For Nokia, the acquisition is an interesting and slightly ironic turn given the Finnish company’s history as a pioneer in the world of mobile.
Back in the 1990s, Nokia set the pace for building mobile networks around the world, and it became the world’s No. 1 handset maker. In the 2000s, however, it missed the boat in the shift to smartphones, where Apple and Google (and Samsung and the hundreds of others building on Google’s Android operating system) took charge. Some argued that one of Nokia’s biggest failings was its inability to build an extensible ecosystem for apps and third parties to build for its smartphones. So it’s interesting that it’s now positioning itself as an enabler for that very purpose.