Andrew Orlowski

Collected Journalism

Tag: smartphones

  • Nokia, Apple and Sudden Extinction Events

    Nokia, Apple and Sudden Extinction Events

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Every day brings fresh gloom for Nokia – and the criticisms are now so familiar I won’t elaborate on them. But I was struck by a recent observation likening Nokia’s plight now to Apple’s in the mid-1990s.

    It seems absurd, at first – Nokia is still turning a profit in the billions, while Apple’s annual loss was in the billions of dollars. But one thing should focus minds of executives and shareholders for one reason that’s never mentioned – the … Read More

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  • Rescuing Palm

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    You know you’re in trouble when your revenue is $1bn less than you’d expected for the year. But a few companies might envy being in Palm’s position. It has an excellent product it can’t sell, and in webOS an asset that wealthy rivals – Nokia, Samsung or Microsoft – would pick up in a snap.… Read More

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  • Google to mobile phone industry: ‘Fuck you very much!’

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    "It’s Google’s autistic approach to relationships," one senior phone exec told me this week. "They don’t know what hurt they’re doing, and they don’t care."

    It’s nothing personal, guys. Today, some of the biggest tech companies in the world, who thought they were Google’s closest partners, will begin to understand how, say, copyright holders have felt for some time now. For the first time, I suspect, they’ll be enjoying that recurring tingle of amazement and disbelief that (as Chris Castle … Read More

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  • Rescuing Nokia’s Ovi: a plan

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Ovi means door in Finnish

    It must be frustrating to sketch out a long-term technology roadmap in great depth, and see it come to fruition… only to goof on your own execution. But to do so repeatedly – as Nokia has – points to something seriously wrong.

    Nokia spent more than a decade preparing for Tuesday this week, when it finally launched its own worldwide, all-phones application store. It correctly anticipated a software market for smartphones back in the mid-1990s, when it was choosing the … Read More

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  • Apple and the Gentlemen from the Networks (or, why it pays to turn up Really, Really Late)

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    the iPhoneThis week Apple threw the kitchen sink at its iPhone/Touch software stack, removing most of the most irritating nuisances at a stroke. It’s a stunning achievement.

    So Apple now finds itself where everyone else in the mobile handset business wanted to be 15 years ago. Large companies full of clever people devoted years of planning and expenditure to fail to get here. If the iPhone continues to flourish (see below for the many obstacles en route) – then both rival … Read More

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  • Farewell then, Symbian

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Ten years ago to the day, I attended the surprise foundation of Symbian. I was in Norway and sorry to miss the event today that closed the chapter – and probably the book – on the great adventure.

    I find it exquisitely ironic that the philosophy behind the decision to end Symbian’s independent existence as a joint-ownership, for-profit consortium has its roots in the Microsoft antitrust trial. Symbian was created because the leading phone manufacturers desperately wanted to avoid Microsoft’s … Read More

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