>, we had plenty touch screen smartphones in Europe, between Nokia, Siemens-Ericson and PocketPC/Windows CE.
Those were older TFT resistive touchscreens and not the newer capacitive touchscreens that could detect multi-finger gestures like swipes and pinch-to-zoom. TFT touchscreens requiring finger pressure instead of finger swipes is not as intuitive a UI.
That's why the audience at Macworld 2007 gasped in astonishment when Steve Jobs demonstrated gentle finger scrolling on a capacitive screen. Deep link to that demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=16m05s
Keep in mind that MacWorld tradeshow attendees are technology geeks who are aware of the latest gadgets and phones. Many of those in the audience would already have the latest 2006 Palm Treo 680 in their pocket that had a TFT touchscreen. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_680)
The iPhone's touchscreen capabilities made that Palm phone's TFT touchscreen technology obsolete.
You can check the Europe news archives back in 2007 to see both the telecoms and customers there were also eagerly awaiting the iPhone. If Europe already had equivalent touchscreen smartphones with Nokia, Siemens-Ericsson etc, the iPhone would have been a non-event and flopped in sales.
Nokia/Blackberry/WindowsCE/Android/etc switched to capacitive touchscreens to compete with the iPhone.
Why didn't European devs collectively just ignore the Apple iPhone and instead, focus on Nokia Symbian OS? Devs did ignore platforms if they wanted to. E.g. the devs mostly ignored the Blackberry OS and Microsoft Windows CE Mobile.
>I could write a lengthy comment, however it appears it would be a waste of my time.
It won't be a waste of time if you correct something I wrote that was factually incorrect. I won't debate it.
>I even happened to be in Espoo, the tragic week of the burning platforms memo.
Was Stephen Elop's assessment of Nokia's fading market share by both consumers and developers in 2011 incorrect? What Nokia phone in 2007/2008 was compelling that people were not buying and the developers not adopting compared to Apple iPhone? What do you believe happened?
>In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.
And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core.
[...] While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.
The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.
[...] At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.
