Goodbye Nokia

According to the Telegraph today, it's "a goodnight from me and a goodnight from him" with regard to the once mobile phone giant Nokia:

Farewell Nokia. Once one of the biggest brands in the world, it has now gone the way of Pan Am, Opal Fruits and Somerfield supermarkets.

This week Microsoft, which bought Nokia’s handset division for £4.61 billion last year, has announced that the next phone it releases will no longer have the Nokia logo stamped on it. 

Although the company still exists, as a brand it's all over - Microsoft deciding that Nokia is not a name synonymous with smartphones. Within 10 years it has gone from a giant to nothing more than a footnote, though I guess no-one will miss its distinctive ringtone which was widely parodied. A victim of the ruthless and relentless march of technological progress. Its classic phones, with changeable covers and customisable ringtones, now museum pieces.

Yet while we mock old fashioned mobiles for being like bricks, it is a curious oddity that modern phones are getting larger. As technology progresses it is not unreasonable to expect devices in general to shrink as it did with mobiles in the '90s, probably best illustrated by the Nokia 8210 launched in 1999. However as mobile technology has developed their size has now gone into reverse - as anyone who has held an iPhone 6 can testify to. A reflection that they are being used less for phone calls and more as mini-computers.

In other words we are communicating more but talking less. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.

No flowers