[simonh]

Because they cannot comprehend the factors that meant it took the Android team 3 to 5 years working flat out to even vaguely approximate technical parity with the iPhone OS of the time.

Even given that the Android team actually did understand what they needed to do to achieve that. Nobody else in the industry did. They thought that if you just ported an OS the job was done. That’s barely even the start.

[wmf]

IIRC the N9 did have approximate technical parity (not business parity) with the iPhone and it did take Nokia 3-4 years (2007-2011). As other commenters have said, they lost out due to timing and lack of platform strategy.