I was at Nokia during Elop's short reign, and while he gets a lot of blame for what happened to them -- some of it fairly -- the thing is, that memo was basically right.
Remember, by this point it was 2010. The iPhone had already taken off like a rocket, Android had pivoted to be "iPhone-like" and other companies were riding its rocketship -- and Meego, Nokia's ostensible Symbian successor, was way, way behind schedule. The Nokia Communicator was a great "computer in your pocket" device for a certain kind of ubergeek, but it wasn't ever going to be a mainstream smartphone. I know there are people who still fiercely defend the hardware keyboard -- I was a Sidekick user and used to be one of them! -- but it was obvious by 2009 that "giant touch screen with virtual keyboard" was the runaway winner, and it was also obvious by 2009 that most of the incumbents had dealt themselves death blows by refusing to read the writing on the wall.
Elop's memo came about after he looked at the N9, what was supposed to be their response to the iPhone and Android, and it was clearly not just too little, too late, but at the time he saw it, it literally just did not work. You were lucky if you could get through a few hours without a fatal crash.
Anyway -- I don't think Apple would own the mobile space without Android, either, but I think there's a good chance they'd have a larger marketshare than they do just because nobody else would gotten a credible response to the market before 2011. Maybe it would have opened up space for Windows Phone and WebOS to keep existing, which would have been nice. (Although if we're playing "what if," it's possible that if Windows Phone had succeeded, Microsoft wouldn't have gotten desperate enough to go through its executive shakeup and, ironically, would have been in a worse place today!)
Remember, by this point it was 2010. The iPhone had already taken off like a rocket, Android had pivoted to be "iPhone-like" and other companies were riding its rocketship -- and Meego, Nokia's ostensible Symbian successor, was way, way behind schedule. The Nokia Communicator was a great "computer in your pocket" device for a certain kind of ubergeek, but it wasn't ever going to be a mainstream smartphone. I know there are people who still fiercely defend the hardware keyboard -- I was a Sidekick user and used to be one of them! -- but it was obvious by 2009 that "giant touch screen with virtual keyboard" was the runaway winner, and it was also obvious by 2009 that most of the incumbents had dealt themselves death blows by refusing to read the writing on the wall.
Elop's memo came about after he looked at the N9, what was supposed to be their response to the iPhone and Android, and it was clearly not just too little, too late, but at the time he saw it, it literally just did not work. You were lucky if you could get through a few hours without a fatal crash.
Anyway -- I don't think Apple would own the mobile space without Android, either, but I think there's a good chance they'd have a larger marketshare than they do just because nobody else would gotten a credible response to the market before 2011. Maybe it would have opened up space for Windows Phone and WebOS to keep existing, which would have been nice. (Although if we're playing "what if," it's possible that if Windows Phone had succeeded, Microsoft wouldn't have gotten desperate enough to go through its executive shakeup and, ironically, would have been in a worse place today!)