SMS Co-Inventor Matti Makkonen Dead At 63

An anonymous reader writes: The BBC News reports that Matti Makkonen, a 'grand old man of mobile industry' who helped launch the worldwide sensation of texting, has died at the age of 63 after an illness. Although planning to retire later in 2015 from the board of Finnet Telecoms, Makkonen constantly remained fascinated with communications technologies, from the Nokia 2010 mobile phone to 3G connections. He lived just enough to witness the last remnants of former Finnish mobile industry giant Nokia disappear, as Redmond announced its intent last month to convert all Nokia stores into Microsoft-branded Authorized Reseller and Service Centers, offering Xbox game consoles alongside the Nokia-derived Lumia range of smartphones.

Comments

His obituary

[Virtucon]

Was 160 characters.

Re:His obituary

[Marginal Coward]

See http://bbc.in/1LA1Zn2 for details.

Probably texted for a doctor...

[Viol8]

... but it didn't get there for 24 hours.

Re:Probably texted for a doctor...

[antdude]

Or never got through. I have lost many SMSes through the Internet with AIM and e-mails. :(

Re:Couldn't summarize it in 140 characters?

[ArcadeMan]

Isn't SMS 160 characters? Where did you get 140?

Re:Couldn't summarize it in 140 characters?

[Eunuchswear]

140? What is this 140 characters of which you speak?

SMS is 140 octets, either 160 characters (7 bit gsm.03.38 code) or 80 characters (utf-16).

And now his watch has ended.

[onthemightofprinces]

He's gone on to the second text now.

The last remnants of Nokia?

[Anonymous Coward]

"He lived just enough to witness the last remnants of former Finnish mobile industry giant Nokia disappear"

WTF, now this trolling takes place in the summary itself. Earlier we had to wait for comments for this piece of misinformation.
Nokia still has a strong network business (not to mention HERE maps and extensive patent portfolio) and some 57,000 employees, thank you.

Re:The last remnants of Nokia?

[marsu_k]

And right now trying to sell off HERE, if you haven't been keeping up with the news. At the moment it seems a consortium of German auto manufacturers is the likeliest buyer.

Moment of silence

[Anonymous Coward]

We should all observe a period of 160 seconds of no texting at noon today.

Re:Moment of silence

[rubycodez]

I was thinking of everyone should send each other 160 characters of spaces, texting silence

Re:Couldn't summarize it in 140 characters?

[rubycodez]

Many services (like Twitter) reserve 20 characters for user address

Nokia is not dead, their handset business is

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia hasn't disappeared. Nokia has gone to where it was before it came to mobile handset business: in telecom network business. Nokia - yes, company by that name - is doing quite well now where it has been strong all along. It is not consumer-sexy business, but every handset needs the network to be useful.

Reasonably large portion of Finnish ex-Nokians actually think part of the strategy Nokia executed ending in the sale of handset business to Microsoft was that they had recognized direction of things better than Microsoft, and decided to take the money, and go from overly commoditized handset business back to network business where both commoditization was not crippling profits and where engineering - even research still mattered. Now it seems that was actually a sensible bet.

It's sad that popular image makes Nokia only a failed handset company, and paints companies like Apple as great inventors of the market. If Nokians wouldn't have had their position also on the network business, SMS might not have gone anywhere in practice. To a great extent the cellular revolution was and is powered by network engineering - handset engineering and productization came only later. But apparently consumers - and journalists - care of networks only when those don't work. When they do, they take the incredible amount of engineering that has went to global mobile networks for granted - which it hardly is.

Re:Nokia is not dead, their handset business is

[Viol8]

"It's sad that popular image makes Nokia only a failed handset company, and paints companies like Apple as great inventors of the market."

Actually Motorola built the first cellular phone but lets not let facts get in the way. And lets not pretend that Nokia made the decision to quit the handset business out of choice. They fucked up. Badly.

And for all the cries of "Well, Nokias doing nicely now thanks", which company out of Nokia and Apple currently has $178 BILLION of cash reserves in the bank? If Nokia management had been a bit bolder in the mid 2000s it could have been them.

I'm not a fan of Apple, but lets be realistic, they could buy Nokia outright and not really even notice the different in their bank balance.

Re:Couldn't summarize it in 140 characters?

[Eunuchswear]

Get off my lawn.

Twitter -- ack pfft.

Re:Couldn't summarize it in 140 characters?

[rubycodez]

indeed, twitter is twats tweeting to twits

Re:Couldn't summarize it in 140 characters?

[jones_supa]

He was probably thinking Twitter.

Re:Couldn't summarize it in 140 characters?

[blazer1024]

I seem to remember in the late 90's or very early 2000's you could use SMS for free (I forget the carrier I used... one of those that eventually became part of Verizon). Nobody seemed to care about it...then the teenagers found it and suddenly it was $0.20 a message.

Re:Was He Well Compensated for His Invention?

[bws111]

It is called 'being an employee'. You trade in the ability to get rich for the relative safety of a steady paycheck.

Britain had 999 30 years before the US had 911. Your grandfather may have had something to do with 911, but he did not 'invent' it.