[jillesvangurp]

You and loads of other people in Nokia. Including me. The N800 actually had a silly webcam and skype running on the device. And Google used it to dual boot early versions of Android on it. This was before they had the first nexus phone to work with.

The only thing it lacked (on purpose) was phone functionality. They were just stubbornly betting the company on Symbian and never committed properly to making a flagship Linux device. So every single maemo and meego device that they launched was encumbered with underpowered hardware, crippled features, or they would just position it as a developer phone and kill all the marketing. Because Symbian was "obviously" their future. There was a pretty big camp in Nokia who did not believe that though. And by the time the iphone and Android had launched the company was panicking and started doing increasingly more erratic things.

They came close a few times with the N8, the N900 and the N9. With the N8 they had a really nice device with aluminium body, oled screen, and 12 megapixel camera (mind you this was 12 years ago). But they chickened out and launched it with Symbian and it kind of was just another underwhelming not quite good enough Symbian device. The N900 was a developer phone and the first proper meego phone. I had one, it was great. But it was also under powered and seriously ugly.

The N9 did eventually launch but years late and with the message that they were shelving the whole meego team and betting the company on windows phone. They even managed to squeeze out an Android phone just before MS completed the acquisition (they promptly killed that). A year or so later, Microsoft bought the phone unit, and then fired the whole lot a year later as soon as they got rid of Steve Balmer.

[upupupandaway]

Now it's easy to see the Windows Phone as a dumb decision, but for us insiders at the time it was a bit of a desperate situation as there was no solution in 4-5 years given the absolute zoo of frameworks that took over the company. I remember being told by my VP that Anssi Vanjoki cried when the OS+Framework+Hardware situation was clearly demoed to the leadership. He knew it was over.

[jillesvangurp]

Anssi Vanjoki was the one that strangled the software strategy and created that mess. First by flogging the dead horse that was Symbian for way too long. And secondly by frustrating the Maemo/Meego strategy for something like seven years. And indeed failing to provide adequate leadership when it came to managing internal UI platforms.

Windows phone was a risky decision and they literally bet the company on it and then MS got all hand wavy about doing an update and then took their sweet time doing that update while Nokia basically died. The whole strategy could have worked but it would have required Microsoft to be way less flaky. And of course having outsourced the future of the company to them, Nokia no longer was in control of their own future. Which was an expensive mistake for Nokia share holders.

[johnnyanmac]

> With the N8 they had a really nice device with aluminium body, oled screen, and 12 megapixel camera (mind you this was 12 years ago). But they chickened out and launched it with Symbian and it kind of was just another underwhelming not quite good enough Symbian device.

in all fairness, there wasn't really a good move to make here yet. IOS was and is closed down, and early android was pretty rough on the software end. and Android device would not necessarily have saved them.

Windows 7 mobile wasnt much better and it was still a ways from the Windows 8 devices. Which was pretty good as devices but was simply too late to capture the network effect. A real shame; I think 3 is the minimum numbers of competitors I'd want for an industry this huge.