Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora
Posted Jul 9, 2012 13:23 UTC (Mon) by
pboddie (subscriber, #50784)
In reply to:
Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora by drag
Parent article:
Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora
(The referenced article is really good, but it's not possible to say so on the blog, so I'll say so here.)
Nokia had Linux tablets on the market in 2006. That was 2 years before Android. That was a year before iPhone. It was 4 years before the iPad. I don't know exactly why it took them from 2006 to 2011 to add telephony capabilities to what they shipped on the Nokia 770, but I have my theories.
"We can't give the consumer everything at the same time - this is not a phone!" is probably a very large one. As for the general reasons about Nokia snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, here are a few:
- Always having the benefit of another iteration to get things "right": unlike the Apple and Android people, developing and then immediately delivering wasn't seen as feasible or even desirable. The five step plan is very telling, I think, and hints at the attitude mentioned above.
- Turf wars: I wonder how many e-mails were exchanged about getting access to hardware people for hardware details and specifications, and how many feathers were ruffled because some department head's pet project was going to be upstaged by the N-series tablets.
- The obsession over control: people who would have been happy to develop for these platforms were constantly rebuffed when it turned out that various parts were proprietary or secret, and Nokia representatives appeared to want to cultivate the impression that it was their "show", on their terms, and that outsiders should feel lucky to be able to participate in a limited way and, of course, popularise and legitimise the platform by developing for it.
- The exercise of control: every time Nokia iterated and changed the platform, no-one had anywhere else to go to for hardware (or support for that partially open hardware) in order to continue what they were working on, being forced to either rebase and keep up with the circus or give up and do something else. It's the rodeo style of community management.
I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons, but each one of those is pretty significant.
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