Originally Posted by Bec

Well actually not.
Market share doesn't actually reflect sales - which have grown.

The US market is mainly Nokia-unaware and the top selling phone before the iPhone was/were the Motorola bla bla ZR.

iPhone has gained market share due to users migrating from a phone to another phone (not a smartphone) since the first iPhone can't even be called a mediocre feature phone. To those users the complexity of menus submenus, widgets, setups camera focus, etc(Symbian) would have been incomprehensible - instead, apple has gained market share by presenting basic features as "innovations" and introducing them to the basic user one step at a time.

Then there's android - and since it's not "cool" to not have an OS on any phone every low end piece of junk now has android - and android has the proper advertising which nokia doesn't.

Nokia - king of the world until 2008. Why only until 2008? Easy, they stopped producing high end devices after N82 and N95 (2007), don't ask me why but they even claimed there's no need for HWA in a phone
Symbian UIQ aka. Sony's touch symbian version went down (exactly because of low-spec devices IMHO but then there was the lack of standards such as USB and micro SD which already brings the iPhone down) and Nokia "smartly" decided it wasn't yet time for touch screen devices as the industry wasn't ready yet.
Nokia was right - since the first two iPhones were a complete mess - but that doesn't mean the users didn't want to go "touch" (I did)
So instead of making a bold move they decided to wait, exactly at the time when everyone else decided they belong to the mobile space as well.

Mistakes or not, things are slowly heading back where they used to be.
IMHO old dinosaurs (Nokia & Apple CEOs) have had quite a hard time adapting - at least Nokia has finally managed to do so.

Originally Posted by ysss

Sure, their nominal revenue has grown, but when your company is still losing marketshare while doing that then it means you're not growing as fast as your sector is. That means you're still behind.

<snip>latter parts...</snip>
I think you've given good examples on why they've slipped behind.

Originally Posted by Bec

Yup but if you add sales numbers no two or three smartphone makers can rival nokia altogether. If you add phones to that too, then it's nokia and some other companies with puny sales.

Then there's the constantly expanding universe, but that doesn't mean that the Milky Way is getting smaller - hence Nokia's position allows them to continuously evolve since the cash flow is in no way decreasing.

As for slipping, N97 played a major role - it was expected to be a powerhouse and instead it was just another smartphone with a fancy design. Also nokia never used to release a "flagship" a year - competition does them good, N97 should have been like N8 IMHO.
But nokia never claimed it as the next big thing in smartphones, it was rumours and impatient users that made it seem so and their dissapointment can only be blamed on their own speculations.

Originally Posted by ysss

Bad analogies don't address the real issue.

IMHO that's apologist talk. Rumors and users expectation have to be managed or even exploited for their common benefit.

Originally Posted by Bec

If Nokia's smartphones are half-baked I don't know what phones aren't.
If I were to judge things like this I'd stick with fixed telephony and TV instead of a pc/internet.

But then again I have enjoyed XP and ubuntu for years and if I am to look back both of them were unbaked piece of craps compared to what they are today. We don't live back in Y2K when having a bug on a device meant it was ruined and the whole stock had to be recalled at the factory and reflashed.

So please tell me what company doesn't release "unbaked" devices so I might sell my house and car and buy as muck as I can of their stock.

I mean it, please tell me what company doesn't release "unbaked" devices?