After Nokia surprised everybody with its Android tablet yesterday, the Internet has pretty much decided that the once tech giant is on its way to a magnificent comeback. Whether (the non-Microsoft owned part of) Nokia actually lives up to everyone’s expectations is a story yet to be told, but it can learn from some of the giant comeback stories we’ve witnessed in the past.
Apple
While the ‘90s are often remembered as the decade of decadence and economic boom, for Apple, the decade was terrible. The Cupertino based company lost plenty of market share in the PC segment to Microsoft and its Newton PDA was a failure. However, the next decade saw Apple’s emergence as the most valuable company in the world after it launched three revolutionary products back-to-back: the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.
Motorola
Motorola has made it a habit of scripting comebacks. Once the feature phone segment began its spiral into obsolescence, Motorola jumpstarted the Android ecosystem with its original Droid smartphones. However, the company soon found itself pushed to the sidelines by the likes of Samsung, HTC and LG. After about a year of floundering, Motorola got its groove back and released the Moto G this year, a phone that has emerged as one of the most successful Android devices ever and has pushed the (now Lenovo owned) company to the top of the Android pyramid.
AMD
Like Motorola, AMD is another company that has made a decent comeback more than once. After years of flagging behind Intel, in 2001, AMD launched the Athlon XP processor that not only beat the Pentium 4 in terms of performance but was also priced at half the cost. If that wasn’t enough, in 2008, and again after a couple of years of settling into the No. 2 spot, AMD released the R700 GPUs that included cards like the HD4850 and HD4870 that shook the market thanks to better performance and value than the competing Nvidia Geforce cards. Now that AMD powers both the Xbox One and the PS4, the company’s importance as a graphics technology giant can’t be disputed
Nintendo
Nintendo was pretty much synonymous with gaming during the ‘80s and most of the ‘90s but then, just like Apple, it was almost given a knockout punch by two underperforming products- the Nintendo 64 and the Gamecube. With both the Xbox and the PS2 ruling over the console market, it appeared like Nintendo would become a footnote in gaming history. Then, in 2006, it launched the Wii, a console that relied on motion controls, and broke all sales records. The Wii ended up selling over 100 million units and easily became the best selling console of the last generation.
Microsoft
To be fair, Microsoft hasn’t really had to write a gargantuan comeback story yet because it still remains one of the largest tech companies in the world. However, in the latter half of the last decade, after the emergence of Android and iOS, it looked like Microsoft had lost the plot. The Redmond giant’s only presence in the smartphone market was Windows Mobile, an obsolete OS that was as embarrassing to look at as it was terrible to use. Fortunately, Microsoft realised the error of its ways (a little too late, some will argue), and in 2010, launched Windows Phone, a smartphone OS that looked great and focused on usability, on the Nokia Lumia 800. Today, Windows Phone stands as serious alternative in the smartphone segment to Microsoft’s credit.