Re: France Wants to Sue Apple for Planned Obsolescence

Am 06.08.23 um 20:08 schrieb nospam:

> it is not. symbian phones were available worldwide, and they did not
> sell in appreciable numbers..

Thanks for confirming your *very* US-centric view. ^_-
Nokia was actually No.1 in Europe in the early 2000s...


>> They were actually quite reasonable for was possible around the turn of
>> the millennium.
> 
> perhaps so, but that doesn't mean they were any good. they weren't.

A handy little device with expandable software and mobile network 
connectivity was absolutely stunning in the late 90s, were phones used 
to be phones, PDAs used to be offline devices with limited software and 
Laptops used to be heavy and bulky.

But these early smartphones were pretty expensive and of limited use due 
to the lack of fast mobile data networks, which limited the target 
audience very much (basically, only tech geeks and management guys).


>> In the end, it was three factors which killed Nokia:
> 
> really just one: it wasn't anywhere near as good as iphone and android.

Oh, come on. You really want to compare products, which were developed 
more than 10 years apart?

And: The first iPhone wasn't really that good either. Tiny screen, no 
support for the state-of-the-art network technology of the time (UMTS), 
only available in conjunction with an expensive "exclusive" phone 
contract, very little software available in the store in the beginning.

The design was fancy and the marketing was superb, that's all.


>> 1. They were too early.
> 
> that's not a flaw.

It is, because after many years of a niche presence, the product line 
was accursed from the management perspective and they failed to invest 
again, when it was necessary to do so.


>> The technology was still too expensive for the
>> average customer and the mobile networks not ready for large-scale data
>> usage.
> 
> wifi.

The main selling point for a smartphone is mobility, and public WIFI was 
almost non-existent back then.


>> Not because
>> the devices didn't provide a browser and installable Apps (they did,
>> starting with Symbian), but because data transmission was just WAY too
>> slow and expensive.
> 
> the browser and third party apps were not particularly good and
> comparatively expensive, 

The browser of the first iPhone wasn't particularly good and usable 
either. It took a few years for the screen sizes to grow bigger and for 
the web sites to adapt to mobile devices.


> most apps in the iphone app store were free, and of the paid apps, they were a buck or two. 

The situation in the symbian store wasn't really that different.
Most of it was cheap. There were a few more expensive apps, but these 
were either selling premium content (e.g. offline maps) or were targeted 
toward big enterprises (mobile office).


> it was also *much*
> easier to write ios apps, especially since code could be shared from
> the mac.

True. Symbian tried to follow up by switching from a proprietary API 
towards QT, but this did not gain enough momentum, before MS killed 
everything.


>> 2. Nokia had far less marketing power than Apple and Google (especially
>> outside of europe) and used it poorly. When Apple started aggressively
>> marketing the iPhone, Nokia just reclined on their leading position in
>> the European market.
> 
> that's because they knew they didn't have anything that could come
> close to the iphone and android.

They actually had some pretty competitive devices back then, but they 
failed to push them in time and improve upon them.

I remember having a Nokia 5800 at the time, which isn't really that far 
away from the first iPhone Generation feature-wise. There was also the 
N95/N96 Series, with a slider design, but again pretty much the same 
feature set as the iPhone.