> Which is a really long way of saying, Nokia phones where just a different category of things to iPhones, and we shouldn't compare them.
Except they weren't and we should.
Nokia had very popular feature phones with S40 and that's what most people likely remember about it, but it was also a huge player on the smartphone market with Symbian - and those smartphones were proper pocket computers with native apps, web browser, multitasking, messaging etc. years before iPhone. As a teenager I have myself played with Python on a Nokia E65 months before the first iPhone was released.
Pretty much the only thing they lacked compared to the first iPhone was a touchscreen (even though Nokia made some attempts years before as well, see Nokia 7710 for example). iPhones didn't even let you install apps at that point (that ability only came in 2nd gen), and let's not even talk about multitasking. Nokia smartphones were doing that for years at that point.
Also, let's not forget that Nokia N800 with Maemo was initially supposed to be a smartphone, and that was already before the iPhone as well. It ended up not being one because of internal politics between Maemo and Symbian teams, so the first actual Maemo phone (rather than merely an "Internet Tablet") was N900 two years later. As a "touch screen computer", iPhone was laughable compared to Maemo.
Nokia lost to Android, not Apple. iPhone merely acted as a catalyst, and certainly did not define a new "device category" in any technical sense. It accelerated trends that caused regular people to start moving from feature phones to smartphones (a market segment that was previously reserved to high-end and business-class models), at which point Nokia was already left behind by Android.
If anything, iPhones harmed Nokia indirectly by making Google redesign Android's UI before it first shipped, while Nokia was too busy enjoying its market leader position and in-fighting to notice what was going on around them.
Except they weren't and we should.
Nokia had very popular feature phones with S40 and that's what most people likely remember about it, but it was also a huge player on the smartphone market with Symbian - and those smartphones were proper pocket computers with native apps, web browser, multitasking, messaging etc. years before iPhone. As a teenager I have myself played with Python on a Nokia E65 months before the first iPhone was released.
Pretty much the only thing they lacked compared to the first iPhone was a touchscreen (even though Nokia made some attempts years before as well, see Nokia 7710 for example). iPhones didn't even let you install apps at that point (that ability only came in 2nd gen), and let's not even talk about multitasking. Nokia smartphones were doing that for years at that point.
Also, let's not forget that Nokia N800 with Maemo was initially supposed to be a smartphone, and that was already before the iPhone as well. It ended up not being one because of internal politics between Maemo and Symbian teams, so the first actual Maemo phone (rather than merely an "Internet Tablet") was N900 two years later. As a "touch screen computer", iPhone was laughable compared to Maemo.
Nokia lost to Android, not Apple. iPhone merely acted as a catalyst, and certainly did not define a new "device category" in any technical sense. It accelerated trends that caused regular people to start moving from feature phones to smartphones (a market segment that was previously reserved to high-end and business-class models), at which point Nokia was already left behind by Android.
If anything, iPhones harmed Nokia indirectly by making Google redesign Android's UI before it first shipped, while Nokia was too busy enjoying its market leader position and in-fighting to notice what was going on around them.