Or put another way. Where Microsoft went wrong with Nokia.

Like millions of people I have two phones. One for “work” and one for “home”. The “home” phone has my diary, contacts, music, email, RSS reader, YouTube and a million other things. I rarely use it to make a call.

Now here’s the interesting thing. What do I want from my work phone? Well I want to make calls and I want access to my Outlook contacts. Nothing more. That’s it. I’d pay a premium for a “clunker” that accessed my contacts and had a battery that lasted a week. If one exists, I’ve not found it.

I also have a third phone. It’s an old iPhone 4 that I use in the pool so that I can swim with podcasts. I’d pay for a simple waterproof phone that did the basics of music and health monitoring and nothing else. I’ve not found it, so I use an old iPhone in a waterproof case.

This was Nokia’s market. The second and third phones. Instead they went for the iPhone market. Homerun or bust. Sadly it was a bust.

Nokia was Microsofts way into the IoT. From the third phone they could have gone to connected objects, home monitoring, and back to SmartPhones later.

Interestingly Nokia seems to have understood better than Microsoft and have now bought Withings. I step on my Withings scales every morning. One of the best products that I own. I’m hopeful that at the third attempt they may get this right.