Not hard to figure out why the N900 was not a commercial success. And no it is not that Nokia did not intend it to be a commercial success. I am sure Nokia would have loved to sell 10 million of these things.
For all of us that love the N900 we just need to consider why we love it and realise they are the very reasons the N900 could never have been a commercial success. They are also the very reasons the HTC Desires and iphones and now the Samsung Galaxies have been so successful.
1. Form Factor: For us we may love having a butch device and having a hardware keyboard but for girls and for many guys it is just too thick and ugly. I would guess close to half of buyers of smartphones are female. If on form factor alone you rule out half the market then you are bound to have limited success.
2. Bugginness: There are tons of bugs and missing features. Some bugs have been fixed (usually not by Nokias) and missing features implemented by others. These things require visiting this site very often to find solutions (e.g. swappolube). Most people do not have time for this. They just want to tap an icon and it opens up immediately. They want to press send on an email and it sends immediately, not have a rotating loading icon for 20 seconds (well done Nokia Messaging). To really get the best out of the N900 you need a significant investment of time with the device and time on this website. Well most people are not interested. They want to spend their free time watching Big Brother, watching football, reading OK Magazine. Not spend it trying to get a phone to run smoothly.
3. Apps: Apps are clearly the way forward now whether we like it or not. The N900 has very few apps and most of them are in Testing or Developers.
4. Resistive Screen: The general public do not want this. They do not want to have to use a stylus. They want the most responsive screen possible. They do not want to have to use their nails and bend their finger to get full responsiveness. Yes bla bla China market and cold countries. Truth is insist on resistive screen and just as with form factor you are reducing a big chunk of the market and those you bring in from having a resistive do not come anywhere close to making up for those you lose.
Android is linux. It was done before Nokia did the N900. Nokia were copying to try and grab market %
Windows 7 is actually windows 6.1, (If you look at the source code) so it really is Vista with add ons.
Android is _not_ linux. Google had re-written almost every core library in their OS. Last I checked they have not released the modifications as they must do so. The statement Android is Linux is almost like iOS/MacOS is Unix.
PLEASE give us the source code of Windows 7 and Windows 6.1
I think the biggest reason was that shortly after it came out, it was revealed that the OS (Maemo) was being abandoned for a new OS (Meego). It gave me a lot of reservations about buying an N900, & it was the reason a couple of engineers I know did not by an N900.
Too fat, too buggy, too underdeveloped, too abandoned (for meego)...too bad, it coulda been a contenda...Nokia went into the proverbial gun fight vs android/ios with a knife not a gun. And they never even bothered to sharpen the knife. I love the device for what it can do (bash in my pocket) but it is unimaginable how poor the device would be if not for this community. Shame on Nokia.
Too fat, too buggy, too underdeveloped, too abandoned (for meego)...too bad, it coulda been a contenda...Nokia went into the proverbial gun fight vs android/ios with a knife not a gun. And they never even bothered to sharpen the knife. I love the device for what it can do (bash in my pocket) but it is unimaginable how poor the device would be if not for this community. Shame on Nokia.
I disagree. We, the smart, charming and adorable bunch of people bought it right? It's definitely for a niche market. Nokia is competing with the other slim smartphones (form and function) with the N8 or E7. Anyway, remember the N900 is the decendent of the 'tablet' mobile internet device(MID) range which has always been for niche market.
Vista died because of IBM not buying into it, when the worlds largest company says no you need to think why.
I'm fairly sure Micrfosoft are bigger than IBM and that IBM had already sold their desktop and laptop business to Lenovo by the time Vista came out. But let's not le inconvenient facts get in the way of anything.
something Google locked down to reduce the amount of messing that goes on inside. The kernel is the same as every other linux kernel, it is still just Linux and that puts it right back to the same basic logic as Android (upto 2.1 when they split off the kernel tree), Ubuntu, mandriva etc.
Other than Dal... oh, what's the point?
[QUOTE=twigleaf1976;881002]What Nokia did was code it to a small black box, nothing more, and they didn't do that very well. Android is in version 2.2 now and still only Android. Maemo is on version 1.3 [QUOTE]
and now there is Meego 1.1. Google stuck it out and worked well to get it out there, even with their decision to split from the linux tree (which might be reversed.)Nokia failed at the first hurdle because the N900 did pants in the markets and then changed their minds to try another linux distro.
It isn't two steps, it is another direction from the same starting point.
Tying up with Intel and getting their technology (esp Qt) spread into a wide variety of platforms had nowt to do with Nokia's Meego decision then? Well, now we know.
I disagree. We, the smart, charming and adorable bunch of people bought it right? It's definitely for a niche market. Nokia is competing with the other slim smartphones (form and function) with the N8 or E7. Anyway, remember the N900 is the decendent of the 'tablet' mobile internet device(MID) range which has always been for niche market.
I disagree with your disagree. No company puts out products hoping they will have limited appeal/sales, if the tablets are niche, they became niche when they never took off, not because nokia wanted a niche product. Evidently they were not made or marketed right, as look what certain tablets are doing now. In 20/20 hindsight its is easy to just say stuff was meant to be niche, but I doubt that was how the devices were pitched internally within Nokia.
