. Yes. And from those humble beginnings the whole mobile internet and mobile data revolution grew, which today is worth 200 Billion dollars in value. Pretty cool, that it was those 5 Nokia premium phones that had that ability to install user-generated ringing tones, and have those delivered over the air. I should mention that I created my first ringing tone that very first week this was possible. Not because I was that interested in ringing tones, but because one of my former colleagues from the Finnet days, a lady named Sara Melkko, had joined Saunalahden Serveri and was on that team that invented the downloadable ringing tone. She would later join me in co-authoring my third book, 3G Marketing. Thank you Nokia for enabling the invention of the mobile data industry.
Nokia did publish the world's first white paper on the mobile internet (co-authored by my dear friend Jouko Ahvenainen who would later run Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's telecoms consulting 3G competence, when CGEY was the world' largest telecoms consultancy - and yes, me.) Nokia would then help build that mobile internet not just with hardware but helping run the first conference on the mobile internet, where the chairman was also from Nokia (me). And Nokia would further help spread the mobile data services knowhow by sponsoring the first ever book written about mobile data services, called Services for UMTS. That book, written by a dozen of Nokia's best mobile data services experts was edited by my friend Joe Barrett - and yes, me. This was the very core ethos of Nokia - not going it alone. But sharing. Helping everyone grow. Nokia didn't hide insights, it shared them.
Like Symbian. I mean, who else does this in technology? But when Nokia set up the Symbian partnership, it literally invited every other handset maker to join in the Symbian partnership, to co-develop and co-own the smarpthone OS. Who in their right mind does this? Nokia that is who. Yes, they invited their biggest rivals, Motorola, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Ericsson, etc etc etc all to join in owning and developing Symbian. Why? So there would not be technology race and war about the smartphone operating systems. Nokia even convinced the Japanese giant carrier/operators NTT DoCoMo - the inventor of the mobile telecoms industry - to join in Symbian (and NTT DoCoMo would for more than a decade specify Symbian to its premium phones as the OS). Unfortunately some Americans didn't want this happy collaboration. A company called Palm refused, and a company called Microsoft decided to launch its own, Windows version instead of joining Symbian. Later a Canadian company called RIM would do its own Blackberry OS and eventually Apple did its iOS and Google launched Android. But Symbian was a noble attempt to prevent fragmentation - and allowing all to share equally - as owners and developers - in Symbian. Is this not the very quintessential European tech company, who thinks this way. Thank you Nokia. While in the end, Symbian was too old and heavy to maintain, and had to be killed, it was a noble effort indeed and Nokia never got the recognition and credit for how far-sighted this was. Very modern 'open source' thinking for its time. (and lets not now blame our American cousins for wrecking this concept)
Are you bored already? Are you sneaking into your pocket to sling some Angries at some nasty Pigs? Yes Finland's Angry Birds additiction has now hit every major country and it the company that developed the world's most-downloaded videogame of all time, Rovio is not Nokia. But who first put a videogame on a phone as pre-installed software? That truly 'silly' idea was from Nokia, and the Snake - the first videogame to have had more than 1 Billion gamers. Thank you Nokia for taking those bold risks, innovating and creating. Gaming on phones. Who isn't looking to use some game when bored.
Apple did yes, revolutionize the smartphone space, so much so, that the iPhone got the nickname Jesusphone (a term that originates from a mistaken reference to my blog, talking of the two eras in smarpthones, before the iPhone and after the iPhone). But contrary to most recent converts to smartphones, Apple didn't invent smartphones. The original iPhone wasn't even a smartphone. Apple didn't even introduce its app store until the following year and the second version of the iPhone. No, smartphones were invented literally ten years before the iPhone - by Nokia. Not Nokia alone, the original Communciator 9000 project was a collaboration with the biggest PDA maker of that time, Hewlett-Packard the computer giant. HP pulled out of the project and left it to Nokia. The outrageously expensive 9000 Communciator was released and the rest is history. This past quarter, Q2 of 2013, was the tipping point when more than half of all new phones sold, were now smartphones. Nokia invented the smartphone. For all those Facebooking, YouTubing, Instagramming, Twittering, Grouponing you do with your Android or iPhone today, thank Nokia for the first smartphone, to create this market.
So you say, but those were like the Blackberry, business-oriented smartphones. Yes, that is true. And the iPhone was revolutionary because it was a consumer smartphone. Ok, yes, the iPhone was indeed a consumer-focused (smart)phone but not the first. Not by miles, not by years. The first consumer-oriented smartphone came from Nokia. The N-Gage gaming smartphone. Incidentially had an app store five YEARS before Apple gave its app store for us. Nokia took lessons from the N-Gage to proceed to launch N-Series smarpthones that were 'multimedia computers' yes, with music players, video players, full internet web browers, and great cameras. You like your WiFi and think this was awesome by Apple. Yeah, copied Nokia who put WiFi on the smartphones four years prior (and again, American carriers/operators screamed bloody murder and refused to sell those models). Do you love your WiFi on the smartphone. Thank Nokia for that.
What of the microSD data cards? Nokia offered the first data cards on the Nokia 9110 Communicator model. A way to transfer data easily and without any network charges, and to store large files like music, videos and pictures easily. Unfortunately some (mostly North America-based) smartphone makers and operating systems do not want to support this idea that consumers love. Nokia pioneered it for us. Thank you Nokia for helping us have more user-friendly technology that helps us avoid unnecessary costs.
And what of that usability? Nokia invented the full QWERTY keyboard for phones. Not the narrow QWERTY which was Blackberry's response, but the full width QWERTY, such as on the Communciator series. And again, Nokia obsession with user-friendliness, they had dual keyboard inputs on most models of the Communcator series, because why? A traditional T9 keypad is easier to operate single-handed, but a full QWERTY is far faster if you have both hands available such as sitting at a Starbucks. Thank you Nokia for creating user-friendly phones. Yes, eventually Apple would out-do Nokia on this, but seriously, is there any tech ever, where Apple was NOT the best in user friendliness? If you come second to Apple, that is still pretty darn good. And until the iPhone appeared, you readers remember this, Nokia phones of any price range were the most user-friendly devices of their generation. Miles ahead of contemporary Motorolas or Siemenses or Ericssons etc.. Thank you Nokia for obsessing about usability and helping make this complex technology more user friendly.
User friendly? Try planetary-friendly? Which handset brand has won almost every year the Greenpeace award for most green handset manufacturing and packaging? Nokia thats who. Thank you Nokia not just for helping Connecting People but also helping save the planet too. Gosh Nokia, so often I felt you never got the credit for what you did and how you lived. No wonder you were the most admired tech company of Europe for almost the full decade. And no surprise then that the Nokia brand was nearly ten years one of the ten most valuable brands on the planet. Not handset brands or tech brands. Brands. Yes, with Coca Cola and IBM and McDonalds and yes, Nokia. Gosh, you were so much a part of our lives, how can we live without you in the future?
I am a camerabuff (or used to be, once, long ago, in a a galaxy far far away..). Sharp invented the cameraphone in Japan. But it was Nokia who popularized the cameraphone for the rest of the world. By 2006 Nokia had become the world's most used camera brand. Not the bestselling new camera brand, the world's most used camera brand. Today, out of all people who have ever taken a picture, 9 out of 10 people have never used a 'stand-alone' type of camera, either digital or film-based 'real' camera. And of those 9 who only know cameraphones, the majority have used a Nokia branded cameraphone. How this incredible rate of success? Because Nokia was a big believer in the camera as a new behavior for consumers. Nokia partnered with Carl Zeiss for premium camera optics. Nokia innovated and delivered ever more astounding cameraphone innovations, from the first megapixel cameraphone to the first true optical zoom to the first true Xenon flash to the massive 41 megapixel camera sensor on the 808 Pureview. A survey of Nokia consumers in 2012 found that the number 1 feature loyal Nokia owners ask for when buying a new phone - is a good camera. Oh, and the other reason why Nokia is so widely used is that it is by far the bestselling second-hand phone model worldwide. You didn't know that, did you? That there is a strong, vibrant hundreds-of-millions of phones sold per year - size 'used phone' market that is disproportionately Nokia branded handsets. Thank you Nokia for safeguarding our memories. For being not the best camera ever made but rather, the best camera we always carry with us when the sudden opportunity to take that picture arises.
What of video recording. Surely not, you might think. Yes. Nokia's revolutionary N93 was the first cameraphone that shot DVD quality video (and had TV out too, so you could watch those videos on your plasma screen TV). Those top-line video cameras kept getting better, so much so, that the first full-length Hollywood movie shot only on cameraphones - not for a short film festival, a Hollywood movie released in theaters and full-length, was shot on the Nokia N8 by professional cinematographer. Yes, today whichever brand flagship smartphone you use, it will have at least 8mp camera and shoots DVD quality video. When Nokia first did this, most thoughts its a daft idea and would never catch on. Nobody would bother to shoot 'real video' on a pocket toy like a phone. Today we all do it.
So you go on Facebook or Twitter to do some social networking. Yeah. We all do. And we do that increasingly on our mobile phones. But what was the first international social media launched on mobile phones. It was Nokia's LiveBlog. Now, LiveBlog wasn't that successful and eventually after some upgrades, was discontinued. But once again, Nokia pioneered the way for us. Before Lifeblog the only social media experiments on mobile were all some national services in some advanced countries like South Korea and Japan. Nokia brought the idea to the masses. (oh, I had the privilege to be a test user for LifeBlog..)
So of the masses? What do we all do? We all use money. No, Nokia didn't invent mobile payments but mobile payments were invented in Finland. By... Coca Cola. They decided to install two vending machines that you could buy Coke cans by paying with SMS text messages. Mobile money was invented. Then the innovations bounced around the world, Smart Money in the Philippines full money payments from one account to another. Osaifu Keitai in Japan on NTT DoCoMo the first full mobile wallet etc. And then you know what? Nokia launched Nokia Money in India and a few other Asian countries. Yes. Nokia Money. A mobile payments solution on Nokia phones that soon took second place in the India mobile money market (it was eventually killed by Elop but lets not talk about that). Yes. Check this out. Google's Chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in Harvard Business Review that one of Google's highest priorities was mobile money. Nokia had already launched it and was second biggest in India haha. Who beats Google to the future? Nokia, our darling European tech giant. Thank you Nokia for constantly innovating and exploring.
Yes, after the iPhones and Galaxies and Sony Xperias, the Nokia phones were starting to feel quite dated and often had the association of 'your parents' phones' not really the coolest or most desirable. But for very many of us, some Nokia model was our first phone. The first love. There is a very special place we hold for the Nokia brand, even as it no longer is the coolest kid on the block.
I could tell you stories about what all Nokia did for our industry, from sharing literally the world's most thorough end-user surveys of mobile services covering over 60,000 consumer surveys over several years and over a dozen countries on all ihabited continents. I could tell you how Nokia helps students learn better in South Africa or help heal people better in India or farmers have better yields in Nigeria. I meet these kinds of Nokia experts at the various conferences where I speak all the time. They take great pride in being able to work for a company that takes its social responsibility this literally. But that is not why you would buy a phone. Still, it is something we should be proud of, as the kind of tech company all should aspire to be. True definition of the Google philosophy of 'do no evil'.
Recently Nokia gave us wireless charging, yet another usability innovation. In some markets Nokia offers dual SIM phones - Nokia didn't invent this idea but is offering it widely in those markets where these are popular. In other markets Nokia is offering NFC. Nokia introduced QR code readers as far back as 2006 (although, unfortunately in the penny-pinching years of the global economic downturn, Nokia stopped shipping it as a preinstalled app. That may be part reason why the QR code boom seemd to stall). GBut yes, I've had a QR code on my business cards since 2006.
So then that mobile internet. The first billion internet users, for most of them, their first intenet experience was on a PC. For the next billion internet users, almost all of them will only know a mobile phone based internet - on a modest 'feature' phone, not a top end iPhone or Android. Nokia was the first phone brand to offer the real internet on the original 9000 Communicator. Then Nokia helped bring internet browsing experiences to the masses with the WAP standard and its modest performance browsers. Yes, I know what you think 'WAP is crap' which perhaps was true in much of the Western world but in the emerging world still today, WAP is the primary internet browsing experience. The primary web browsing experience. Because the phones are cheap and basic and the networks are patch and 3G is very rare and the data prices are heavy. WAP was designed to be a 'lite' version of the internet. But look what Nokia has been doing consistently, for years. Bringing the real HTML internet to basic 'featurephones' such as the Asha series now. Ever lower prices to ever more masses. Can you remember how much the internet changed your life? Now try to imagine living in Africa in a village with no electric lighting. No television. No radio. But you save your money and buy an 80 dollar Asha featurephone from Nokia - and for the first time, you have the full internet in your pocket!!!! How radical an improvement this is in your standard of living. I love Apple but come on, when was Apple interested in bringing low cost iPhones to Africa? Nokia was there for more than a decade, doing just that. In India just now again, the latest brand survey found that India's number 1 brand is Nokia. Across all brands ahead of Mercedes Benz and Toyota and McDonalds and Coca Cola. That is the love Nokia has from its users.
Our lives were comprehensively changed from those of our parents' generation due to mobile phones. For most of us, that first phone was a Nokia phone. For many of us, our most favored phones over the years have all been Nokia branded. More than any other tech brand, Nokia has brought digital connectivity and bridged the digital divide on the planet. Connecting People. One Nokia phone at a time. And we loved you for it.
We will miss you Nokia as a consumer brand. Please fare well as the networks provider and if the gods of technology have any sense of justice, they will let our Nokia return one day to again live with us, in our pockets ...and in our hearts.
One person who is almost forgotten from this story is the great leader the brilliant leader el mahico himself Jorma Ollila he was the guy who started the damn fall. He instituted the unflexible leadership culture in Nokia of the mid level management bullshit he was the guy controlled OPK strings and steering the ship from the backseat. Jorma Ollila personally selected Elop as Nokias CEO he is the one who started this mess in first place, yes he did create the Nokia legend that is still remembered today but he should have stepped down over 10 years ago dont get me wrong Elop had his fingers in the cookie jar big time but he mess he inherited was way bigger and almost impossible to fix. One thing that bothers me with this text is that in 2006 Symbian had 60% market share of smartphone platforms 2007 it had dropped to 50% 2008 40% in 2009 it was around 35% in q1 2011 it was around 23%.
http://www.statista.com/statistics/263438/market-share-held-by-nokia-smartphones-since-2007/
When Elop took the wheel in feb 2011 so yes he destroyed what was left but ship was allready sinking way before that he just put the damn thing in overdrive.
One thing that is positive about this deal is that now all the bad stuff is gone from Nokia they have a fresh new beginning to start again they still own the patents and the name they are licensed to MS but Nokia owns the rights they still have NSN a profit making operation and the mapping that could have a bright future ahead of itself.
Posted by: Hansu | September 04, 2013 at 07:11 PM
I take exception with Nokia's stewardship of Symbian.
You see, Nokia did not invent Symbian. That was a UK company, Psion, creator of the EPOC operating system for the Psion Series 5. But Psion was owned by a coward, and he created an Anything But Microsoft alliance to be in charge of his unique operating system.
Nokia, in particular, kept Symbian from being a unified platform. So, I'm saddened by the manner of the death of Symbian, with its attendant human cost, but I see Nokia's failure as poetic justice.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/23/symbian_history_part_one_dark_star/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/29/symbian_history_part_two_ui_wars/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/12/symbian_history_part_three_charles_davies_interview/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/10/nokia_ui_saga/
Posted by: R | September 04, 2013 at 08:28 PM
@R that quantifies the problems that were in Nokia yes they had great ideas and products but failed to realise what consumers really wanted it was too engineering driven systems yes technically great for phones but not as easy or pleasing for the consumer. The biggest mistake Nokia made with Symbian was to buy it back for 1bn € too keep it to themselves.
Posted by: Hansu | September 04, 2013 at 08:48 PM
Great article Tomi.I have to admit.. my first phone was an ericsson in 1997 (one line screen)and in 1998 i got my first nokia (6150)i was directly in love with nokia which had 5 lines and had awesome audio.nokia was always the number 1 un-disputed handset brand and who could imagine 3 years ago that nokia would be thrown to the dogs like this.. i have been been using the low end nokias and always been amazed by the durability of this devices.i have an asha now and my next phone will be the asha 501 (functionality is more important than apps for me..i still use a mobile as a basic phone) as a second phone i have the nokia 1110. Nokia 1110 is the highest sold mobile device of all time, they sold about 250 million units, its works perfecly still after 7 years. Back when in 1999 when i came to finland almost everyone had a nokia and once i while you saw an ericsson.i am still just a bit puzzled how elop went as an elephant trough the porcelain shelf with little opposition of the Finnish people.I think later on when the dirty stories of elops insider deals come out the people will be terrified.God bless Finland and my next vote will go to jolla.
Posted by: M | September 04, 2013 at 08:55 PM
@M, I also do not see how Finnish govt can be entertaining these two Steve Elop and Steve Ballmer. The duo that has led to this.. To them, the patient was terminally ill, cancer had infected the main organs so best solution was to terminate the patient. I am not the kind to look back. What Elop has done cannot be undone. I can not believe he is now being feted by the high and mighty in Finland as if he is some kind of national hero. There are many legal questions that leave on lookers bewildered. When Steve Elop was negotiating the price, was he doing this as Nokia CEO or MSFT employee ? At what point did Elop cease to be Nokia employee and joined MSFT ? The size of scandal on this Nokia sale would make ENRON look like a joke. But hey, no one will go looking for any clues or smoking guns. The two Steves are moving around Finland spreading spin that they will make the nation and R&D centre - ah, yea. Can the regulators check this deal whether it meets business integrity of any acquisition ?
MSFT has taken everything Nokia including dumb phones, Phone factories, Development teams, services, sales channels, HR, the lot. As a parting shot, Steve Elop has put a clause that Nokia cannot release newly branded handsets for another 30 months, why ? Was this clause in Nokia's interest ? It will therefore be 2016 if at all Nokia will release new handsets. Anyway, they have no R&D unless they purchase Jolla with the money received. By 2016, mobile market may be very different to what we know it today.
MSFT has made the same mistake every winner does in the face of victory. They have failed to see the trees from the forest. They have taken everything Nokia. Why did they not just cherry pick the parts of business that were useful for them ? They will now have a costly restructuring process, with potential to lose focus or get derailed. I hope they make Elop their CEO and let us see how other companies will want to trade with him - very low business ethics.
Posted by: Jamie | September 05, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Tomi,
like you, I am a Nokia fanboy, albeit an Australian one. I've owned a Nokia phone almost exclusively over the years (with the exception of a crazy obsession with Siemens phones between 1998-2000!):
* Nokia 2010 (1994)
* Nokia 5110 (1998)
* Siemens A50
* Siemens A65
* Nokia 8210 (2000)
* Nokia 6230 (2003)
* Nokia E65 (2007)
* Nokia N82 (2008)
* Nokia N97 mini (2009)
* Nokia N8 (2010)
* Nokia 808 (2012)
As much as I love my 808 and its camera, the Symbian OS is being deserted by developers, and a lot of the things I used to be able to do on my phone I now can't. I'd (literally) be lost without Nokia maps, but all new features are now being added to HERE maps on Lumia phones and Symbian users miss out.
So I'll soon be buying what's possibly the last Nokia branded phone, the Lumia 1020. I'm prepared to give the Windows phone OS a chance - I don't like iOS and I find Android to be quite clunky and non-intuitive, even compared to Symbian, which is saying a lot!
Of course, hardware also plays a large part in my decision - I've never had a problem with a Nokia phone; they just work. My 808 has been dropped onto the pavement more times than I'd care to admit, but it still works like the day I bought it. In contrast, my son's Galaxy S3 was shattered after one minor fall and had to be replaced. Being 14, he wouldn't accept a Symbian powered phone, despite my insistence!
The bottom line is that while I'm attached to the Nokia brand, its DNA will live on, and hopefully we will continue to be rewarded with high quality handsets and cutting edge technology with the Lumia range - the same design team will be behind it after all, it's just that now they work for Microsoft, and we all have to accept that, sooner or later.
Posted by: Tony | September 05, 2013 at 12:47 AM
I still use a pimped up N8, replete with custom firmware. It's pristine, having been in a case its entire life...even though it's been dropped at least once a week over the last 2+ years. I like it so much, I keep another N8 as a spare...leaving it around the house as our Skype wifi phone and a nice little gaming device for the kids (when they get bored with their Nintendo 3DS XL's). Still have a couple of 5800XM's lying around...maybe I'll set one up as a security camera for fun. Even a couple of E51's...which I always felt had an excellent & svelte design. They really complemented the Moccha E90 I still keep in my drawer. That phone had so much capability for its time...though it was a bit of a brick. This is where the E51 kicked in...it was basically the outside of an E90.
When I think back at how much Nokia brought to the mobile landscape, it's truly astonishing. Every time I hear someone say that Apple invented the smartphone, I can only laugh.
Posted by: Stoli89 | September 05, 2013 at 12:51 AM
Nice & just requiem Tomi. I, too, had the great privilege of using many of the most popular & innovative Nokia handsets since the '90s, from the 5110, 6210, the 3210 of course, 7650 & most of the N-series, plus so much more. Until now I'm still on the lookout for a mint 8910i on eBay since I considered this one of the most beautiful designs for a mobile phone ever & I couldn't afford to buy it at the time it was released. As I've said here previously I currently use a couple of 808 PVs (red & white) as my workhorse phones (actually more as a P&S substitute when I don't or can't carry my EOS 5D Mark III full-frame DSLR).
Posted by: The Recusant | September 05, 2013 at 02:05 AM
Tomi, can you re-post your posting guidelines instead of arbitrarily deleting posts??? Seriously, I don't know the criteria, if any, for you to delete some posts & not others that are more objectionable or mere propaganda. Also, can you check the IP posts of each poster here, because I feel some are just using another handle to "agree" or support their own previous post made with another handle. TIA
Posted by: The Recusant | September 05, 2013 at 05:09 AM
Hi Recusant
Good question, I don't put up with profanity or personal attacks. I won't allow any comments left that would require me, or any of my readers to start their response with 'if you had read this article fully' - this is the most common reason why something is removed. I won't waste any of my time or my readers' time with such silliness if someone didn't bother to read the full article and posted based on partial reading only. And finally, I remove trolls which is somewhat arbitrary but my regulars here are very well tuned into what is trolling and often already point out who is a troll and needs to be removed..
By the way, you can disagree strongly with my view, if you for example say 'Tomi you wrote x, I think y..' but if I post a statistic or source, and you simply give your opinion why not, that is 'you didn't read the article'.. you MAY of course, post an alternate source - 'Tomi you quoted the IDC stat that x, but did you see that Gartner quotes the stat of y' this is fair... If you indicate in your comment that you've clearly read the article, you can disagree with me as much as you ever want and we have here strongly worded disagreements all over the years, in the 33,000 comments posted on this blog. All remain forever, if they don't violate those above rules. (I also keep every posting I blogged, including all my mistaken forecasts, etc, so the history remains fully intact)
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | September 05, 2013 at 08:05 AM
Thank you Tomi!
This article has let me remembered the good old times when we, the geeks, did so cool stuff which now is done by every single child...
I will always remember when i bought my first smartphone with symbian, the 7650, I converted a movie on my pc (thx divx) to the screensize of the phone and watched it with two friends on my balcony... and yes, as a man i can say it was a short scene from a pron movie ;) But yes, this moment when watching a movie in my hands was so amazing for us, i will always remember this moment.
Or with my 6260 i installed an app which was able to stream the screen of my pc to my phone, with full keyboard support so i was able to view and control my pc while lying in my bed, i even didnt needed to have the monitor on.
Thank you Nokia for everything, absolutely everything you did in the past! I will miss you a lot!
BTW, here are my phones
Nokia 6110 -> Nokia 6210 -> Nokia 7650 -> Nokia 6260 -> Nokia N73 -> Nokia E51 -> Nokia N900
In 2012!! I replaced my N900 with the Galaxy Nexus, as it wasnt working anymore and I had to replace it. I felt sad because it wasnt a Nokia and I didnt wanted a WindowsPhone. since then i am an Android Nexus guy and sadly i will never return to nokia, since this week my last hopes are gone...
Posted by: Brock | September 05, 2013 at 09:59 AM
Nice article.
I still think that it is a bit premature to be writing an obituary.
Somebody else posted a link to a list of Nokia shareholders on one of the other Nokia posts which was very interesting. He was trying to demonstrate that Nokia and Microsoft share many of the same institutional shareholders but I noticed that the level of institutional shareholding is 12.07%.
That means 87.9% of Nokia shares are not held by these institutions.
I can easily see those shareholders voting against a fire sale to the company that destroyed two thirds of the value of their holdings if a viable second option is in play.
All it needs is someone to provide one in the next six weeks.
Chris Hanlon
thedarienproject.blogspot.com/
Posted by: crizh | September 05, 2013 at 11:38 AM
A sad day indeed.
Nokia didn't even put up a fight, thanks to that little f**ker. Lots of great things could have come out of a big struggling company.
Everything was thrown in the garbage to do MS's bidding. Burned to the ground assets, markets, IP, employees, factories and patents(the ones that were transfered to MS controlled trolls).
The perfect strategy to repel potential buyers and drive prices rock bottom.
Goodbye Nokia, the Nokia Tune never sounded so sad...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nokia_tune.ogg
Posted by: QtFan | September 05, 2013 at 11:50 AM
Tomi, I must say I'm a bit moved to tears on reading this. Maybe if you cut me as well, my blood would have RGB values of 00, 51, 204 :-)
I still cant believe that Elop's scheming has not sent anti-competitive bells ringing in Finland...the guy has ruined a loved and cherished company, destroyed careers of thousands, impacted the economy of a few Finnish cities, and gets away scott free!
PS: It's also very gratifying to hear that you still carry the 808 Pureview. It so happened that this was the last Nokia phone that my team worked on.
Posted by: Dipankar | September 05, 2013 at 12:13 PM
dear tomi t ahonen,
in India before 2-3 years mobile phone means "NOKIA", i love nokia very much as it is my first phone ( 2110 in the year 2001)for past 12 years i use only NOKIA.for me NOKIA N95 is the Best phone ever made,F*****k off IOS, F******k off ANDRO , sorry for bad words but i am broken.
Posted by: srinivasan | September 05, 2013 at 12:46 PM
Reminds me my training in Forssa/Tampere in 1999, in partnership with Nokia and Sonera; at that time, our dream phone was the Nokia 6110 (though I also loved the Ericsson T series design), the communicator being out of reach of our students revenues.
Anyway, now Nokia's story ended, it's time to find out who won the "Kick-Elop out" contest ; obviously, it's not me, as the date I posted was mid-january 2014 (if I remember well)
Someone in this world deserves a copy of your book, Tomi.
Posted by: vladkr | September 05, 2013 at 02:03 PM
Just for you guys :
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=83f_1323799141&comments=1
Posted by: vladkr | September 05, 2013 at 02:05 PM
Tomi: Npkia -> Nokia
typo in last sentence: ... let our Npkia return ...
(feel free to delete this post after fixing)
Posted by: daz | September 05, 2013 at 04:58 PM
Thank you Tomi, great read! Nokia had me when they released the legendary N95 and they had me ever since. N95 had a very conservative amount of RAM and was generally slow but I had it for over 3 years until its battery gave up and was quite happy with it. Great audio, great camera, maps were finally off-line and usable, email worked and a lot more which is standard stuff these days. Loved that phone, loved its successor N8 and its successor 808PV which I am using nowadays.
Too bad they screwed up, selling the entire mobile unit to MS means only one thing, it will be shut down in a couple of years (if not sooner). It will be interesting to see what exactly MS intends to do with Nokia.
Posted by: svensson | September 05, 2013 at 07:35 PM
One of the very unfortunate consequences of switching to Windows Phone is it is so restrictive that Nokia couldn't innovate any longer.
Windows Phone takes a peculiar position in the market. It isn't an oem-developed OS like iOS or Symbian was (for most of its history). It isn't a truely open OS like Android that oem's and telecoms are free to modify as they wish. It is multi-oem, but so structured that oem's can innovate and differentiate pnly in hardware. And neither oem's nor telecoms like that, so it was dead in the market from day one.
And one of the reasons that Nokia is doomed is that Microsoft is now going to have even tighter control over it.
Posted by: eduardo | September 06, 2013 at 01:23 AM