The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about the sad state of Nokia. We’ve all heard the tale of how the Finnish handset maker is struggling, but what’s interesting about the WSJ piece is its focus on Nokia’s shining past. Speaking with Frank Nuovo, the former chief designer at Nokia, the WSJ talks about a Nokia phone with a touchscreen and a single button that predates the iPhone by seven years. The company also developed a prototype tablet computer in the late 1990s that shares some of the features of the iPad.”Oh my God, we had it completely nailed, ,” says Nuovo when thinking back about these early devices.
What happened to Nokia is not unique. The company was producing ” unpolished gems” in its R&D labs, but this technology was not making it out of testing. When Stephen Elop took, one of his missions was to get Nokia’s hot technology like the Pureview camera technology into the hands of consumers. You can read more about Elop’s vision for Nokia in this recent WSJ interview and the article about Nokia’s past and present here.
[Via WSJ]