It's official. Dismissed as a silly rumour by many, Nokia and Micorsoft have just announced a very comprehensive partnership in which Windows Phone 7 will become Nokia's prime smartphone platform. It goes a lot deeper than that, though. Update: Qt will not be available for Windows Phone 7. Qt will remain the development platform for MeeGo and Symbian. Update II: During its Capital Market Day event, Elop confirmed Nokia will not make a comprehensive MeeGo product line. It will be a platform to learn from, but it won't become a competitive platform. Update III: Android was not an option because it would be difficult to differentiate there. Update IV: There will be 'substantial reductions in employment' in Finland and around the world. Also, before I forget, thanks Engadget for the live-blogging where I get this stuff from!
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Member since:2008-07-01
Member since:2009-02-11
The fact that it was (probably) the right move doesn't make it any less true, or sad.
The fact is that, given the insane delays of MeeGo and that Symbian was not aimed at the high end, Nokia's move was probably right. But this doesn't leave Nokia on a very good place.
Stephen Elop's memo talked about how Nokia needed to move away from the 'hardware-only' mentality and focus on the whole ecosystem around the device. Today's news though seem contradictory. Nokia will essentially become another WP7 hardware manufacturer, with the only differentiating factors being hardware, Ovi and NAVTEQ. Mobile hardware has become so standardized these days (CPU, RAM, Flash, Sensors etc.) that the only thing Nokia can do is slap a higher MP count camera. Ovi will be yet another WP7 app store. I don't know if NAVTEQ is so good that people are going to buy Nokia it, but I doubt it.
So the way I see it is that right now Nokia has nothing going their way. They are simply a WP7 hardware manufacturer, like many others.
Member since:2005-09-01
Member since:2007-04-23
Much of the delay with MeeGo was just that, the transition from Maemo which was a relatively stable and complete platform, to MeeGo that is a significant departure and in need of significant changes.
Without their own OS, nokia will be reduced to just producing hardware and having to compete with the asians who can produce the same hardware more cheaply... Also to choose windows phone 7 over android is another black mark, windows mobile left a bad taste in many peoples mouths and while windows may be a well known brand, it also has negative connotations and is not generally associated with phones.
I liked the idea of meego/maemo, an open linux based platform for your phone.. Android requires significant effort to turn it into a regular linux system, and while the iphone can have a bsd userland installed you need to jailbreak it in order to do that.
Member since:2006-05-30
Really? Are you sure Maemo was "relatively stable and complete"??? It broke binary ABI with every major release. So, on the N800 alone, we had NITOS2007 and NITOS2008 then there were the 2 or 3 revisions of NITOS2008... so, basically 2006 -> 2007 broke ABI. 2007 -> 2008 broke ABI. 2008 broke ABI on itself. This is well documented and people were talking about it back *in* 2007!!!
http://eugenia.queru.com/2007/07/06/compatibility-compatibility-com...
Every ABI break lost apps. Sad. The pool of apps reduced over time, not increased. It would have been okay if there had actually been more than 2 or 3 that were worth having. *sigh*
EDIT: and the fact that the only option for development was Linux (which I was okay with) but installing the SDK was completely and totally un intuitive and cumbersome, AND was RPM based, so made installing on Ubuntu (which I much preferred over RPM style distros) extremely tricky... I dunno... I'm a Windows and Mac guy. I like installers that don't make me learn how to manually install software. ANd then, once installed - it was never straight forward to get it working and the emulation was flakey. A far cry from WinMobile, Android and iOS (all of which have their flaws, but at least they install without too many headaches and then just "work")
Edited 2011-02-11 12:06 UTC
Member since:2011-02-11
Member since:2006-02-15
Yes, because hanging on to an outdated platform and a platform that has been delayed like crazy and MIGHT be ready this year is totally not going to mean their demise.
All this time Nokia has been pushing for devs to use Qt, they've actually invested a helluva lot of money to it and the whole point with pushing people for Qt has been that they'd be developing for MeeGo in the future. But since WP7 doesn't support Qt they not only seriously shot themselves in the foot with this, they also instantly alienated all those Qt-devs they've attracted so far!
This has been a downright terrible move on their part.
Member since:2005-09-01
Not making MS enable QT on Nokia WinMo variant (the only real ecosystem differentiator Nokia could save for themselves) shows what their negotiation positions were.
Were they as desperate? Seriously, what does this deal buys Nokia, after it's has bet so much on yet unproven platform?
Member since:2011-02-11
All this time Nokia has been pushing for devs to use Qt, they've actually invested a helluva lot of money to it and the whole point with pushing people for Qt has been that they'd be developing for MeeGo in the future.
This is an emotional assertion, from an economic point of view your statement does not make sense at all. It does not matter what they have been investing in. At this point investing in WP7 is will be better than investing in Qt, so how could it matter how much money they already wasted on Qt?
Member since:2005-07-07
Exactly. I was looking forward to buying a Meego-based smartphone.
After reading this
I don't have to wait anymore: I'll go HTC/Samsung. Hello, Android!
Member since:2006-02-23
Thom, are you an OS enthusiast or a business strategist? You do realize they have just announced the death of Qt and the death of the only true open platform for mobile phones? Are you really so clueless that you think this is a good thing because YOU are a WP7 user? How shortsighted can you possibly be?
This reminds me of when Palm bought Be. There were people which reacted enthusiastically, thinking Palm would continue development of BeOs. We all know what happened there.
As a Qt developer, when Nokia bought Trolltech I was very apprehensive and feared for the future of Qt. Nokia however proved to invest in Qt and foster a community around the project. There was a bright future for Qt. But now they have just raised a giant middle finger to all the devs working with Qt. I am deeply, deeply saddened by this news and quit angry as well.
Member since:2005-06-29
So, because I happen to like a different platform than you I'm suddenly a business strategist?
So open source can't stand on its own two feet without money pouring in from businesses?
Member since:2008-03-27
Do you actually read before you hit "Submit"?
You can't even compare the two: There are many many many more "dumb" phones sold than smart phones (which need charging at least once a day - yeah, really smart that crap).
Aside that little detail (how good's a phone when it's out of battery?), MeeGo was a great migration plan to a modern phone OS. WP7 just simply doesn't fit.
I guess, the dude from Microsoft did his job.
RIP, Nokia.
PS: I do like WP7, don't get me wrong. But it just doesn't fit in Nokia's portfolio.
Member since:2010-04-27
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move."A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane."MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Member since:
2005-06-29
Yes, because hanging on to an outdated platform and a platform that has been delayed like crazy and MIGHT be ready this year is totally not going to mean their demise.
Get real.