Down the Rabbit Hole - What Happened to Nokia?

When 'The Matrix' hit the screens in the summer of 1999, it had one of the greatest product placements ever - the very sleek and sexy Nokia phone. The phone was featured in the key moments of the movie and had a cool, spring loaded sliding cover, which made answering a call look like lots of fun. On the surface, it appeared to be the Nokia 8110, a top range model of that time.

By then I have already been a devoted Nokia user for a couple of years. I have owned the old 6110, which I liked very much. It was an executive class model at the time, very convenient and with great battery life. But the 'Matrix Phone' was so cool that I have decided to look it up. After a while I found it in one of the local operators offering and few hours later I was holding one in my hand. To my big surprise, the spring was nowhere to be found, the sliding cover was to be moved manually. I was very disappointed. Needless to say I did not buy the phone. Later I heard from my friend who had connections in the operator that those phones had bad audio problems. The model flopped, at least in our local market.

Later I have learned that Nokia did release a spring loaded model, a 7110, but it was not till the end of that year and I have never seen it anywhere, surely none of my friends, all big Matrix fans, owned one.

It was the first, but surely not the last time, I have raised an eyebrow, about the ways of Nokia, however they have continued to make good, solid models, until some point in time, few years ago, when something changed, and Nokia lost their way completely and entirely. This series of posts will try to investigate what happened to this great company and why.