This is how a Helsingin Sanomat journalist tried to save Nokia
by Volker Weber
I hope that you will forward my letter to wherever you feel would be the best place. However, it would be best if you were to frame this and put it on the wall of your lobby so that every Nokia employee will see this every morning when they come to work.
Very clear message: complexity kills. It's not about features. Ease of use wins.
Comments
I so wholeheartedly agree with Lauri Malkavaara! What a brilliant story! Other than most people here I am not a tech guy, just an ordinary user. And I never owned a Nokia phone. But my wife did, like Lauri she was given one by her employer. It was also the E51. Curious to see what magic Nokia’s devises are like I tried it. And experienced exactly the same frustration as Lauri did. I never owned an iPhone neither. But when one of my colleagues brought one of the first ones of the first generation home from the U.S., I couldn’t resist playing around with it. I do remember very vividly that after 30 seconds I exclaimed: This device is ingenious! It was sooo obvious. And it was even more obvious after five minutes. The user interface is all that matters to the majority of us. Nokia should have listened to their customers. And to four year olds …
Tomi Ahonen also has some interesting reads about Nokia's downfall on his blog.
Tomi is one of those people who found nothing wrong with the E51.
Sure, it's pretty one-side but interesting nontheless. Makes you wonder when and what Nokia could have done better. Around 2007 / 08 (release of the E51) they were still pretty strong. The N95 is one of the best phones I had and also the E71 got a good review here. Both based on the same version of Symbian OS as the E51. What came after was not really competitive any more (e.g. N97). Somehow Nokia was not able to produce a smartphone with a decent touch screen and touch UI at that time. Now we'll have to see what MSFT is up to.
You are in the same boat as Tomi.
"Telephones – like all other devices – need to be designed on the terms of the simplest user."
Nice read. Interesting that certain people seem to have gotten it right back then. Makes the whole story only more tragic :-/
