Why Nokia Built a Touchscreen Phone in 2004 — Then Killed It

🎬 Watch Next: The family that beat France's richest man (Hermès vs LVMH) →    • How a Family of Saddle-Makers Beat France'...   🔔 Subscribe, new story every night:    / @howtheyatehq   📺 Start here (all full stories):    • How They Ate — Full Stories (Start Here)   ▶ The 30-second version (Short):    • Nokia Built a Touchscreen Phone 3 Years Be...   In 2004, three years before the first iPhone, a team inside Nokia's glass headquarters in Espoo, Finland showed off a phone with a big touch screen that could go online. They even designed an app store. Management looked at the cost, and killed it. By 2007, four in every ten phones on Earth were Nokias. Six years later, Nokia sold its phone business to Microsoft. This is the human story in between: a paper mill on a Finnish river, a banker's huge bet, the 3310 and Snake, "quite interesting," the burning-platform memo, and the deal that ended it all. Plus: the famous "we didn't do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost" quote, and why there's no record of anyone saying it. CHAPTERS 0:00 The quote that was never said 0:46 Chapter 1: The Paper Mill That Took Over the World 2:10 Chapter 2: The Phone in the Drawer 3:31 Chapter 3: Quite Interesting 4:45 Chapter 4: The Burning Platform 6:08 Chapter 5: Sold for Parts 7:37 What to watch next WATCH NEXT • Hermès vs LVMH, the family that said no:    • How a Family of Saddle-Makers Beat France'...   • Full series, Origin & Rivalry Stories:    • Origin & Rivalry Stories,   Question for you: what's the one Nokia phone you'll never forget? Tell us in the comments. SOURCES • The New York Times, 27 Sep 2010 (2004 touchscreen prototype and app store; Ari Hakkarainen quote; Juhani Risku) • The Wall Street Journal, 18 Jul 2012, "Nokia's Bad Call on Smartphones" • Reuters, Jan 2007 (Anssi Vanjoki and Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo on the iPhone) • AP / NBC News, Jan 2008 (Nokia ~40% global share, record Q4 2007) • Stephen Elop "burning platform" memo, Feb 2011 (full text via Engadget) • Nokia & Microsoft press releases, 11 Feb 2011 and 3 Sep 2013; Bloomberg / The Guardian on the share fall • Yle / The Guardian, Sep 2013 (Elop payout row) • Microsoft press release, 8 Jul 2015 (phone business impairment and job cuts) • Nokia corporate history (Idestam, Tampere, Nokianvirta; Alcatel-Lucent 2016); BBC / The Verge on the 3310 at MWC 2017 Figures rounded. Quotes lightly trimmed for length. MEDIA CREDITS Real archive photos via Wikimedia Commons (public domain, CC BY, CC BY-SA; authors credited on screen and in the full credits file), incl. Maurizio Pesce, Kārlis Dambrāns, Soppakanuuna, Sektori, Santeri Viinamäki, ArnoldReinhold, Blake Patterson (CC BY / CC BY-SA). Stock video via Pexels (Pexels License). Music: royalty-free lo-fi bed. Not affiliated with Nokia, HMD, Microsoft or Apple. #HowTheyAte #Nokia #iPhone #BusinessStories #TechHistory #Microsoft #BusinessDocumentary #india #businessstoriesindia 🍿 More stories like this:    • How They Ate — Full Stories (Start Here)