I owned a series of Nokia high-end smartphones through this era, and I have to disagree with this:
> what actually killed Nokia handsets in one stroke was one memo by their then CEO Stehphen Elop where he basically stated their platform as it is was dead in the water
IMO, Nokia was infact dead in the water compared to Apple and Android, and Elop was just the one to recognize it in a culture of stagnated development coasting on past glories, and call it out loud enough that it might possibly change in time.
The key falling behind point, as I see it, is that Nokia just never got on board with making app development and distribution easy. Symbian phones in theory supported loading apps. In the many years that I owned one, I think I was able to install 1 or 2 total, which were mostly never used. IIRC, there was an app store with virtually nothing on it, and useful apps were usually downloaded from random websites directly. I don't recall the process exactly, and I never tried to look into building and distributing one myself, but it sure wasn't as easy as open the official store -> find an app that's useful -> tap "install" -> done, use the app.
The bigger issue, also IMO, is that their engineering culture just never got into the rapid cadence that the new-gen phone OSes brought - they were stuck in the appliance mentality. The first iPhone and Android were a little lame compared to the best Nokias. Nokia's development pace was always slow though. iOS and Android rapidly eclipsed them, while they essentially stood still.
I did also own one of the Meego devices. It was basically junk compared to Android. Nokia never had a chance. Elop might have been a MS stooge, but it was still arguably the best move they had at the time.
> what actually killed Nokia handsets in one stroke was one memo by their then CEO Stehphen Elop where he basically stated their platform as it is was dead in the water
IMO, Nokia was infact dead in the water compared to Apple and Android, and Elop was just the one to recognize it in a culture of stagnated development coasting on past glories, and call it out loud enough that it might possibly change in time.
The key falling behind point, as I see it, is that Nokia just never got on board with making app development and distribution easy. Symbian phones in theory supported loading apps. In the many years that I owned one, I think I was able to install 1 or 2 total, which were mostly never used. IIRC, there was an app store with virtually nothing on it, and useful apps were usually downloaded from random websites directly. I don't recall the process exactly, and I never tried to look into building and distributing one myself, but it sure wasn't as easy as open the official store -> find an app that's useful -> tap "install" -> done, use the app.
The bigger issue, also IMO, is that their engineering culture just never got into the rapid cadence that the new-gen phone OSes brought - they were stuck in the appliance mentality. The first iPhone and Android were a little lame compared to the best Nokias. Nokia's development pace was always slow though. iOS and Android rapidly eclipsed them, while they essentially stood still.
I did also own one of the Meego devices. It was basically junk compared to Android. Nokia never had a chance. Elop might have been a MS stooge, but it was still arguably the best move they had at the time.