BBC

What? That was Nokias golden years and culminated with the N95, E71, E95. They had it all and pioneered in everything we take for granted today (GPS, maps, good cameras, 3G etc, even AMOLED), then came the iPhone and later Android and Nokia has ever since behaved like a headless duck.

Samsung will be untouchable for a long time to come. They are the most complete consumer electronics company since ever. Phillips, Sony were similar but not at the level of Samsung. Samsung would have passed Nokia anyway, Nokia just made it happen sooner. Samsung lacks software though. Good software comes from China these days, and that is where next gen OS's will come from IMO.

I think people here overestimate the (potential) impact of Maemo. Looking at Maemo from a objective perspective, it headed in the wrong direction from the n900 on. It should have stayed on tablets and Nokia should have developed software and HW in that field. Nothing is wrong with Maemo on a phone per se, it was simply a lost battle from the start for anything but a niche product. On tablets it could have shined and captured a large market share before Apple came. In hindsight that is the only way Maemo could have been something other than dead.

And that was when their only competition was Motorola. Newer, more swift and mobile competition came along and they had been resting on their laurels, came out with the N97 that wasn't really an impressive jump over the N95... it all worked against them.

2007 was their last golden year. It's been downhill ever since. They reacted slowly, didn't innovate beyond Maemo. Complacent in the market, not viewing or being in the forefront for newer trends. Not reaching out to developers and bringing out stuff like N-Gage, et al... not bringing their A-game to the table either.

That's my opinion. You have yours.

Maybe platform was burning, but all Nokia had to do is pick a water, instead they added more fuel into fire.
They had Maemo/Meego - should've picked Android port QT there and keep developing their own Linux based OS.

Also telling customers Symbian is obsolete was a disaster move - basically means forget about updates, guys. Who would buy it now? Same for N9. I guess half of the people who was interested, changed their mind after that, just like me. So is developers.

Just buy another stock. NOK, will NOK down

Yes I remember asking many developers(around 15), including one I recall off the top of my head Softpauer, about developing for the N900 back in the day when I had it, and their responses were that they were all waiting to develop for Meego as it had their interests peaked for what it could bring to future devices. I don't honestly know what the appeal was to them, but obviously none of them were going to develop if Nokia openly announces that Meego will be dead. I don't know what affect it would have had if they did, but it is sad to hear that the N9/N950 could have had many more useful apps than it currently does.

From the nextweb article: "...Yes, Nokia was late to the smartphone party..."

Really? Do you agree with that, qgil?

I don't mean this to sound anti-American but there are a lot of Americans that believe the iPhone was the original smartphone and unfortunately a lot of the American churnalists just regurgitate the same ignorant nonsense.

Like Lumiaman they seem to think a smartphone is defined by the standard of eye-candy and having half a million fart apps in their app store rather than the device's functionality.

I also think if you have an open platform like MeeGo on an unlocked device any talk of an 'ecosystem' is myopic.

You know, I have read and seen enough by now. There is only one way this can go if MS/Nokia keep going in the direction they apparently/seemingly are going at the moment. Nokia will crumble and disappear, at least the smartphone division, and MS will be cut up in pieces. There are limits to how much MS Office and MS Server will bleed to make this dead horse called WP/Metro/Windows8 live an artificial life fighting a lost battle.

The longer MS keeps on doing this, the more foothold Apple and Google gain also in areas that are considered solid MS ground. But that is not the only danger. Chinese software companies are growing up and expanding at a paste MS cannot keep up with. With performance like this (Maxthon browser) it's only a matter of time before things start changing rapidly and very unexpectedly.

Unless Apollo/Windows8 comes with some heavy rethinking and changes, more in the line of what people actually want, this is the end of MS. Just too bad Nokia got caught up in it, but that's entirely Nokia's fault.

So, Nokia stock is - irrelevant at the moment. They got Mary and her virtual "billion", but what is that worth?

Then you really don't know a lot of Americans that know a damn thing. The way most folks saw it in the US - mind you, I'm in a very tech-oriented sector for the most part - all of us North Americans saw the original iPhone as just a feature phone that played your music, did some web, was at a cheaper price point than most others in regards to having wi-fi.

But smartphone? No. I save that for the Nokia 9000 as being my first introduction to a "smartphone". I think you'd see other North Americans say it was between Blackberry or Windows Mobile based phones, if not Palm to be their first foray into smartphones.

But that's probably because of who/what I work around. It's a lot like you folks here... not exactly the "normal" type of user is around me daily.