Posted on 07/20/2012 8:18:42 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
More than seven years before Apple Inc. AAPL -1.63% rolled out the iPhone, the Nokia team showed a phone with a color touch screen set above a single button. The device was shown locating a restaurant, playing a racing game and ordering lipstick. In the late 1990s, Nokia secretly developed another alluring product: a tablet computer with a wireless connection and touch screen—all features today of the hot-selling Apple iPad.
Former Nokia designer Frank Nuovo says the company had prototypes that anticipated the iPhone.
"Oh my God," Mr. Nuovo says as he clicks through his old slides. "We had it completely nailed."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Sounds like these guys were channeling Xerox PARC - who had EVERYTHING, computer-wise; the mouse, Windows, etc. Xerox could be Microsoft and Apple combined today. But they were run by a bunch of “copier heads” who didn’t see the potential.
Anybody remember the Nokia 3310? This phone was HUGE for a couple of years from about year 2001 to 2003. Also very popular was the previous model which was bigger and had an exterior antenna. VERY durable. I somehow can't remember that earlier model number.
The problem for Nokia was that they could design the exterior, but they couldn’t get the battery life, CPU power or heat issues resolved and they certainly couldn’t get the software to actually, you know, work.
It’s not the technology, it’s the marketing...you can have the best products, but if your marketing department isn’t up to snuff, you will lose.
You get the impression this guy was one of the displaced Nokia employees who is now backing a bus squarely over someone’s career?
I disagree. For example: whoever comes up with a phone that does holographic chat. Game over.
apple is a superior software company...software rules...
WSJ expects Nokia to recover and RIM to fail.
Tablet computers existed in 1992. I was selling them! Apple even brought out the Netwon. But the market wasn’t there.
Internet browsing smartphones existed long before the iPhone but they were expensive and marketed towards business not consumers. The iPhone used a Capacitive screen rather then the more dull Resistive screen and that made a huge differnece in the interactivity of the device. But other phone makers didn’t think consumers would spend that much money on a phone.
Well, we know how that worked out.
So even if Nokia engineers had an iPad device in the late 90’s, they would have failed marketing it.
The early bird may get the work, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Should be,
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
RIM isn’t going anywhere. They are still the preferred product outside the US and after seeing BB10 previews, that phone is going to give Droid and Apple a challenge. RIM has a few Billion in reserve they have yet to tap into so they are not going broke.
You sound like a Democrat apologist!
“It’s not our policies, nor our Communism, nor our tyranny, nor our despot leaders. No, we simply can’t get our message out. And the voters are too stupid to understand it. If we simply had a better marketing department, we’d win more elections.”
Cool, explain how the WSJ writer (elsewhere in today’s issue) who considers your arguments is wrong!
And yet they didn’t produce it.... happens
It’s going to be real unpopular if every time the girl starts taking her top off, the phone locks up or crashes. Like what Nokia’s smartphones did for years when you started doing *anything* processor intensive on them. Not just video but even web browsing or collecting mail.
Terrible, terrible software on them.
Um, RIM’s world sales have tanked, not just North American ones.
http://www.mobileburn.com/19115/news/rim-sales-revenue-tank-in-q4-2012-earnings-report
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