Trusted
Good article on Nokia management issues. It is hard to believe that they did so many things wrong and, rereading that article, it does make me wonder if the same is possible at Microsoft.
I think it's entirely possible at Microsoft. I'd go as far to say it's already happening.
I didn't say Nokia wasted "time", I said that they wasted "smartphone development" and I should have included Meego. But the two overpriced Meego models I evaluated were hardly memorable marketing propositions.
I don't know what Meego models you evaluated. I understand there were some issues with the initial version of the OS. I have an N9, admittedly I got it after the PR1.3 update. That version of the OS is pretty good let down only by the small number of apps. It's slick and stable with some very nice features.
Nokia certainly squandered lots of work and Williams is justifiably peeved but he doesn't say anything to change my view that Nokia Symbian phones were underwhelming and he is hardly an unbiased or disinterested observer. I knew nothing about Android or iOS at the time, their ecosystem or products. What I saw with Nokia/Symbian was that important features were slow to appear and integration with online features was always disappointing. And integration with my PCs was even worse. In terms of handset features, I found my productivity was so much better with a Sony Ericsson UIQ phone. Android was a bit crappy to start with but I found it better integrated with online features.
Squandered pretty well sums it up. Sure Williams has a reason to go into bat for Symbian but I do think he has a point. I don't know what versions you used but by the time Symbian was discontinued the Nokia Belle version wasn't too bad.
I don't know what important features you refer to as being slow to arrive, nor what online features you found disappointing. For me the Symbian and Meego OS's do more for me than Windows Phone and are at least as good as Android. I suspect mileage varies depending on what features/services each user finds important. For example I don't use Twitter or Facebook so I don't know how good these are on Symbian or Meego.
Things I use my phone for the most other than calling and texting are, web browsing, email (reading and replying), maps, calendar, documents (spreadsheet, word and PDF) activity monitor (Sports Tracker), TV out. Symbian and Meego handle all these tasks easily with the one exception the N9 cannot edit documents.
Windows Phone 8 on the other hand has a crap browser and there's not much in that way of choices, the calendar cannot handle .ics files without installing an app first and then only one event at a time (I cannot load my monthly work roster), it cannot interface with the Sportstracker bluetooth heart rate strap, and there's no TV out type of function. For me the 920 was a step backwards in many ways, my wife has it now and she bemoans the lack of features of WP8 compared to Symbian.
One criticism of Symbian that cropped up regularly was that it was slow. It certainly is slower than WP8, Android and Meego and the main reason I believe was the choice of processor. Nokia chose battery life over processor speed, and there's no doubt about it Nokias had a reputation for good battery life. However this approach didn't match what the majority of users wanted which was speed. Nokia weren't necessarily good at picking these market trends.
Snowflake
Maybe you mean me re Symbian in the 2008/9?
