Here's some very interesting analysis of why dropping Symbian or MeeGo for Android or Windows Phone 7 would be the closest thing to brand suicide which Nokia could do now.
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Member since:2005-07-09
The main problem with Nokia (with Maemo) is the same problem OLPC folks face (and Borland faced with OWL back when they owned C++ on Windows development), namely credibility. Both announced their platform with defiant optimism. Both got a huge following. Both abandonned them. Anything produced after that is met with scepticism because the early adopters were left as orphans without even a migration path to the new platform. Meanwhile, the market moved on. Nokia added insult to injury by abandoning its old Symbian OS. Why should any developer or consumer trust Nokia again considering that there are safer and more credible competitors out there? How is Meego better than AndroidOS? It's not enough to be marginally better, AndroidOS has to be blown out of the water before it would be worth consumers and developer to accept the risk of being orphaned. An example of this would be, if Meego devices could give you everything AndroidOS did at a third of the price (since it needed to run on less powerful hardware). Another example would be being able to run both iOS and Android apps and Symbian apps and other types of apps at the same time at about the same price-point as Android or iOS devices.
BTW, seniors devices will likely be touch screens too since context sensitive buttons are much more intuitive than buttons that persist whether or not they are useful in the current context.
Edited 2011-02-09 20:05 UTC
Member since:2007-04-25
As an N900 owner for the past year and iPad owner for a couple of months, I'm quite puzzled by your post.
How was I "abandoned" on the N900, exactly? How was I "left as orphans without even a migration path to the new platform"?
S60, Symbian^3 and MeeGo are programmed using Qt 2.6; well, darned if Qt 2.6 can't (now) be used to program Maemo as well. And the repository certainly has a fairly wide selection of Qt apps for my N900 today - more than I can work through, actually, which makes it effectively rather similar to my iPad (though the app store's UI is certainly more fun to browse - except for the prices ;-).
And I presume that you already know that the N900 can run the Dalvik engine by purchasing Alien (a commercial, supported product by Myriad), so that it runs Android apps. Oh, great - MORE apps to sort through!
And what's the first two platforms simultaneously supported by Firefox 4 Mobile? Hmmm...
So, I don't understand why you think I should feel abandoned or orphaned. My darned N900 tablet/phone has been a joy to use for the past year, and it still compares favorably to my iPad.
Member since:2010-03-30
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
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"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Member since:
2011-02-09
I actually stopped reading after he compared Nokia to Ford with the argument "Ford cannot afford to focus on sports cars, too"
what a ridiculus argument, did he ever have a look at the history of cars? For the last 40 years or so, a car can be defined as "a thing with 4 wheels, 3 pedals, and a steering wheel, where you can fill in some liquid and it runs about 100km/h". of course cars got a lot safer, more comfortable, more environment-friendly and probably got a little faster over time.
Now compare that to phones, due to technological advances, phones changed more over the last half decade than cars did over the last half century. Just 5 years ago, a mobile phone was a thing with a small display and a T9 keyboard, which could do calls, SMS and some MMS and stuff, which nobody really used anyway. Now large touchscreen devices with finger optimized UI and 1GHz CPUs sell like crazy.
To the order of magnitude, that cars got faster over the last 40 years, phones get faster hardware every single year, so how can he proclaim something like "it is not feasable for everyone to have a highend device"? I'm not talking of something like 2020, I actually think, there is no reason one would buy a not-so-smart phone 3 years from now except some very small nices (rugged phones, senior optimized phones, ...)
EDIT: or did he want to express, that nokia phones changed as little as Ford cars over the last decade? ;-)
Edited 2011-02-09 19:34 UTC