How Would You Feel If Apple Shared Nokia’s Fate?

[capamac]

Honestly, the more Apple turns into a financialization operation working to jam ADs, subscriptions and recurring revenue extraction streams into everyone's lives, the more I root for some major change and their downfall.

I don't know if any leadership change can really fix the direction they've gone in at this point.

It might just be too late to turn this ship around.

(I'm speaking as someone who was into Apple for their former focus on product, not as someone only concerned about their stock price)

What is Cigar Butt Investing? And How Does it Work?

In Cigar Butt Investing approach, the companies picked are those that are in their final stages. But a final surge in the prices occurs which is the free..

tradebrains.in

Vulture capitalism, value extraction, financialization. I've experienced this firsthand in the late 1990s. I was working at a family-owned weekly newspaper. Very healthy, thick newspaper. The family sold it to a newspaper chain, who closed the paper's own printing press down and fired all the printing press workers. Printing was moved to one of the chain's own print shops two hours away. They didn't touch the newsroom staffing at first. But when a reporter quit, no one was hired to replace them. Last time I saw a copy of the paper, it was thin, and they had a meager staff of two news reporters. Gutted.

That's the problem with corporate-minded folks like those running Apple today. No vision. No sense of design. No respect for art. Jobs had that.

 

[Le_Chiffre]

Not to speak for the poster but no person educated on the tech industry or business thinks the same way about Google and Apple. We know how Google makes money---we are the product. They take our data and sell ads and services. Some people are fine with that and getting a free or near-free product is worth the tradeoffs for them.

As the poster said...Apple's focus used to be product. Creating the world's best personal computers and OS. Then the best devices (iPod). Then the best devices + (respectful) services: iPod + iTunes Music Store.

Over time, under Cook, Apple has been more focused on evenue extraction via services. You can't deny that. From a corporate and market perspective, it is (probably) the right move for Apple...for consumers...it's a mixed bag.

We were talking about subscriptions. Last time I checked Google does all of that and still charges a subscription. 😂

Getting a free or near free product? Where have you been? The new Google pixels will cost more than iPhones.

Google can have your data, but you actually pay Google multiple subscriptions and a greater price than an iPhone for the privilege.
Knock yourself out.

Honestly that’s just 🤣🤣🤣

Atleast Apple maintains users privacy.

 

[theluggage]

Not for a while, Nokia better resembles Kodak, never took digital photography seriously,

Nah. Nokia made smartphones. The smartphone market never went away, Nokia could have survived by making better smartphones - many other phone makers did.

Kodak made film, and supplies and equipment for developing and printing film. Every high street and mall had a couple of photo developing and printing labs that were either Kodak or (ISTR) Fuji franchises. Digital photography pretty much obliterated that entire industry - with digital people simply didn't buy 6 CF cards every time they went on vacation then get 200 shots printed out when they came back.

Yes, Kodak made cameras & lenses - but apart from their specialist equipment, their mass-market consumer cameras were primarily devices for selling film and processing on the King Camp Gillette business model... plus they'd happily sell you film and processing for your Nikon/Canon/Leica/Olympus (most of whom had a better rep for making cameras and lenses...)

If you see a 50' high wave bearing down on you, you can take it as seriously as you like - you're still done for. I'd like to know how the armchair quarterbacks think that Kodak could have survived as more than a me-to camera maker.

Even if Kodak had been quicker to market with a consumer digital camera, it still wouldn't have saved their core film & processing business. Meanwhile, they'd soon be competing with Canon, Nikon etc. who probably had better reputations for making cameras.

Kodak did try and embrace digital photography, If you remember Photo CD (get your film developed & scanned onto CD-ROM) that was actually just one part of the process of switching their photo lab franchises to digital printing - so they were in pole position to print and enlarge your digital camera shots (or turn them into mugs, calendars etc.) I don't think they realised how totally digital cameras would kill the idea of physical prints. They could maybe have done more by way of getting into at-home color inkjet printing - but that market was already occupied by Epson, HP Canon etc.

 

[Le_Chiffre]

Nah. Nokia made smartphones. The smartphone market never went away, Nokia could have survived by making better smartphones - many other phone makers did.

Kodak made film, and supplies and equipment for developing and printing film. Every high street and mall had a couple of photo developing and printing labs that were either Kodak or (ISTR) Fuji franchises. Digital photography pretty much obliterated that entire industry - with digital people simply didn't buy 6 CF cards every time they went on vacation then get 200 shots printed out when they came back.

Yes, Kodak made cameras & lenses - but apart from their specialist equipment, their mass-market consumer cameras were primarily devices for selling film and processing on the King Camp Gillette business model... plus they'd happily sell you film and processing for your Nikon/Canon/Leica/Olympus (most of whom had a better rep for making cameras and lenses...)

If you see a 50' high wave bearing down on you, you can take it as seriously as you like - you're still done for. I'd like to know how the armchair quarterbacks think that Kodak could have survived as more than a me-to camera maker.

Even if Kodak had been quicker to market with a consumer digital camera, it still wouldn't have saved their core film & processing business. Meanwhile, they'd soon be competing with Canon, Nikon etc. who probably had better reputations for making cameras.

Kodak did try and embrace digital photography, If you remember Photo CD (get your film developed & scanned onto CD-ROM) that was actually just one part of the process of switching their photo lab franchises to digital printing - so they were in pole position to print and enlarge your digital camera shots (or turn them into mugs, calendars etc.) I don't think they realised how totally digital cameras would kill the idea of physical prints. They could maybe have done more by way of getting into at-home color inkjet printing - but that market was already occupied by Epson, HP Canon etc.

You can’t really call the Nokia Symbian phones a smartphone, they didn’t even have a centralized App Store or a workable web browser, same with Microsoft Windows ce smartphones or palm smartphones. They never really worked, that’s why consumers couldn’t wait to get rid of them for an iPhone and 2 or 3 years later a cheap Android.

They were just dumbphones with a keyboard. Or gimmick.

 

[Fallforward]

Other phone-makers survived the arrival of the iPhone...

The top competitors were Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson and LG.

Samsung had many operatng systems like Symbian, Windows Moble, Palm as well as their own and survived because they adopted Android. Nokia and Motorola are just brand names bought by other companies. Sony still exists with minuscule market share. LG phone is RIP.

 

[capamac]

There's some quirky brands as well, like Nothing and Fairphone, which features modular parts, Light Phone and others.

There's a wider variety of choices for Android phones. You don't see that on iPhone.

 

[Ctrlos]

You can’t really call the Nokia Symbian phones a smartphone, they didn’t even have a centralized App Store or a workable web browser, same with Microsoft Windows ce smartphones or palm smartphones. They never really worked, that’s why consumers couldn’t wait to get rid of them for an iPhone and 2 or 3 years later a cheap Android.

They were just dumbphones with a keyboard. Or gimmick.

But they were marketed as Smartphones at the time because they did more than make phonecalls. We could go back to the Nokia Communicator line as early as 1996 that were perfectly capable of browsing the mobile web as it was at the time. Being able to download apps from an integrated storefront is not a requirement.

The Nokia 9000, the Palm Treo, the iPaq all laid the groundwork for Apple to build on. I'd thoroughly recommend reading The One Device by Bryan Merchant which lays out more than a centiry of innovations the iPhone became the convergent inflection of.

 

[theluggage]

The top competitors were Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson and LG.

Samsung switched to Android and are still successful. LG continued making Android phones until 2021. Motorola initially had some well-received Android phones like the Droid. Thing is, they all switched to making modern Android smartphones and survived the initial iPhone revolution, and later failures/mergers/takovers were as much to do with competion between Android phone makers as with Apple.

You can’t really call the Nokia Symbian phones a smartphone, they didn’t even have a centralized App Store or a workable web browser, same with Microsoft Windows ce smartphones or palm smartphones.

It was what passed for a smartphone before the iPhone came along and all of the phone makers had a chance to evolve - and many did (at least for a while), while others like Nokia and Blackberry dug in and/or backed the wrong horse (Nokia with Windows Phone) and got an early bath.

Anyway, my point was about someone's comparison with Kodak. Kodak didn't "fail to evolve" - the film & processing market that formed their core business model ceased to exist with digital, and digital didn't create anything comparable to replace it (even home printing and memory cards really didn't compar in scale). That's not what happened with smartphones.

 

[Le_Chiffre]

The top competitors were Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson and LG.

Nokia and Ericsson exited the smartphone business just like lg. Motorola couldn’t compete and was sold to Google and when it failed what was left was sold to Lenovo. Palm was sold to hp and was stuttered due to a lack of sales.

Lenovo and zte currently hold .3% marketshare in China, so they are likely to exit the smartphone market next, along with Sony. Not to mention blackberry is no more as well. 😂

Samsung mobile is still around but will post an operating loss for the first time. Going into 2027 consumers should expect further consolidation of the smartphone market.

The only holdouts gaining marketshare and profits are Apple and Huawei.

So Apple and the iPhone completely crushed them.

 

[Le_Chiffre]

But they were marketed as Smartphones at the time because they did more than make phonecalls. We could go back to the Nokia Communicator line as early as 1996 that were perfectly capable of browsing the mobile web as it was at the time. Being able to download apps from an integrated storefront is not a requirement.

The Nokia 9000, the Palm Treo, the iPaq all laid the groundwork for Apple to build on. I'd thoroughly recommend reading The One Device by Bryan Merchant which lays out more than a centiry of innovations the iPhone became the convergent inflection of.

Sure marketed. 😂

Most consumers used them as dumbpohones anyway.

None of the companies laid any ground work for Apple or Android. Apple used OS X as the foundation for the iPhone and is the reason the smartphone makers of the past were completely obitersted. They couldn’t scale or compete with a true mobile computing platform.

I had all the Nokia communicators back in the day, all the palm treos even the first ones when they were made by handspring, and the palm pilot when it was a subsidiary of Us robotics and 3com. Also have a bunch of prototype Nokia Symbian devices lying around somewhere.

My first windows ce device was the Philips velo and my first Symbian s60 device the Nokia 7650 also first phone with a built in camera. It was slider. 😂 Sony Ericsson at the time released a camera accessory for their t68 smartphone, had all of those smartphones too lol. I even had one of the first non Nokia Symbian 60 device the Siemens sx1.

Fun fact the first Nokia communicator didn’t even run Symbian, they ran geos in the mid 90s.

Even has the first Motorola startac and razr razr phone. Also had multiple vertus. Now those were on a completely different another level.

Back then all you needed was a SIM card with your contacts stored in it.

I kind of know what I’m talking about when it comes to tech and phones. 😂 😂

 

[capamac]

Both iOS and Android are based on Unix-like operating systems.

iOS is derived from BSD, which is a free OS anyone can install on their computer.

 

[theluggage]

Both iOS and Android are based on Unix-like operating systems.

iOS is derived from BSD, which is a free OS anyone can install on their computer.

Technically true (they are both Unix-like: Android is built on the Linux kernel, iOS on the XNU kernel which is a descendent of the BSD kernel) but they both come with a load of specialised UI and application framework stuff which makes them an entirely different experience to a regular Linux or BSD distribution.

You certainly used to be able to get a Linux-like command line on Android - don't think that's ever been possible on iOS without major hacking, and Android is getting more and more locked-down.

Unlike MacOS which is officially Unix and comes with the BSD subsystem for an authentic Unix command-line experience.

 

[HouseLannister]

Nokia was acquired by Microsoft as part of a short-term gamble that they didn't have a solid plan on how to grow (or even manage) and therefore ran it into the ground. See everything they are doing with the Xbox brand right now as proof that if we do not learn from history, we are forced to repeat it.

The issue is no one can afford to buy Apple with its current market cap, so they would need to make multiple years or even a decade of bad decisions before another company could acquire them and then run it into the ground. If that happened, it wouldn’t be for the chip business. They would get bought for patents, designs, and trademarks. As soon as the FTC was satisfied and looking elsewhere, most everyone would be laid off and Apple would just be a product category at another company.

 

[Le_Chiffre]

Both iOS and Android are based on Unix-like operating systems.

iOS is derived from BSD, which is a free OS anyone can install on their computer.

Pretty sure iOS is based on Mac OS X 😂

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Pretty sure iOS is based on Mac OS X 😂

It is, as is WatchOS, iPadOS, and even AppleTVOS (or whatever its called). That doesn’t mean they end up resembling each other much.

 

[capamac]

Yeah but macOS came from NeXTStep which came from BSD.

 

[theluggage]

Pretty sure iOS is based on Mac OS X 😂

...which is Unix. QED.

 

[Le_Chiffre]

Yeah but macOS came from NeXTStep which came from BSD.

That’s true iOS is based on macOS x which came from next and is based on Darwin which is a bsd unix derivative. 😂

 

[gummybear2026]

At least Apple maintains users privacy.

That's very questionable at this point after it took them over a year to fix the hide my email flaw. Also Tata leaked tons of documents on Apple suppliers, parts and photos of upcoming iPhone models.

 

[Luftkopf]

macOS is a certified Unix distro:

The Register of UNIX® Certified Products

 

[Le_Chiffre]

That's very questionable at this point after it took them over a year to fix the hide my email flaw. Also Tata leaked tons of documents on Apple suppliers, parts and photos of upcoming iPhone models.

I think you are reaching, the flaw didn’t do anything to comprise a users privacy. All it did in certain circumstances was show the users email address. No user data was compromised. Hence privacy. 😂 😂

So what? Did the tata data leak any user data.
What was your point again. 🤣

As I previously said if you care about privacy there only is one option and that’s iPhone.

If you care about privacy and use Google services and pay more for an android then an iPhone….well that’s hilarious. 😆

 

[gummybear2026]

I think you are reaching, the flaw didn’t do anything to comprise a users privacy. All it did in certain circumstances was show the users email address. No user data was compromised. Hence privacy. 😂 😂

So what? Did the tata data leak any user data.
What was your point again. 🤣

As I previously said if you care about privacy there only is one option and that’s iPhone.

If you care about privacy and use Google services and pay more for an android then an iPhone….well that’s hilarious. 😆

If exposing users email address is not a privacy issue, then I have a bridge to sell you.

 

[Le_Chiffre]

If exposing users email address is not a privacy issue, then I have a bridge to sell you.

It’s their email address. 😂

I’m starting to believe you don’t even have an iPhone, let alone an iCloud subscription.

You know what they say about people with bridges. 🤣

 

[Ctrlos]

Sure marketed. 😂

Most consumers used them as dumbpohones anyway.

None of the companies laid any ground work for Apple or Android. Apple used OS X as the foundation for the iPhone and is the reason the smartphone makers of the past were completely obitersted. They couldn’t scale or compete with a true mobile computing platform.

I had all the Nokia communicators back in the day, all the palm treos even the first ones when they were made by handspring, and the palm pilot when it was a subsidiary of Us robotics and 3com. Also have a bunch of prototype Nokia Symbian devices lying around somewhere.

My first windows ce device was the Philips velo and my first Symbian s60 device the Nokia 7650 also first phone with a built in camera. It was slider. 😂 Sony Ericsson at the time released a camera accessory for their t68 smartphone, had all of those smartphones too lol. I even had one of the first non Nokia Symbian 60 device the Siemens sx1.

Fun fact the first Nokia communicator didn’t even run Symbian, they ran geos in the mid 90s.

Even has the first Motorola startac and razr razr phone. Also had multiple vertus. Now those were on a completely different another level.

Back then all you needed was a SIM card with your contacts stored in it.

I kind of know what I’m talking about when it comes to tech and phones. 😂 😂

There's literally a whole book about all the groundwork laid for the iPhone. It is probably the greatest consumer technology product launch of all time, a huge inflection point for portable electronics. It was groundbreaking, but it also stood on the shoulders of giants.

Convergence had been written about in the tech press for years beforehand. It was clearly where things were going. Had Apple not launched the iPhone somebody else would have eventually got there. The LG Prada came out months before the iPhone and was developed in a complete silo. Convergent evolution suggests that the portrait touchscreen was always going to be a point we would always get to.

Companies had been experimenting with multi touch and capacitive displays for decades. Gorilla glass was sat on a patent shelf for years because it was too expensive for the windshields it was developed for. There are dozens more innovations. Don't take my word for it: read The One Device! I mean, the touch interface was developed as a Skunkworks project using a coffee table for years under Jobs nose because the engineers knew they were on to something but lacked a project to build it into. Remember the iPhone was actually an offshoot of the iPad project they were working on first.

(I have fond memories of my Sony Ericsson T68 and the T68i I later bought with the dorky camera attachment!)

 

[gummybear2026]

It’s their email address. 😂

I’m starting to believe you don’t even have an iPhone, let alone an iCloud subscription.

You know what they say about people with bridges. 🤣

I'm starting to believe you have no clue how hide my email works. Apple exposed users real email addresses. That's a privacy issue any way you slice it.