A lot of people are wondering why Nokia didn’t choose to go with Android. How can Nokia differentiate themselves when Android is a lot more open and free than Windows Phone 7? As usual, the key to this is in the details. If you read the announcements carefully, you’ll see that Microsoft offered Nokia something Google most likely didn’t. Update: What a surprise. Elop just confirmed Nokia has a special deal with Microsoft. Whereas HTC, Samsung, and so on are not allowed to customise WP7 – Nokia is, further confirming my theory.
Windows Phone 7 is a new and young platform, and while reviews have been very positive, we don’t know much yet of consumer response. Carriers and device makers seem lukewarm at best – HTC, Samsung, and LG are much more interested in Android than in Windows Phone 7, and I can’t really blame them.
At the same time, Android is already a major and established player, bigger than iOS and – depending on the figures – bigger than Symbian. And Google got there without Nokia’s help. In other words, Google doesn’t need Nokia, which means Nokia’s negotiation position with Google is not a good one. In such negotiations, Nokia would need Android – but Android wouldn’t need Nokia.
During the Q&A during Nokia’s Capital Market Day, Elop said that Android did not allow them to differentiate enough. This seems weird, since Android is considerably more open and free than Windows Phone 7. However, I think what he meant is that Nokia would not have a say in the actual development direction of Android. And this is where Microsoft comes in.
The press release makes it clear that Nokia will get a considerable say in Windows Phone 7’s development, and this is the crux of the matter. With Windows Phone 7, Nokia can differentiate from the inside-out, whereas with Android, all they could do was be at the mercy of Google and develop skins. Nokia had a much stronger negotiation position while dealing with Microsoft than while dealing with Google, and as such, Nokia managed to get a lot of influence not just after a new version is released, but also during its development.
And this is why Nokia went with Windows Phone 7. And it makes sense, too. No phone maker currently has the kind of influence over Android that Nokia will have over Windows Phone 7. In other words, while Nokia will no longer develop their smartphone operating system in-house, they still have more influence over their OS than Samsung, HTC, and LG do. And that’s the key.
A lot of people are sad that MeeGo will not be Nokia’s main platform. For MeeGo, this is bad news. For Nokia, however, this is great news. MeeGo’s development is incredibly slow, and would maybe lead to just 1 (one) (!) device this year. That’s not enough. That’s too late. If you care about Nokia (as I most certainly do), you can’t with a straight face advocate they stick to such a platform. If you care about MeeGo and don’t give a rat’s bum about Nokia – well, that’s a different story.
As far Symbian is concerned – it’s been a dead end ever since the iPhone was released. We’re four years down the line, and Nokia still hasn’t managed to create a compelling touch-based interface for this otherwise decent mobile operating system. While I’m all for as much competition as possible, I can also see when a platform has run its course. Symbian is done for, it’s dead, and I’m glad it’s getting buried. It’s a relic. I’m hoping the open source community can keep it alive for us enthusiasts, but for Nokia’s future, it’s a liability, not a strength.
I’m incredibly excited about this deal. I’ve fallen in love with Windows Phone 7, but at the same time, I was a little scared of its prospects since it didn’t really have a truly dedicated phone maker backing it. My HD7 is a great device (review coming up), but nor HTC, nor Samsung, nor LG really care about WP7 all that much. This deal with Nokia will ensure the survival of the platform, and that makes me happy.
It will also ensure Nokia’s survival (I’m pretty convinced about that), and in the long run, that’s a great thing. They would’ve drowned in the Android world, they would’ve sunk into irrelevance waiting for MeeGo, and they would’ve faced the eternal great hardware/bad software-problems with Symbian.
Nokia would have no influence of Android? Hello, it is open source. Nokia could rewrite half of it if they wished so. They don’t need to go to Google and beg for any changes.
Compare that to WP7 – yeah, they may have some say in OS development at the beginning, when they are still biggest player in WP7 sandbox. But it is only as much influence as MS is willing to give them – and can revoke as soon as Nokia is no longer critical to WP7 success. Essentially Nokia just gave keys to their mobile phone business to MS.
It may get them some cash in short term, but in long term they are going from company that shaped mobile market for decades to mere OEM like HTC.
Wishful thinking. They’d have to rewrite their own changes every time Google released a new version. They’d still have no influence over Android’s future. They’d still be at the mercy of what Google does. They’d create a different Android version and bring in application incompatibilities.
With this deal, they get to shape WP7 AS IT DEVELOPS, as an INTEGRAL partner. THAT is the key.
They don’t get to shape anything. No one is ever an integral partner with Microsoft because all Nokia will be is an OEM. This is a well trodden path.
I’m curious as to why you think they will have some kind of influence of Windows Phone, or whatever the damn thing is called these days, when they can do actual development with Android and at least plough a lot of their own furrow. The apps stores today are also the iPhone first and Android second. Developers and users don’t want a third. There’s just no point.
I bet Microsoft can’t believe it’s luck and Nokia’s desperation. This will finish Nokia off and keep Windows on mobiles on a little bit of life support.
Oh, and if all you are is a hardware producer you don’t really want to be competing with cheap far eastern manufacturers who are slapping Android on their phones at a dime a dozen.
Once again, if you don’t at least have some form of control over the platform code-wise then you have and are worth nothing.
Microsoft will buy Nokia.
Now that’s wishful thinking.
As if Microsoft would let Nokia help to develop WP7.
They had a good smartphone platform (Hildon/Maemo), they had even some tablets (N700, N800 and N810) and a phone (N900) manufactured with this platform. But what did they? Did they churn out other ones and fine tune it, slap a market on it and start get appealing for the crowd?
No they changed the platform to a new toolkit (QT), after a year or so they integrated the changed Maemo with another platform, which used the previous toolkit (GTK+) they used for Maemo and the Clutter toolkit, which integrates in GTK+ from Intel (Moblin) and it became Meego. After a another year they still hadn’t released a phone with this triple changed platform.
What are they, dummies?
Maemo was good enough platform when it was released with the N900, it could easily compete with the early Androids. They lost the momentum by taking years to rewrite it instead of gradually change and improve it while churning out sexy smart phones.
They are dumb! If Microsoft is wise they will not let them near the WP7 code.
When the N800 came out, I thought it was a missed change, because they left out a SIM chip. That was four years ago. They could have ruled the smart phone world, but they didn’t dare it when the time was right, so Apple blew them out of the water.
Idiots!!!
Edited 2011-02-12 15:29 UTC
I completely agree with you. I can´t understand why it took them so long to be able to make calls with Meego (now they can, can´t they?) when it worked in the N900. They could replace the stack components one by one
Wrong!!!! They can fork the current version of Android and move on with own changes with new name for OS! They have nothing to do with google once they fork the current android branch and create a new OS like Nokidroid!
With WP7 they should not expect to penetrate the upper smart phone market as that market has big boss sitting like iphone and galaxy S and many LG,Samsung, Htc WP7 phones. They need to show they are different in that segment!
Only if they are willing to give up getting their phone blessed by Google and thus willing to give up access to the Google Android apps like Maps, Mail and Market.
So? They have Ovi maps, Ovi store, etc. There is also community port of Qt to Android which already works quite well. If they finished it and installed on their phones by default, Symbian/Qt developers would have path forward. Sure, it would segment Android ecosystem, but it would be Google’s problem, not Nokia’s.
The N900 get’s it’s travel directions from Ovi or Google already. It seems the could provide mapping and navigation already let alone in an alternate future where they chose Android.
Nokia already have thier own Market, Maps and Mail (have a look at ovi.com). They could have ported them to Android.
What if they could get someone else to pay for the porting, because they have been signed on as the software partner?
I feel odd about this deal. Not particular fond of Microsoft, and used to consider Nokia the Microsoft of the mobile industry (until Apple and Google appeared). But despite my scepticm, this might be more clever than it appears at first. Microsoft needs Nokia and has been willing to sink a lot of money into new business areas before, if Nokia can get them to spend that money on their behalf, I might be worthwhile. On the other hand, they may get screwed like everone before them.
Well this is a good call as if Nokia could actually write a phone OS and thereby its ecosystem, they would have succeeded with Symbian or Meego or possibly both.
I may be wrong but have not Google said they are going to reduce the ability to customise android and make people use their own in future?
(Off topic but why is the word Google not in the default spell checker for Chrome? it wants to correct it to goggle)
Edited 2011-02-11 12:56 UTC
Funny, I never noticed that. It is interesting that Nokia and Microsoft are both in Chrome’s dictionary but Google isn’t (neither is googol).
Even though what you are telling about Android is true, it’d have come at a price to Nokia. It’d still have to maintain an extensive software R&D team for developing Android the way they want it to be. Further, it’s easier for other android vendors to copy the design (hardware & UI) that Nokia would have brought in their device as differentiation.
While, in case of WP7 Nokia can reduce much of their software R&D spend and ask MS to develop SW & HW ref in whichever they’d require. This is what I believe as providing direction to MS on future developments. This would easily thwart the competition as 1)they’d not be ready with a phone meeting reference design and 2)they’ll not be able to get Nokia specific software customizations, giving them the power of differentiation.
“Further, it’s easier for other android vendors to copy the design (hardware & UI) that Nokia would have brought in their device as differentiation. ”
To me, that seems to be called competition from natural market forces leading to vendors trying to deliver increasingly better designs.. but, maybe that’s just me..
It’s amazing how ELop stated what he’s going to do, but nobody gets it.
He’s going to cut Nokia’s costs below their sales level, to keep it profitable as it dramatically shrinks in size.
This is not good news to any Nokia fan. Also, what a bunch of wishful thinking this article is – Nokia is the OEM to Microsoft now, hand delivered by the ex-MS exec.
“Influence” my friend – influence to do what, name the thing you think is so important, lets get to the details. Name one thing Nokia needs to influence, and lets examine how that would work with the open source OS.
Android is open source, it could be forked into a completely incompatible OS, if someone so chose – it could be made into a WinPho 7 in that respect, which is also completely incompatible with Android.
To get WinPho 7 on Nokia devices by end of year, they are slapping a stock version on stock phones.
This is a huge “we don’t believe in ourselves” move. Why would Nokia be drowned out in an Android world? Why can Samsung do fine, but Nokia wouldn’t make it?
Heck Nokia was known for quality – quality build of the phone, they can’t hang onto that reputation? But Samsung can? Why??? Koreans are just smarter than Finns?
Give me a break, this Elop has this vision in his head, and he’s listening to nobody. His MS experience, is shaping his plans, and he’s implementing them, come heck or high water.
Pretty decent analysis there, and you’re spot on.
Nokia will be slashed to the bone and downsized as it seeks to be profitable. That’s the lot of an OEM. He’s slashing research and development and is going to turn Nokia into a company that really doesn’t do anything.
You never, ever give up control of your platforms and your destiny.
Elop is a total loon. Nokia should have recruited Finnish rather than bringing in an ex-Microsoft MBA idiot.
Yeah, simple vision – not to allow Meego to be successful on Mobile. M$ was dreaded by potential Linux success in hands of Nokia. They are happy now of course – Nokia works for them.
Many Samsung phones are just cheap generic Chinese phones with a customised Samsung branded case. They are designed in Taiwan and manufactured under contract in mainland China. They use Taiwanese designed hardware and software.
Basically MS and Nokia have merged. Nokia gets free software and MS gets a phone hardware division.
Cheap Chinese phones will totally dominate the Android market. They already cost less than $100 in China. A super-cheap open hardware platform for Android phones is also being developed in China.
Nokia would be committing a slow suicide by selling Android phones.
You call it a merger, I call it a hostile take over, orchestrated by Microsofts inside man Elop.
I see zero benefit for Nokia in this.
Nokia didn’t get software for “free”. They already had their own software that they now have to ditch. The cost of this technology shift will be huge, specially to a company that is used to control every aspect of hw and sw.
Nokia is however giving their own software [Ovi maps etc] to Microsoft for free.
[also, this is a sad day for OSS, specially the Qt people]
The main benefit is not encouraging a 2 party market.
By using WP7 they can get a good deal with MS for a cut of the profits while not encouraging further adoption of Android. They can take advantage of MS and use WP7 to divide the market. A fragmented market would be much easier for them to enter later with their own OS than one dominated by two systems.
Hopefully they made a deal with MS to bring Qt to WP7.
Somehow, I bet Elop has forgotten to ask for this in the negociations.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, this deal is extremely advantageous for MS, whereas for Nokia it only brings short-term benefits and is a disaster in the long run. So I have to wonder why Elop actually left Microsoft. Or, if you prefer, if he actually left the company.
Probably. As the CEO he likely doesn’t care that much about Qt. MS on the other hand does not want to endorse or advertise Qt and would pay extra to not make this concession. But it’s possible that Elop bargained to put whatever they want on WP7, including Qt and their own application store.
I think it is just another case of MS getting lucky. Elop also went to Google and they probably turned him down for a partnership.
Hmmm didn’t see the update, looks like Qt is out.
You have absolutely no idea how companies work if you think this is some sort of sneaky takeover. It would have been negotiated at the highest level over many months (perhaps several years) with full Nokia and MS board approval.
The board of Nokia is interested in the preservation of shareholder capital not maintaining Qt or Meego.
There is no future profit in dumb phones.
Ultra cheap phones are going to dominate the Android user base.
Many cheap phones by Samsung etc are nothing but rebranded Chinese made generics.
The boards of companies are legally obliged to maximise shareholder wealth. That may mean a merger or takeover is necessary.
Modern corporations such as Nokia are controlled by professional funds management companies and pension funds. They are totally unsentimental.
Nokia has already been transformed from a paper and rubber manufacturing company to a telecommunications company.
Mergers are never truly mergers. 😉
Remember DEC & Compaq Merged?
Nope. Compaq took over lock stock & rotten barrel.
This is the best thing that could happen to Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 System-whatever, at least theoretically. Right now Windows Phone 7 is dead in the water, with the promised software updates nowhere to be seen and everything going against what Microsoft had said at launch: that carriers would not be in control of software and updates, Microsoft would. But as Thom says in this post, Nokia now will have a major say in these software matters, so we will have to wait and see how this plays out.
Nokia will have to come up with some sort of pretty compelling hardware to go up against the iPhone and the dozens of variations of Droids, etc from Motorola and HTC. I am an iPhone user, but I happily used Nokia phones before the iPhone. They were great, but they were not smartphones, just good basic cellphones. This will be interesting to watch.
“MeeGo’s development is incredibly slow, and would maybe lead to just 1 (one) (!) device this year.”
I will readily admit that I do not care so much about Nokia as a company as I care about Meego as a platform.
But I’m not going to whine about Nokia’s choice. I do hope though, that someone else will pick up Meego as their phone OS, and help its development in that direction. WP7 (Or iOS or Android) don’t appeal much to me.
But I have to also wonder if suddenly switching to an entirely different platform is really going to improve anything for Nokia’s development speed in the short run.
Will they really have one or more WP7 Phones out in 2011? And are they really going to be able to “differentiate” it that soon?
Can they transform their in-house expertise that quickly?
Color me slightly sceptic. But hey, let’s just sit back and see how it pans out for them…
Maybe, but the situation doesn’t look much better than they were with MeeGo:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-tells-investors-that-2011-…
Edited 2011-02-11 17:36 UTC
Nokia could do what ever they liked with Symbian and they failed big even that they had a huge advantage over Apple and Google. Now you say that Nokia will have a say in WP7 development. I don’t know how Microsoft could accept that. They are giving their new platform that is not accepted so good by the users to a company that completely lost track with reality. That can lead to only one thing for WP7, and thats a total fail. And for Nokia, they are already on that very same track for the last few years.
It goes.
What about Nokia’s feature phones, aka “dumb phones”? There’s one thing that Nokia does well, and that’s make phones that are just phones – ask any old person who can barely make their digits meet those of the phone. Anecdotally speaking, I’ve seen a LOT of Nokia smartphones returned on warranty in the past 18 months. A disproportionate number. I’d be stupid to think it started immediately when I started working at the phone shop, so I must assume that their smart phones for at least the past two years have been failures. The N900 was a step in the right direction, too bad they forgot MMS out of the box, but everything else (with the current exception of the N8, though I’m still holding my breath) has had manufacturer’s faults piled high as the sky. If they’re planning to move to a smartphone only business model, they’d best be prepared to kiss goodbye the only sure thing on their sales figures.
I say this because, if Nokia plans to drop Symbian entirely, this will leave them with no dumbphone OS, unless they plan to start charging up around the AU$500 mark for their feature phones, too. They’ll need pretty powerful hardware in their dumbphones to run Windows Phone 7. Unfortunately, there are still people who can’t grasp the basics of how to use a mobile phone, like even how to open their damn contacts after I’ve put a shortcut on their phone’s home screen. If Nokia begin to fail in their just-a-phone business, then they have no future as a company. That’s the one market they have 100% cornered.
Nokia can just outsource to a Taiwanese company like MTK to design their dumbphones. Samsung already do this.
However the margins are probably too slim for Nokia to stay in the dumbphone business.
I had already made the same post on the previous article’s thread. It seems clearer now that Nokia’s going to drop Qt.
So what about KDE ? Nokia is the main income source for Qt/KDE developers.
or maybe part of the deal was windows phone was to allow QT dev. Would help to ease the transition of current nokia devs over to the new platform.
If they dont do something along those lines, these same devs will choose one of the other platforms and be lost to nokia forever (would be quite a bitter pill to swallow!)
Dude, where do you get your numbers from?
As far as I know there are only two people paid by Nokia to work on KDE: Aaron Seigo and Marco Martin.
Then I think there is still the deal between Nokia and KDAB that David Faure can spend 50% of his work time on KDE.
That would be three contributors out of several hundred.
You know, Nokia doesn’t send money your way just because you happen to commit code to KDE’s repository.
I really wonder how parent could have been voted up. It is obviously inaccurate.
I think what he is getting at is that if Qt’s further development ceases to be funded by Nokia, KDE’s development takes a huge hit too….
I’d not say so.
I think Qt will be their dev platform for future tablets & netbooks. Qt is too good to be left out. We’ll have to see what Intel provides as the reference CPU for Meego tablets/netbooks. I don’t think Nokia will make ARM based tablets
KDE is just KDE, but it raises some serious questions about where Qt is heading and is going to be used.
Absolutely wrong !!! It’s the other way around. Android is open source, so Nokia could do with it what they want, unless they are not able to.
There is also no assurance M$ will want to do with WP7 what Nokia is not able to do with it.
Nokia just lost all credibility with developers. Qt just a few weeks ago was to be the platform for all Nokia devices. Now it won’t even run on WindoesPhone7(dayum, that name creeps me out)
Qt quick is the best way to develop great apps there is PERIOD. Sure a new platform needs some polish and that takes time, but Android showed that you can arrive late and still dominate. The smartphone wars are far from over.
Nokia will gain a nearly finished platform and few known brands .. well Xbox, but mainly Office. Bing is just unkown. Do people really care for Office anymore?
Nokia will loose:
-The 6 billion they invested in maps (Navteq maps or bing maps .. people will not care. HTCs WP7 phones will have the same mapping as far as the gernal public is concerned.)
-Half a billion they invested in Qt and Meego
-A lot of faith and cred with developers. Don’t go around telling people Qt is the future and now it won’t even be supported on WP7. Because at the end of the day MS controls WP7, not Nokia. MS is the daddy, Nokia the bitch.
-They will have to compete with the likes of Samsung and equal terms, which builds RAM,SOCs and displays and they will always be cheaper and faster. Anybody who thinks Nokia will be able to build better “more differiantiated phones than HTC or Samsung is just insane. MS wants WP7 to succeed, they couldn’t care less for Nokia.
I could go on and on, but at the end of the day a great european company is doomed, maybe it already was, but now it is quite certain.
Edited 2011-02-11 12:17 UTC
Just because you already dug a very deep hole doesn’t mean you have to keep digging.
Maybe there was a treasure hidden there, now they stopped digging.
We could argue all day I guess. What is certain is that Nokia no longer controls its own fate, it is a WP7 manufacturer now.
Yeah, it is so much better to take a crap. Zune, Kin, Nokia.
Thom you are without a doubt clueless. MS now controls Nokia’s faith. Microsoft managed to get an inside man into Nokia who has now succeeded in totally destroying the Nokia developer community.
This deal is bad for OSS, bad for Qt, bad for KDE, bad for the Nokia development community, bad for Nokia’s own developers (how about those ex-Trolltech people), the end of Meego, the end of Symbian.
The only ones who profit from this deal are Microsoft and its shareholders, Nokia’s CEO and shareholders (in the short term) and of course the Microsoft fanboys.
Oh, and do you really think all the Qt devs will now switch to .NET all of a sudden? How do you think Nokia’s own developers will feel if they now have to start developing in .NET?
*sigh*
MS needs Nokia to succeed. For the second time, you need to get out of your 90s mindset. Microsoft does not have a monopoly. It doesn’t get to order Nokia around. Microsoft sells three phones every month – Nokia sells about a 300 billion squintillion phones every nanosecond. In this deal Microsoft is the underdog.
Why then didn’t they enable QT on WP7?
This is no-brainer from Nokia pov. Without that they are alienating their existing dev community (basically passing them message they are redundant).
Edited 2011-02-11 16:27 UTC
At the risk of repeating myself…
Microsoft initially needed IBM, too. And Sendo. Where are these now ?
Some people just can’t see history I’m afraid. They always have this mindset that somehow things are different.
Amen. Some past IBM CEO must be laughing loud in his corporate grave.
Edited 2011-02-11 17:24 UTC
A list of previous Microsoft mobile ‘partners’:
http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/11/in-memoriam-microsofts-previous-st…
What’s wrong with IBM? They’re making plenty of money. Less than M$, but more than Intel.
Sure, IBM have beautifully recovered from the blow they’ve taken then, by switching to a totally different market where they seem to do quite fine.
But who, today, knows about them in the general public ? They used to be the greatest personal computer manufacturer, now they are nonexistent in that market. It’s just impressive how quickly they have sunk.
Edited 2011-02-13 21:09 UTC
You might well sigh Thom, but you’re still clueless.
The one thing you never, ever, ever do is sell off your platform to someone else and place it under their control. Microsoft is in total control if Nokia is relying on them to deliver a platform. You always, always control your own platform. You also don’t piss off your developers.
Microsoft is not an underdog here at all. It shows a lack of understanding as to where the balance of power is in these kinds of relationships.
Edited 2011-02-11 16:59 UTC
Exactly. Thom clearly does not remember how MS played the Windows NT card back in the day. All the Unix vendors created strategic alliances with MS over Windows NT, placing the focus of the future on Windows NT instead of their own platforms. DEC even had 200+ engineers working on the NT code base to port it all to 64-bit. MS screwed them all over by not properly supporting these platforms and not even porting Office to them. By the time they realized what happened, it was too late.
Smartphones are not about the hardware, but all about the software. Now that Nokia has killed their own software development, the future looks very bleak for Nokia.
Why was Thom voted to zero here?
You’re not supposed to vote someone down just because you disagree with them.
Don’t be so disingenuous.
Thom has angered the freetards, cynics and the “oh noes M$ WINBLOW$ !!11” and “ZOMG REALITY DISTORTION FIELD” crowd who are already smarting from the announcement.
In their impotent rage, all they can do is hit the vote button and hope that comments they are opposed to never have a chance to be seen by casual readers while firing off an emotional, or snarky comment to be voted up by the hive mind.
End rant.
Personally I think this is an excellent outcome for Nokia. WP7 is a very polished platform and Nokia make some pretty decent handsets.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, everything is great about windows phone seven except the browser.
Thom, if the history of Microsoft has taught us one thing, it must be that:-
“In a Deal/Partnership etc, Microsoft is NEVER the underdog”
It might very well seem to you that way at the moment. I am sure however that in due course, Nokia will fade away and become just another (potentially loss making) division of Microsoft Inc.
Looking into my crystal ball I see the following:-
I am sure that in 2-3 years there will be stuff in Windows 8/9 that won’t work properly unless it is paired with a MS-Nokia Phone. Maybe OutLook & Exchange?
If you think that Apple has lock-in down to a fine art then sit back at watch the master of the universe at work.
Then where will we be?
I’d say that you guys are probably overreacting. Nokia will not stop its investments on Meego or Qt. Only thing going away is Symbian.
Below link clearly shows that Nokia will continue its investment in Meego & the likes (albeit with some reduction)
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/rip-symbian/
As good as WP7 is currently, it is not a good tablet platform. Meego will fulfill this need for Nokia.
Well, here is hoping they actually live up to the promise of continued Meego development but it seems one of a long line of promises that change two months later.
Going back to a basic phone and a PDA combination may not be so bad though either. We’ll have to see how it goes. I might even buy the future Nokia MID if it’s a true upgrade in the N### path and runs a standard distro instead of a mashed stack.
MS wants full Windows on a tablet.
Depends what you mean by doomed. Nokia will become a marketing and distribution company of products manufactured in Asia using US and Asian designed chip sets and software from Microsoft. This can be a highly profitable business because it does not require large R&D and other capital expenses.
And they have no value beyond what HTC, etc already offers. That means nokia accepts a potentially permanent minority share of the marketplace.
I’ve fallen in love with Windows Phone 7
Well that sum up the article and the motivations behind it, unfortunately.
While it’s not a bad move for Nokia as in “they stay alive”, it’s a bad move for Nokia as a brand as in “i’ts going to be an MS phone, not a Nokia phone”.
It means Nokia is not the force driving the innovation in the OS department anymore. Just an OEM.
You also forgot to mention how Nokia just piss off devs by not supporting QT after asking them to put everything into it.
Porting QT to WP7 would have been the sensible move.
I don’t see why we should trust them on WP7 now. Android and iOS apps sell more anyway.
And why would MS allow them to port Qt? They want developers to use only .Net, Silverlight and XNA. Sure, MS cares about interoperability but only within their own walled garden – WP7, desktop windows, Zune, Xbox. Allowing Qt would be step in opposite direction, so it is not going to happen. Which also shows how much “influence” Nokia is going to get over direction of WP7.
I did not say MS would want to do it. Do not put words in people’s mouth.. or hand, in the Internet case.
I said Nokia should have had this part of the deal, for it to be an OK deal.
This is Nokia’s own fault here. If they cannot due to Microsoft, then it makes the alliance a bad move for developers, both code wise and trust wise. But especially trust wise I guess.
Simple.
And also shows from the beginning who is the boss in this alliance.
Exactly!
After having told all their partners to invest time and money (for training, etc) into Qt, this would have been their most important influence on WP7.
I wouldn’t be surprised if killing Nokia’s developer ecosystem wasn’t part of the things Microsoft wanted.
Android apps sell?
In what universe?
Thom, just as your personal bias to WP7, I’m also happy about Nokia’s move – it will cut my wondering what to buy in the next couple of years – either an Android or iOS device – but not Nokia, at any price. They needed some sort of refreshment – there you go – MS to rule the world.
I think that anybody who has used WP7 for a period of time, will surely like it a lot & will be biased. I’ve been using the platform (HD7) since December & I have nothing but really good things to say about it. I like the transitions so much that even today when I see those animations on pressing the back button, I give a faint smile.
I think it’s largely in part due the unique nature of WP7. There really is nothing else like it anywhere on the market. Like BeOS, this gives its users a sense of uniqueness – and that often clouds judgement. I suffer from the same problem, and I have to try a little bit harder to remember the platform’s shortcomings while writing the WP7/HD7 review than I do with reviews of other products.
I’ll readily admit that.
Thom, as a BeOS fan I must say I don’t get the BeOS vibe from WP7 at all. For me, what made BeOS awesome was that it was packed with things that were done in a different, smarter, innovative way. It was ahead of its time with threading & SMP, BFS, etc… What exactly is innovative about WP7?
The whole tiles thing is slightly cool, but beyond that minimal distinction I just don’t see anything that differentiates it from other platforms. Are you just saying it feels like BeOS because the GUI is sorta different-ish than existing GUI’s?
If you want the BeOS vibe in a mobile platform, then for my money webOS is the place to be. I know, I know, you haven’t been able to get your hands on a webOS device over there. But I have a feeling that will change drastically this year.
I’ve select Nokia as my phones only because of Symbian.
I need no “cutting edge” (iPhone with iOS) and I need no “good development platform” (anything with Android), need no “corporate phone” (Blackbery) and so on.
But I need good, stable, “enough” powerfull, expandable mobile phone. And that was Symbian phone (no matter S60 or S^3). Nokia.
What will force me to select Nokia right now?
Nothing.
You can still buy Symbian phones from Nokia.
Quotes & Links:
“Nokia chose Microsoft. I guess when your company is circling the toilet bowl, stepping onto a log of shit is the only way to stay afloat.”
“My current smartphone is an Android-powered Samsung Captivate. By this time next year, I might be using a Windows-powered Nokia Capitulate”
“I’m sure Nokia’s strategic partnership with Microsoft will be every bit as successful as Microsoft’s groundbreaking Kin platform.”
“The reason why Stephen Elop’s manhood hurts right now is because Ballmer is holding it wrong.”
“Connecting sheeple” http://i.imgur.com/7w0xb.png
http://bethesignal.org/blog/2011/02/11/elopocalypse-nokia-chooses-m…
http://whilos.blogsite.org/?p=203
http://www.elpauer.org/?p=630
Pretty accurate analysis actually. Nokia’s Symbian platform is sinking and rather than fight and outdevelop the competition they took the easy way out.
Those people didn’t like Nokia very much if they wanted it to continue on the path to nowhere that it was on, or just become one more Android vendor.
Besides that, posting the irrational rantings of a handful of anti-Microsoft fanboys doesn’t exactly impress me.
I read a comment posted to Arstechnica that wraps up the reaction of the haters:
They’re pissed because this deal has the potential to make WP7 prosper in the long term, and anti-Microsoft fanboys just can’t stand that. They’d rather that Nokia die off than Nokia+WP7 prosper, and it’s absolutely sad, pathetic, and juvenile.
People keep talking like Nokia are almost out of money and about to go bust.
Yes they were loosing markshare and need to plan a comeback, but they could easily push ahead with MeeGo even if took another 8months. Android, BlackBerry and the iPhone have proven that its never to late to enter the Mobile market and be competitive. This mark changes so fast that there is nothing stopping Nokia from pushing ahead with MeeGo and if marketed correctly dominating in 2012.
People talking like the roof is on fire at Nokia, but it was just a little smoke, I think fire is coming now.
Well, let’s be fair, they had to do something before things got worse. However, the answer was not this.
Basically Nokia will have a customized version of Windows Phone 7 and will be able to deliver hardware innovation at a faster pace, letting MS develop OS support for its hardware stuff.
It’s a great outcome because:
1) Nokia is very innovative in hardware support and has been damaged by not having an OS capable of use such innovative hardware quickly and good enough.
2) Microsoft will suddenly jump from being a niche player in mobile OSes to (potentially) be the the market leader when Nokia will finish integrating its line of phones with WP7
3) Microsoft has joined forces with leader market device maker.
4) Nokia suddenly has a modern platform and an entire eco-system to channel devices and services
5) Microsoft eco-system promises (promises, and I hope it will fulfill) to be opener than Apple’s as Microsoft doesn’t need to force its partners to surrender shares in income to basically any services they deliver (apps, services and so on). That means more margins to Nokia.
6) Not only, as Thom said, Google doesn’t need Nokia so it would not care to customize its OS for Nokia, but the real problem about Google partnership is Google lives by its services and plans to extend them. Cell cos are desperately trying to find room to provide their own value-added stuff and get margins from that. Google wouldn’t let Nokia develop a wide array of services as that would jeopardize Google’s own services. Microsoft, though interested in channelling its services, depends less on them because of Windows, Office, Windows Server and so on. Nokia might find more room to negotiate agreements to channel its services via its phones.
Except – if they totally change the Windows 7 platform (e.g. add Qt) it is no longer part of the WinPh7 ecosystem.
If they don’t change it, they are an “also ran” competing with Samsung and others that already have devices there and already know how to do the platform.
It isn’t an exclusive deal as far as I know. It may just prove that it wasn’t the OS – they might have even more really great hardware and then blow the integration. They need to be more than marginally better than the current players, but how do you do that with a “standard”? Price or perfrormance?
Will the Ovi store be killed before the WinPhone7 store has 100k apps?
Yeah… How could Nokia ever succesfully compete with Samsung on the same platform?
Wait what? …
No, Thom. Look at Microsoft track record. Within a few years, Nokia will be almost dead, because nobody (partners, developpers) trusts them anymore, they have no momentum (especially with three OS, all of them falling far behind everybody else), and they will be just an OEM for Windows Phones. MS will just buy it and absorb it.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/02/first-analysis…
If I were intel, I’d build immediatly a mobile division with all the people laid-off from Nokia and Meego. Al least for tablets.
Surely the old days of Nokia – platform innovator are over. Nokia has to reinvent itself around MS platform expertise and do everything for WP7 to succeed. If MS still plays it hard on platform customization to other vendors both companies will be dependent upon each other. But then after gaining significant market share MS will be free to do whatever it wants w/o Nokia consent. Nokia on the other hand has basically burned its escape bridges.
Edited 2011-02-11 18:21 UTC
Sets the stage for MS to yank the rug on nokia at the last minute and run off to some asian handset manufacturer with new visions of dominating the market.
Nahhh…that would *never* happen.
I fully realize that from a business standpoint, partnering with Microsoft makes sense. But I bought the N900 because it was open (mostly), because it showed respect to the customer by not having to have them jailbreak the phone to unlock it’s potential, and because the development platform was the best by far (even if it was never fully taken advantage of). Windows Phone 7 obliterates all of this. The N900 will be the last Nokia phone I will ever purchase.
amen to that. the problem here is that IMHO nokia failed regarding their software efforts to create a competitive smartphone. Unfortunately they changed out their horse that never got out of the gate for another horse that’s gimping along.
I’d say an interesting party to watch in this mess is HP and what they do with WebOS. If they’re smart they’ll quickly move to woo the meego guys (and probably get them).
The day Meego was announced, I made the same conclusion and went to buy a N900.
You say that they will get to influence the future development of phone 7 more than with android. Why is that a good thing for nokia or microsoft? The whole reason they are in this position is that they were not able to make good decisions about ther own OS. So now they get to mess up microsoft’s also? (Here I take your word for it not beeing messed up already). And that is supposed to be better, how?
Stock fell 10% today, not because the market thinks phone 7 is bad, but because this proves that nokia could not create a good os in 5 years of trying, that is really bad when looking at android and webOS.
I see I am too late to say “inb4 MS haters”.
As I’ve said in another comment I’m a new WP7 user and a very happy one.
But I’m not quite sure your argument about differentiation is quite right Thom.
Yes Nokia will have a big say in the development of the OS and could well bring in some of their nice little features which are patented etc.
But I cannot see there being different builds of WP7 for Nokia otherwise that would create the platform fragmentation Microsoft has worked hard to prevent. So all the other WP7 handset manufacturers will benefit from what Nokia bring to the OS.
Yes, but they are still Nokia’s features, and Nokia will know about them from the get-go, and have hardware ready from the get-go that makes use of them.
HTC, LG and Samsung will be faster than Nokia. Bet?
Nokia has always been on the slow side of things.
MS will involve all its customers (remember they have to pay to get WP7) in the development. Elop is just trying to sell his capitulation.
We will see.
Can we stop saying this as if people don’t pay licensing fees for Android? It’s a really misleading statement. To get the complete Android experience, you do in fact pay Google for their applications and marketplace. They also get to tell you what to do, and how to do it, or no marketplace.
Also, there is no patent indemnification for OEMs by Google (crickets chirped as HTC was extorted by Microsoft), so that’s an additional cost ontop of the supposedly free Android.
Android is developed in secret, with no patches being accepted, and then the resulting source code is dropped onto everyone once Google has had its way with it. What are you going to do, fork Android, and not get marketplace apps?
Everyone needs to get real, this was Nokia’s best bet moving forward.
You’ve described what you think Android’s shortcomings are but you don’t go into why using Windows is better.
The one thing you never, ever do is give up complete control of your platform.
Marketplace? It would be nice if WP had one, but no one wants a third one.
Patent indemnification, a unified non fragmented experience, superior development platform, integration with valuable brands (WP7 has ALREADY eaten Android’s lunch in gaming.).
Besides, OEMs and operators have all said they want a third way. The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is growing at the rate of a thousand apps every two weeks, and has exploded to 8,000 apps. Creating an app in Windows Phone 7 is many, many times easier than with iOS or Android, and this is the shared of opinion of many who have tried.
No one who has bought an Android phone cares I’m afraid. Developers and users also don’t want a third application store that has absolutely nothing in it. There’s only so much you can do gaming-wise on a phone as well.
They haven’t. Microsoft claims that they have, but they just haven’t. They have enough on their plate at the moment supporting iOS and Android as well as Symbian. You can’t complain about fragmentation on the one hand and then claim that another OS is going to make any difference.
The market has made it abundantly clear that they don’t want a Windows phone for a very, very long time. That’s why the past few years are littered with companies who’ve got burned partnering with Microsoft on mobiles.
Windows Phone has failed. It’s time to identify the reasons why and either do something about them or can the thing. Putting loaded CEOs into other companies to use your products that end up getting burned when you fail is not going to work.
It’s a wonder Microsoft gets any partners at all.
Microsoft gets partners (aka cannon fodder) when those partners are in trouble. They get milked dry by MS and then left for dead.
MS have done this many times before. They get caught with their hands in the cookie jar, pay the cost in court (sometimes hundreds of millions) and walk away smiling sweetly to themselves.
They then integrate the stuff they have stolen/got caught/paid the fine for into their core products and then go on the prowl for the next sucker company to grind into the dust.
My guess is that Nokia will wither & die in 2-3 years. I’d love to be proved wrong and that MS has changed but there is far too much of a hint of ‘desperation’ in this move by Nokia to leave me with any confidence.
As Franken wrote in http://www.osnews.com/thread?462068:
The decision to partner with Microsoft is not good, But better than choosing Android. Everyone else already has it. But the move to Microsoft is a bad one.
Around 2006/2007 Nokia won the battle in the smartphone department from Microsoft. But was almost instantly beaten by Apple, Blackberry and later Android.
Since then Nokia struggles and makes many bad decisions.
Nokia is/was king with mobile keyboard input.
Their transition to touchscreen is/was bad with series 60 v5 & symbian ^3.
They gave up Maemo to easily and teamed up with Intel in Meego. There was even talk about an atom based phone! How weird is that?
Maemo was almost there and then Nokia screwed up with Intel, because integrating software takes ages. It’s not Lego.
Their real power lies in dumb-phones and Nokia is still king in this department. The real challenge for Nokia should be to sell smart-phones to the dumb-phone user base! And Nokia has the perfect OS for a smart dumb-phone.
Amen. This is why Google develops Android on its own.
…please welcome the new IBM !
It’s incredible how history repeats itself.
Edited 2011-02-11 13:38 UTC
Thom, it is not like good .net developers are instantly available and will have great customizations ready in no time. Maybe you should learn a few things about software development. There won’t be any deep customizations of WindowsP7 from Nokia anytime soon.
Hiring and integrating people takes time. Especially when you have fire hundreds(thousands) of C++ devs.
And anyways, it is not like a Nokia WP7 phone will be ready tomorrow. It will be the end of the year. A Meego phone could have been ready by that time.
Windows Phone 7 OEMs have access to the native SDK. I’m sure their C++ expertise won’t go to waste.
Right… Do I have access to native apis? No…Do I want them? Yes…Can I apply anywhere to get them? No.
I like developing in Silverlight, very neat and great for thin web frontends. Good for customising the phone in any meaningful way? NO.
Meego would have allowed that. Android allows it…however android suffers from code dumps and if you wanted to send in a patch to fix any problem with android, google does not accept it (see their non Gmail mail app).
This kind of restriction limits creativity in the platform (see how some very cool iOS apps and customizations need to have jailbroken phones).
There also isn’t that much general widespread available knowledge of the winCE kernel unlike iOS with darwin and WebOS and Android with the linux kernel. This also limits the fun one can have with the phone.
One might say that so what….Windows mobile had Cooked ROMs so obviously people could do something; Cooked ROMs were hacks and often rather crappy. On Android you have CyanogenMod, something simply not possible with any other platform barring meego (which I was excited for as it would have allowed CyanogenMod++ type distros and that it might even have allowed changes back into Mainline).
Edited 2011-02-11 15:03 UTC
WP7 is not meant to be heavily customized. WP7 is meant to provide a consistent experience across a broad range of devices. This is why WP7 performs, looks, and feels the same across the 10 devices it launched on.
Find me 10 Android devices that do the same. Hell, find me 5. 2?
All native code does is pave the way for bugs, leaks, and performance losses. Managed code is the saving grace of the platform, and I for one hope that they never release a native SDK for general consumption.
I’d much rather them wrap native APIs in managed code and release them over time, than let people start dealing with raw pointers on WP7.
Furthermore, this was largely besides the point, I merely mentioned that OEMs get native SDK access, and that Nokia would have no trouble adapting its existing talent to WP7.
MFC/ATL are world different than QT (which isn’t even pure C++). These apis are not even in the same league productivity wise. Swithing nokia lowlevel devs to these apis is completely pointess. They’d better be switched to .net or (more efectively) replaced with fresh exprienced .net team.
Let me reiterate, letting MS do the UI for N phones wasn’t the baddest idea they could convey, but wasting QT potential definately was.
Well.
I would prefer Nokia to go with webOS, but choosing WP7 is not bad choice either.
Nokia needed a platform, and Microsoft needed a phone maker, it seems the right moment to make this partnership.
MeeGO:
MeeGO is/was promising but Nokia couldn’t wait until the end of 2011 to release a complete product. From an open source point of view is bad for the overall platform, but from a business point of view investing and waiting for MeeGO was even riskier than adopting WP7.
Android:
Although I’ve read valid arguments about Android been more convenient for “differentiation” I think the problem with Android could be that they didn’t want to develop their own launcher – address book – sms – etc just to see how a few weeks later their modified apk’s are posted in forums.
Time will tell.
Hopefully they can still release some MeeGo devices and if people really want them then maybe they will make more.
But it would had nice if they put more focus on them..
Buf if you see this as a WP + MeeGo route vs exclusive MeeGo route then it looks quite good. You get an existing “eco-system” as he express it. An OS which really exist and works. And something you can release quite soon. Meanwhile you can keep on developing MeeGo until it works well. Release that to. And have both.
If they would supply the market then QT on both made sense. If the WP phones run Microsofts market then I guess it doesn’t matter. Some WP tools for those and some Nokia/QT tools for MeeGo.
Meanwhile, Fujitsu and Intel are moving
http://www.osnews.com/thread?462611
Imagine the patent portfolio of Microsoft and Nokia combined. That’s a force to be reckoned with. Maybe even to the demise of Android?
But isn’t Nokia suing Apple over the iOS devices and not Android?
IBM had a special deal with Microsoft, we all know how it ended.
Novell had a special deal with Microsoft, we all know how it ended.
DEC had a special deal with Microsoft, we all know how it ended.
SGI had a special deal with Microsoft, …
Lets put it plain, Microsoft has a very smart management that will try all tactics to empower itself and once it get what it wants you better have something to keep them from dump you.
Even if Nokia has a special deal now, it does not extend automatically to a new WinPh version. And in a very limited time Nokia may be just one more player. That is how software business works.
The ’90s called, they want your paranoia back.
You’re looking at this as if Microsoft is a monopoly in the mobile phone world. They’re anything but. The NEED Nokia to be successful.
The XXIst century called, they don’t want your Zune and Kin.
And they were nothing on Client/Server, as they were nothing on 3D expertise, as they were nothing on Server infra-structure. But used very well the “underdog” image and turned the table. They looked for the right things: expertize, inter-communication and association to be viewed as a trustful and capable player. Once they got what they wanted …, it is history now.
Edited 2011-02-11 14:40 UTC
Actually, the 80s called. They tell us that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
No they don’t. They’re going to get Windows on to a lot of phones and they’ve got a cushy little number, because they control the platform. If Nokia goes bust they’ll move on to something else. Nokia is taking all the risk here.
Edited 2011-02-11 17:17 UTC
Yes, this deal is much better for Microsoft than for Nokia, just as the deals the OP listed.
Soon Samsung et al are going to go to their sales rep and tell him “wtf dude, why do Nokia get this special treatment? Why arent we allowed to do what they’re doing? Get your shit together or we’ll move to something else.”
After this one of two things will happen. MS will either let all Win7 OEM’s do what Nokia does (contracts arent forever, ay know) or the other OEM’s will jump ship for something else.
Guess what’s Microsoft’s preferred option and guess how that will work out for Nokia…
Those other companies are already putting 90% of their effort into Android anyway, so who cares? And that’s why Nokia gets the special treatment – they, unlike the others, are going all in with WP7.
They needed IBM too…
When they no longer need Nokia, then Nokia will be dropped and screwed. MS has a long history of screwing their “partners” and they have done nothing to suggest that this behaviour is going to end.
Did Microsoft kill their hardware or did they become redundant due to lack of innovation?
Except for IBM, I’m not sure if Microsoft burned them. Even in case of IBM, MS did whatever they did to allow clones to come up so that they can sell more OS licenses.
But, this is not the case today. WP7 is available for everybody. So, where are the chances for Nokia to get burned?
What could happen is what has happened to every other company who has partnered with Microsoft to put Windows on phones – few people buy them and they either lose a ton of money or go bust.
DEC, SGI, and Novell killed themselves off for reasons having nothing to do with Microsoft, and acobar (and those that uprated his comment) knows it. But I’m sure he/she copy-pastes that lame comment over and over (it reads like regurgitated talking points) at various message boards and gets dozens of uprates from the seemingly mindless Microsoft bashers.
Edited 2011-02-12 15:32 UTC
Microsoft just killed off an up and coming competitor Linux OS, and dealt a severe blow to the most promising application development platform on Linux (Qt) and provided a massive setback for KDE.
All while gaining Nokia’s massive distribution channels, various global entrenchments, and a halfway decent hardware OEM.
They just caused an entire species of bird to go extinct with one stone.
Qt has been up and coming and promising for years now. Nothing has materialised out of it. An absolutely great development environment, BUT NOBODY IS USING IT. I don’t understand how this doesn’t get into people’s brains. Nokia was pouring money into a bottomless pit – a very beautiful pit with lovely decorations and stable foundations, but bottomless nonetheless.
Qt is one of the most hyped products in history, yet besides KDE, is there anyone serious even using it? IT has ZERO presence in the mobile world and it has ZERO presence in the desktop world (other than KDE, putting it at about 0.5% of the world’s desktops). That’s the cold and harsh truth.
.NET on the other hand…
I don’t disagree, but it was the best Linux had in terms of a development platform. I was just commenting on the genius of the move by Microsoft. It makes good business sense, beyond the obvious help it will give WP7.
As a .NET developer I wholeheartedly agree.
.net (as in C# and VB#) on the other hand has 8000 WP7 apps and a lot of enterprise shit. Then there is the über popular Silverlight.
Which great .net applications are so widely used?
Qt has stuff from Google, Adobe, Rovio, Skype etc, it may not be much but there more popular Qt apps than real .net apps.
Applications and games on Windows are still C++.
Edit: Oh, there also are the dozens of great Xbox live arcade and indie games.
Edited 2011-02-11 15:05 UTC
Bingo.
Well actually, no. In normal enterprises that have more sense than money COM, C++ and VB still rules. Anything that’s been rewritten in the past ten years have been web applications. They’re easy to run, don’t need installed and the development tools are more varied and cheaper.
Those who read MSDN might think .Net is widely used, but it isn’t used as much as a lot of people would like you to believe. If Microsoft doesn’t use it very much and isn’t rewriting everything in it then why should everyone else?
normal enterprises that have more sense than money COM, C++ and VB still rules
WTF?
Get out of here you Visual basic 6 freak. COM, VB, C++? those where freaking hard technologies to work on Windows, dude, seriously, you are just making a bufon of yourself.
No, I’m afraid you’re just making yourself look like a right twit and showing your lack of real-world experience – as we all know.
There are a massive amount of desktop applications written with COM, C++ and VB. How difficult you think they are to use is totally irrelevant. Those applications are not going to magically rewrite themselves in every version of .Net. Everything that there has been to write on the desktop just about has been.
Let’s rewrite things in something brand new that isn’t going to add any functionality? Errrrr, no. That’s a business case from the loony bin, but it gets repeated often around here.
Microsoft lost the mobile API war, they lost the web API war and they’re even finding it difficult to win the API war on their own operating system.
Really?
.NET is probably the most popular framework in use right now. Additionally, C# is the 6th most popular programming language, of which includes php and python which aren’t really suitable for application development.
You can keep pushing shit down my throat, I’m never going to enjoy it.
It might be popular with new job postings, but compared to the lines of code written with other web and frameworks where Microsoft has no real presence and the historical inertia of C++, VB and COM, it is a pretty miniscule proportion of the whole.
The only real proper .net wpf/silverlight style application that is in wide use is VS2010. This is primarily due to microsofts own incompetence in pushing wpf and silverlight (despite being excellent technically).
Silverlight is quite good for line of business apps that are thin frontends to web services good for many apps in WP7 but I have yet to see a decent beefy application using silverlight.
I also have yet to see a really good game using .net. Are there any speedy 3D engines in .net? Chances of Unreal Engine on WP7 == 0.
Winforms, WPF, and Silverlight have very strong footholds in the enterprise sector with some very large and complex apps leveraging the three. I’ve both helped develop, and seen in house solutions which blow my mind at how cool they are.
Unity3D is all over the app store. XNA all over WP7 and XBox Live. The game performance is relatively good compared to native games (Recent versions of the CLR have achieved near parity in key scenarios heavily used by things like game AI and Physics, and of course anything GPU bound is not reliant on the .NET CLR) and the development is a hell of a lot easier.
Also, be very careful of getting into the mind set of “It’s native so it must be faster”. In fact, a lot of games are slower, glitchier, and less polished because you need to deal with the four headed, twelve armed monster that is C++. Wrestling with, not to mention slaying that beast, is a black art.
Total bollocks.
I don’t care what cushy little number project you’ve got yourself on to that you might deliver some time in the next decade, when you’ve moved it to .Net 54.2 for the umpteenth time, but normal enterprises are chock full of legacy COM, C++ and VB applications that won’t be rewritten in .Net. Anything new or rewritten in the past decade was written as a web application. That’s right. One of those things that doesn’t need a Windows platform.
People have been telling me that .Net has been happening for a decade, and while I occasionally see the odd system that’s been rewritten about fifteen times for Winforms, WPF, Silverlight or whatever the MSDN loons have put out this week, the stuff that sits there and actually works uses…….something else.
So no one apart from Microsoft then? Glad we cleared that up.
It’s alright. Game developers have been doing that for years, and they’ve been doing unspeakable things in that that most normal developers would never do because speed matters.
We took it from white board to in customers hands in four months. It was a rewrite of a legacy C++ LOB app filled to the brim with COM using very legacy database solutions. We turned it into a mixed mode WPF app with O/RM using the Entity Framework, and to boot we were able to significantly improve performance, feature set, and maintainability (through separation of concerns, unit testing, and UI automation). We cut tens of thousands out of support dollars for a fraction of the cost it took to maintain that sinking ship for the same amount of time.
Most shops are moving towards at least WinForms, some WPF and some Silverlight depending on how well its pitched and what kind of needs they have.
Most anybody who does this kind of contracted work already specializes in both COM iterop and mixed mode applications, insofar as to maintain a lot of business logic, or at least salvage a significant portion of it. Things move very quickly once we get whiteboarded.
This is ridiculously false. Don’t just make shit up. The majority of LOB I see is all .NET, differing versions (some even .NET1.0/1.1) but the vast majority are .NET for the LOB sector.
The few that have those creaky MFC and C++ solutions are very dated and its usually the one thing hindering them from moving to a more modern OS because it relies on some weird shim specific to that version of Windows. A worse horror is one where most of the original maintainers of the code have gone, or the contracted company doesnt even exist anymore, so they really have no idea whats going on.
[q\
People have been telling me that .Net has been happening for a decade, and while I occasionally see the odd system that’s been rewritten about fifteen times for Winforms, WPF, Silverlight or whatever the MSDN loons have put out this week, the stuff that sits there and actually works uses…….something else.
[/q]
.NET is not coming. .NET has arrived. The developers number in the millions. C# is extremely popular, Visual Studio is the undisputed IDE king. The age of these barbaric, runtimeless languages has come and gone. I for one, embrace our type safe, just in time compiling overlords.
Those are all frameworks used by thousands and thousands of developers. They have quite the following.
Most of the performance gains in the video game sector from the past decade have been in the realm of pure graphics. When it comes to using the GPU: A shader is a shader. Done in C++ or done in XNA with C# or done in Unity with UnityScript, once it’s on the GPU, it does not matter. So a lot of the worries about performance is misplaced.
Areas which legitimately may suffer under a managed environment are physics, AI, scene node construction and management, some CPU bound calculations on geometry, things like that. However many SIMD instructions exist in .NET (Mono.Simd comes to mind) which brings the performance on par, and even in some cases, surpasses native code performance due to the JITer having more runtime intelligence about the target machine than a compile time toolchain.
Congrats! So your customer moved from a Windows only solution to … another Windows only solution. Poor idiots ..
ROTFL. Yer, that’s why .Net simply hasn’t happened in the past decade despite what idiots like this tell us.
Right, so you want us to rewrite this application that took us years to develop and maintain that now works in something completely new and shiny, and it will do exactly the same thing functionally if we’re lucky? Errr, right. That support reduction is the usual crock you get when this is raised. Web applications don’t need installation or deployment which is why people have found those more interesting in the past decade.
Just about everything significant that’s needed to be written for the desktop has already been written and the inertia from those applications is huge.
Hopefully you do realise that web-applications CAN be .NET as well!
With proper code seperation, the actual business logic is nicely put in a seperate project and then a “WinForms” front-end is made for “inhouse power use” and a “WebForms” front-end is made for “access for everyone”. More and more the WebForms front-end might be made into a Silverlight front-end as well, all running on the same back-end code.
Web-applications are nice for deployment and basic use
“Real” apllications just allow much more power
and basically ALL new Microsoft development is done with .NET, allowing web/windows/smartphone apps all from the same codebase all the time. Look at SharePoint or Expression products. Of course low level development still isn’t done in .NET and tools like Office aren’t (completely) converted (yet)
Most of that isn’t soo true. I can only speak for a few places, but my last job was rewritting all those old VB applications to .Net WinForm applications.
I have a friend who writes a lot of .Net Desktop application and .Net web application for enterprises. .Net is quite big here in Minneapolis/St.Paul area.
Silverlight isn’t designed for beefy applications but you can use it as an interface for anything.
Magicka.
You really don’t want to go there, lol. Are you forgetting about Unity3D which powers over 1,000 iPhone app store games with 250,000 registered users? XNA which has an XBox Live Indie Games install base of 1,500?
Hell, let’s just see how many projects are powered by Mono: http://www.mono-project.com/Companies_Using_Mono
What about Visual Studio? Expression Blend? WebMatrix?
.NET has a pretty tight grip on the Line of Business enterprise sector as well.
Then there’s the Windows Mobile 6 Compact Framework, the Miro Framework used in embedded programming.
The .NET install base is in the millions, with Visual Studio regularly achieving 4-5 million downloads. Most estimates peg the developer base at 6 million world wide.
What about Qt?
See http://www.osnews.com/thread?462187 for only the most notable uses.
Paint.net, keepass, fasttask, cdburnerXP and some others. .NET is mostly used in enterprise but there are a lot more consumer applications in .NET than Java.
Those companies are also porting to multiple platforms. .NET is obviously limited when it comes to cross-platform development. There is Mono but there are plenty of cases where Qt would be a better choice. But Qt is not perfect and still has some issues with local integration which is why so many Qt applications are actually hybrids and not portable. Those issues will be worked out eventually though.
MS still focuses game development around C++ and DX. There is also the legacy factor whereby programs like Photoshop would be very expensive to re-write in .NET. Game companies have millions of lines of C++ code that they do not want to re-write in anything.
Qt is quality software and I was disappointed when Google decided to use their weird non-standard Java instead of Qt.
But I don’t think MeeGo had a chance at this point which is why I don’t think developers lost out. MeeGo needed to come out before WP7.
Qt is one of the most hyped products in history
Amen.
What doesn’t get into peoples’ thick skulls is that Nokia was bloody useless at creating a development platform because they wanted to somehow protect Symbian. It wasn’t that Qt was no good at all.
You don’t solve having little in the way of a developer community and reacting to the competition by selling off your development platform to someone else.
Speaking of zero presence……and that’s on a platform that Microsoft controls.
I beg to disagree. QT is quite successful on Windows for small companies that didn’t want to go, .net or java.
For Desktop C++ development it started to shape up as a standard.
Edited 2011-02-11 18:45 UTC
Qt have its queers in some platforms, is not perfect, and I bet in mobil it wasn’t the wonder they tought.
“It work great on Windows”, everyting works great in Windows, but how about the other platforms? the “Runs everywhere” also means “Debug everywhere”.
queers or not, QT is always orders or magnitude cheaper than a rewrite. And being a native toolkit it always enables you to have a controll which parts will go native.
That combination of productivity/eng. freedom/performance are not shared by any other framework I know about.
HOOOOW can you say this?
Qt is most notably used in Autodesk [7][8], Google Earth, KDE, Adobe Photoshop Album, the European Space Agency [9], OPIE, Skype, VLC media player [10], Samsung [11], Philips [12], Panasonic [13] and VirtualBox.
[7] http://qt.nokia.com/qt-in-use/autodesk/
[8] http://qt.nokia.com/qt-in-use/qt-in-visual-effects
[9] http://qt.nokia.com/qt-in-use/story/customer/esa-european-space-age…
[10] http://qt.nokia.com/qt-in-use/story/app/vlc-player/
[11] http://qt.nokia.com/qt-in-use/qt-in-home-media
[12] http://qt.nokia.com/qt-in-use/qt-in-ip-communications
[13] http://qt.nokia.com/about/news/panasonic-selects-qt-for-hd-video-sy…
This is bullshit. I can name plenty of apps on the Desktop that use Qt. Maya, Lightwave, Miri, VLC, Nuke. I have more but don’t want to make this into a list of applications. Qt is slowly starting to be used heavily in the content industry application development, especially if the developers value cross platform capability and plan to include Linux.
.Net is more prevalent if your whole ecosystem revolves only around windows. However developers that value cross platform development will choose Qt.
How about you use Google Thom before making silly comments. I totally agree with you on the whole mobile part. Qt has no presence there other than Meego and with the failure of that platform, now it never will.
Edited 2011-02-11 23:34 UTC
Obviously, Thom has a different definition of ZERO and NOBODY than most of us.
————
“400.000 developersâ€
“tens of thousands of companies in multiple industries actively using and contributing to Qtâ€
“Qt everywhere. Qt continues to make vast inroads into especially low end Linux devices and distro’s. Qt also continues to provide a platform for others to innovate and differentiate upon. For example Dreamworks switching all their internal animation tools to Qt and making cool movies like ‘MegaMind’ and ‘How to Train Your Dragon’â€
– Daniel Kihlberg, Director Qt Ecosystem
http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/12/nokia-new-strategic-direction-w…
Microsoft didn’t kill off anything. Nokia screwed up by partnering with Intel who has just been experimenting with how far they can take x86.
Nokia should have focused on ARM from the beginning and let another company experiment with pint sized 486 phones. Note that Microsoft had zero interest in pushing a WP7 atom phone despite their history with Intel and x86. I suspect they had concerns over power consumption and went the safe route.
Nokia has also had internal problems. They have plenty of engineers on staff so that usually means management.
I think it’s safe to say Meego is effectively dead, Intel will never get it out of the door. At least with Nokia it at least had a fighting chance to see some form of release.
Qt similarly has been dealt a fatal blow by one of its biggest investors and contributors, Nokia lit a fire under Qt’s ass ever since it aquired TrollTech. Now what?
For as independent as many open source projects like to claim they are, they sure are dependent on their corporate overlords. Otherwise they wouldn’t be running around like a chicken with its head cut off over at the Meego and Qt forums.
This is quite the spectacle.
Well, MS definately had its hand in decision not to enable QT on Nokia WinPhone.
So they may not started the troubles but now they hold the axe.
Edited 2011-02-13 14:05 UTC
Given Nokia’s circumstances, partnering with Microsoft (on the surface) makes sense. However, it seems that Microsoft’s current and previous partners in the mobile space may have wished they had gone with someone else…anyone else!
http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/11/in-memoriam-microsofts-previous-st…
I can hear the cries of “…but this time it will be different”. My friends, you don’t change the devil…THE DEVIL CHANGES YOU!
Good luck, Nokia…you’re going to need it.
Edited 2011-02-11 15:33 UTC
Not for going with WP7, that I understand, but not leveraging Qt as a development option. They are allowing Microsoft to maintain the monopoly on dev tools for WP7 and killing QT mobility. <qoute> “Microsoft would make available the existing free Windows Phone Developer Tools; Visual Studio 2010, Expression, Silverlight and the XNA Framework to developers. Together, we will provide guidance for developers wishing to port their applications to Windows Phone. ” </qoute>
I strongly believe, this was a really bad move by Nokia. Yes, they may have some influence on WP7 development – but knowing Microsoft, they’ll do what they want/need/think is best for their very own interest.
Nokia has had a very nice and clear strategy of moving from a Symbian “dumb”-phone (are they really dumb? Hell, how stupid is having to charge a “smart” phone once a day?) to a Qt based smart-phone environment for developers. Well, Qt doesn’t run on WP7, does it?
MeeGo would have been a really great way for developers for migrating to a high-end smart phone. I was intrigued by Hadrien’s link to “Why Nokia OS Strategy is Right for Nokia…” ( http://www.osnews.com/comments/24393 )
So long, Nokia.
Cheers.
WRONG WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is strange.. I think I could have stomached them going with WebOS. Hp + Nokia would have been a beastly proposal.
Come someone please explain to me the one meego device by the end of the year thing?
Is meego 1.2 going to be really that feature incomplete that they won’t be able to ship a handset with it when it releases in april?
Assuming it is, and that this entire time nokia hasn’t had a handset design in the works for meego that they can just slap windows phone 7 on, then don’t they still need to design a handset for windows phone 7?
Do they really expect to be able to make such a huge paradigm shift and ship more than one phone before the end of the year using windows phone 7?
Has anyone ever signed big agreements with Microsoft and *not* been screwed over? I doubt that Nokia will be any different. Its not like WP7 is doing well now with their current hardware partners, so somehow having Nokia making them will magically make them sell better?
Well, yes, actually. Lol.
Nokia has incredible global reach, in markets Microsoft has not, or cant (due to not having worked out agreements for yet) moved into. Their distribution channel and rapport with a lot of established content providers, operators, etc. is a valuable asset.
I think the big question is whether this alienates other WP7 customers (HTC, Samsung, etc). By allowing Nokia to customise WP7, and not other companies, is Microsoft conceding the rest of the market to Android? It’s a pretty big bet by Microsoft, if their strategy was based on domination. There is no guarantee that Nokia will continue to be the dominant force it was before, if the events of the last year are anything to go by. Nokia has lost so much share, and will lose more before the year is up. WP7 gains market share, but potentially loses a chance to be dominant, if it had one.
Microsoft probably reasoned that this was a no brainer because without Nokia, their OS was looking dead in the water.
Microsoft figures it’s better to have a partner that is 100% in than 3 partners that are pushing Android and are only dabbling in WP7 as an avocation.
How long has Nokia been working on Maemo/Meego? Something is very wrong with the company when it takes them this long to get a Linux-based OS to market. It isn’t as of they are building an OS from scratch and they spend plenty on R&D.
Then they partnered with Intel who has no experience in mobile phones or operating systems.
Even if they got their one MeeGo phone out at the end of the year it would not have caused a Qt revolution. At current rates it would probably would have had bugs and required another year of tweaking. That would be well into 2012 and it would have to compete with a slew of new phones, all offering more to consumers.
The CEO made the right decision to abandon ship. MeeGo was on track to bomb, Qt wouldn’t have saved it.
It can be that Qt wasn’t the wonder they thougth and was totally overrated and full of bugs? I do think so.
MeeGo phones were supposed to come out last year and the CEO has stated that they still don’t have anything comparable to the first iphone.
They are having development problems, I don’t see how anyone could conclude otherwise.
Edited 2011-02-11 19:01 UTC
To avoid repeating it again, we can see
http://www.osnews.com/thread?462187
Maybe there’s something fundamentally wrong with that linux distro inspired development model. I’ve seen to many companies that announce linux revolutionary products in mobile to eventually come up with nothing but burned milions.
On the other hand Google and HP are basically using heavily customized linux kernel as a HAL slapping own user space over it. Quite pragmatic choice.
For one they are strongly discouraging end devs from accessing the native system layer.
I think nothing stops the two from dumping linux in the long term (the Alien software seems like a prove to that).
That’s a good point.
Going with the mini Linux distro approach has caused a lot more problems for companies than the modified kernel as a base for a new OS approach.
The problem is definitely not the Linux kernel. It’s well established that even unmodified it can be relied upon for embedded use.
Linux is very portable but it seems that a lot of what goes into a distro is not. The mini Linux distro approach has been a tar baby for companies like Nokia. They think they are saving time but run into unforeseen interdependencies.
Yeah, goode point.Complicated userland and complexity of full modularity (the “UNIX Philosophy”).
Auction: Advanced, well established Framework for sale…
IMHO Nokia will sell QT pretty soon as it doesn’t make sense to invest in or own something you can’t use to generate the amount of money you envisioned when you bought it.
Any bidders?
Canonical where are you?
Why would Canocial spend a dime in something is getting for free?
Well, Trolltech had some engineers working on it and paid them with money obtained from commercial licenses.
Nokia bought QT from Trolltech and dumped previous work on a GTK solution in the hope to use QT as a leverage to make their phones more appealing.
Canonical started to switch horses (QT in addition to or totally replacing GTK…).
Now Nokia has no use for QT anymore and canonical sits on a new horse and the future of it is uncertain.
If canonical buys QT they can direct the future of their new horse…
Just my $0.02… anyone is entitled to disagree.
People forget that Trolltech was a healthy, self sustaining business that Nokia paid a handsome amount for.
If they really aren’t interested in investing in it any more and have not promised MS to kill it, they might as well let it go again.
That will not reach the level of aspiration everybody got after QT-Meego announcements, but will surely be enough to fund further development of the library (esp. now that nokia helped to modernize it big time) and the keep the KDE ecosystem alive.
Ultimately, it’s GPL. It’s too good piece of code to be left in dark by the community.
The only feat you could get with such an purchase are remnants of the dev team an copyrights allowing you to make a closed source fork.
None of that is of particular value for OSS companies.
Edited 2011-02-11 19:24 UTC
Let me get this straight. Symbian is a horrible OS because it’s old. WP7 is good because it is new. What an insightful analysis of “strategy.”
You realize Nokia just traded “up” to an OS with no copy/paste, no multitasking, single-closed developer platform with a rather junky toolchain all for a UI experience that seems not to really click with end users but hey, its got kinetic scrolling so it must be good! Oh and a app store with fewer apps of generally lesser quality than Ovi.
No it’s good because Nokia will be able to customize it! What? They have full control over Symbian/Maemo customization too. This is just backtracking spin.
WP7-based phones sold so few units in the US not even MS will talk about it and despite a rather heavy marketing push. We’re talking Kin numbers here. No one wanted it. No one is going to want a nokiasoft version neither US nor abroad and certainly not in Latin America or Asia.
As a long term third party developer for Nokia, all I can say is, end of Nokia. Goodbye. It’s too bad RIM isn’t positioned to attack those markets aggressively atm.
P.S. Thom you really have no clue in the mobile space. Sorry. Worst possible strategy for Nokia, pretty much dismantles half the company when it should have been aggressively expanding and innovating either via development or acquisition ala RIM and QNX.
And what would your plan be? Have them work to get their their SINGLE Meego phone out at the end of the year? A smartphone that the CEO admits will not be as good as the original iphone? Stick with Symbian which looks dated compared to everything else? That would just mean that their platform keeps burning.
I’m also not sure why everyone expects WP7 sales to be explosive out of the gate. Android sales took a few months to build and they had the advantage of the Verizon market which really wanted the iphone but would take any knock-off. Even if they got a SINGLE MeeGo phone at the end of the year it would likely need at least six more months of refinement, if not a year. That is too much time. Better RIM and HP phones would be out by then. They have spent too much time with MeeGo and need to cut their losses for the sake of the company.
Partnering with MS is a risk but one they need to take. WP7 is a quality OS, just read the user reviews. But it lacks a software library and that is partly from not having a large userbase. Nokia can help them boost the userbase while cutting a deal that brings in more revenue than by sticking with MeeGo.
Now I think they have initially planned to continue modernizing Symbian while developing Meego for just one year to come, so it wasn’t really out of schedule.
The disappointing reception of N8 (which is light years above prev. gen symbian anyway, and not a bad phone at all) and year to year market share figures have been too much for the board however.
Edited 2011-02-11 20:28 UTC
Please note that WP7 is not a savior for them this year anyway.
Unless they are finishing their customizations now (which can’t be possible given short time from their former strategy announcements and short presence of the system itself) and are ready to put some hardware to market in the coming weeks they will continue to loose marketshare in droves, additionally fueled by developer stir and uncertainty. Obviously can’t just release vanilla WP phone quick, that would be branding subsidence.
Next year they’d better come up with full lineup of hw that sweeps all the competition of the floor (incl. IPhone 5) or their prospects in mobile space are quite bleak.
They may have not any meego gear in store for this year but they have nothing with WP7 either.
So the comparison of the outcome should take into account the situation in 12 months, not now:
– MS with ??? market share (struggling) and a somehow more complete WP7 + some nokia customizations that are meant to bring the WOW factor back (after 12 months the platform will have come off headlines)
– Meego with 0 market share, some loyal dev following and potentially nice UI concepts coming from their freedom to shape the platform.
If we assume they weren’t competent enough to pull anything (better that WP7) off with meego next year that they, well, deserve their fate, but I simply don’t want to accept that.
Edited 2011-02-11 21:02 UTC
The wouldn’t be able to create an OS as good as WP7 in 2 years and I’m sure that was factored into their decision. Try WP7 out for yourself, I’m still shocked that it is a MS 1.0 release.
MeeGo has the Qt dev advantage but the .NET community is larger.
But more importantly MeeGo has been in development for years and still isn’t ready. Like I said before I’m sure it would take another year after release to get the bugs out and they don’t have that kind of time. They also wouldn’t have much to offer consumers since to them it would look like Android but without the software library.
They had to partner with another platform and using Android just feeds the beast. Partnering with MS gives them a chance at breaking up the market to prevent a duopoly and makes it easier to enter later with their own OS. It’s a better strategy than creating a second rate Android. MS can also be leveraged, Google probably laughed at the idea of helping Nokia.
It’s commonly accepted that 2011 was the last year they could have enterd the market with their own platform.
Hoping that it would be easier in say 2013 with market divided between 3 major players, incl. one that their present sales depend on is a pure nonsese.
Now I see their fate as a market dominant force was sealed long time ago (probably at the Iphone premiere). But a from accepting that simple fact to becoming a just an OEM… there’s a whole world of options beetween that.
They should have start the harsh restructirization, preparing for inevitable scaling down of revenue a year ago and announce the results now. In the mean time they should have put all the resources on finishing meego early this year at latest.
The layoffs caused by becoming an MS OEM will be much bigger than that in the long term.
If in fact the MS way was the only sensible choice then it shows really dark picture: the biggest technology company in EU is incapable of innovating. For me being an EU citizen that’s really sad state of affairs in the post crisis world.
It’s Hard to be optimists about EU economy further prospects, after such and announcement.
Edited 2011-02-13 14:33 UTC
Meego was (well, now the second) dumbest mistake Nokia ever made. It added nothing generally to Maemo, except alot of rework for no value. May argue about the feasibility of Hildon/GTK but it’s a strawman argument and irrelevant now anyway.
Weeks lost switching from debian to rpm, build server upgrades for months all to integrate with an existing netbook distribution. Utter waste of time, effort, and more importantly momentum. The n900 adaptation effort for meego couldn’t even launch today for existing hardware let alone new platforms.
Should have completed Harmattan and announced the dual-core N9 in December when they planned and added Qt/QtMobility in staged releases along with Symbian^3.
Not difficult. Someone deserves to be fired, but becoming a Microsoft OEM is the end of Nokia. It will continue obviously in a decade-long slide. Then it’s over. And even if it survives it is no longer the Nokia we have known and supported as a EU technology counterbalance to the US.
The market agrees, their stock price is down what 15% on their new strategic announcement? And Elop is worried about Nokia’s credit rating? Going to be an interesting annual stockholders meeting to be certain. Some board members should be worried.
I’m affraid the biggest mistake for them was to base the system on an outdated framework that the GTK have been for last 5 years.
This shows the whole Maemo idea came out as a sort of grass roots movement within the Nokia and was then used as a saving grace for the company loosing its mindshare.
The QT strategy was fundamentally right, just too late.
When rumors/news popped up I go, WHAT?!!! No way… but the more I read about it all and the comments, call me crazy – I actually want a WP7 Nokia smartphone. My fav phone is Samsung Galaxy S (Version 2 coming soon) but Android, Android everywhere and it is getting tiring. Definitely a case of overexposure. I have always liked Nokia phone until lately but with WP7 on it, I find that increasingly refreshing. In fact what a great idea. I wish that Symbian didn’t have to go and MeeGo get quickly into high gear.
…with the Spirit of Nokia..
(whatever that may mean)
but my thought is this:
if Nokia has done this deal as part of a long term survival strategy (which again is part of a longer term success and innovation strategy) then I think it’s a pragmatic play – run the WP7 road as well and profitably as you can, while in the background having a smaller team (but of some of your best and most talented) trying to make something ‘Amazing’ out of Meego – even if that only mean matching WebOS but with a different spin/style and more open) ; the point of this in the longer term would be to have as many before me have already said, to “be in control of their own destiny”, to be relevant, and to HAVE SIGNIFICANCE.
I’d be very pleasantly suprised in seeing it pan out like that, and in Elop as a man, and a leader of the company he ought to be leading.
Smacks of being just a grubby corporate trojan horse at the moment though. Like I said, I hope I’m wrong…
Lets face the facts: MS has the one of the lowest uptake of its windows mobile OS and Nokia is losing share despite its good HARDWARE offerings. These two are now teaming up to fight the competition. They got nothing to lose. MS has no significant share in mobile. Nokia is losing fast in the market place, even if it adopts the Andriod platform as other manufacturers are coming up with better and more robust cheaper devices.
So, its a strategy of going for broke. A MAKE OF DIE strategy for NOKIA, where the success of WP7 will be the deciding factor !
I think this is an actual case of just that. Nokia has basically failed at maintaining its hold on the market as a complete vertical solution, and now is going to being just another hardware manufacturer. They should have paid attention to HP – now they have a shot at challenging iOS and the complete hardware/software integration with their own ecosystem. It doesn’t guarantee success, but at least what they’re doing looks appealing from an end-user perspective.
Nokia couldn’t keep up – they seem as dysfunctional as Microsoft in that regard – and now are partnering with Ballmer, of all people. Sure, WP7 isn’t Android, but it’s just as much of a failure for a hardware maker to be using. You’ll inevitably have the same low margins and, no matter what an agreement says, you won’t be able to influence development for just your own company/vision effectively.
Time will tell, but it doesn’t sound like a winner.
Apple + Apple: the phone and os everyone seems to love that gets better every version, without actually having to offer anything others don’t. Reliable future and vision
“Everyone” + Google: Everyone makes hundreds of phones and adds A version of Android on it. There is no consistency, no vision for the future and quality goes from complete-crap to best-of-the-best. Plenty of choice, but can consumers handle that?
Blackberry + Blackberry: The phones and OS that everyone keeps forgetting to mention but that have somehow made their way to two opposite groups of users: business (best mail) and youth (ping). It seems they have found a nice middleground between “1 phone to rule them all” and “Choice-chaos”
Nokia + Microsoft: Both have entirely changed their product (MS) and strategy (Nokia). The great hardware of Nokia and the greatly reviewed OS of Microsoft will be either hit or miss. The big problem will be that Nokia is still planning on continuing with their current products after seriously messing with their developer community.
On another note, Apple and Google have shown that taking a “Unix based” kernel and adding an entirely non-distro userland on top is a great working combination. HP WebOS seems to be doing the same.
Is there any source that explains why Nokia is having so much trouble adding a modern UI on top of it’s Symbian kernel (that I believe is great for phones)
and Is Meego having the opposite problem? A good (QT) userland but problems with the underlying OS for a phone?
I am getting the impression that Nokia is great for very technical things (hardware and low level software) but have lots of trouble making good end-user software. If that is really the problem, partnering up with Microsoft is probably the best possible choice as Microsoft has proven time and time again that they DO know how to build software-for-the-masses
I was one of the naysayers at the rumors of a Nokia/Microsoft deal. Not enjoying the taste of crow at this particular moment.
I am, however, astounded at just how far Esop has been willing to commit to this venture. He’s not only diluting or outright tossing literally billions worth of investments made over the years in the development of their own platform ecosystem, but he’s quite likely staking the future of Nokia on Microsoft’s ability to continually deliver a highly compelling platform for Nokia to develop around.
WP7 is too new for that type of investment. Particularly when you consider that part of the reason WP7 has struggled is that MS had previously alienated it’s two strongest mobile partners, Motorola and HTC, and drove them to commit to Android. Many people would consider that to be a warning flag.
Then I find myself trying to think of one struggling company that has managed to pulled themselves up and achieve long term growth and success by partnering with Microsoft, or without becoming utterly dependent upon them. Maybe there are, I just can’t recall any. Does Nokia think they will be different?
The problem with these desperation deals with Microsoft is that they are always in Microsoft’s favor. There’s reciprocity, but it’s still balanced towards Microsoft. Nokia has everything potentially to lose, Microsoft has relatively little. What are they thinking?
How much analysis was put into this decision? The people in favor of it seem to assume that Nokia’s 30%+ smartphone market share (which is the minority portion of their overall phone sales) will automatically translate into a 30%+ market share for Microsoft. How so? Nokia’s expertise in this area is low-cost power-efficient design that can utilize underclock processors. One thing Symbian excelled at was getting bang for the buck. I can’t see how they’re going to be able to deliver WP7 phones without having to utilize more expensive hardware, and a Microsoft license, which will necessitate price increases for those models. I think it’s very big risk to assume that just because Nokia has been successful in the smartphone market with Symbian, it will translate to success with WP7.
Then there’s the timing of this announcement. We’re dropping everything we’ve done until now, and we’re moving exclusively to WP7, except we have no products to announce, no time frames and we need you to keep buying products that we’ve just obsoleted for the next year or two, m’kay? Right.
And even from Microsoft’s POV, what were they thinking? They’ve just announced that Nokia is going to be the preferred WP7 partner and will have exclusive ability to customize and co-develop the platform, but Samsung and SE should continue investing in WP7 anyways, at least until Nokia is ready to take over. At this point in WP7 lifecycle, with less than stellar launch numbers and adoption, it seems like they may be cutting their own legs here if Nokia isn’t able to start pumping phones out right away.
This whole thing just raises more uncertainty at a time when neither Nokia nor the nascent WP7 market need it.
As someone who worked for a Nokia partner for several years, the one thing that always struck me with Nokia was that they had vision, strategy to achieve that vision, and the resource to see that strategy through. They just absolutely sucked in their execution, and in business, execution is everything. The seeds for Nokia’s current situation were sown many years ago, when their success and rapid growth led to the creation of massive bureaucracies, analysis paralyis, and entire departments and business units that undermined each other and all sought to move in different directions.
Their Qt strategy was sound, as it played on Nokia’s biggest strength, their market share. It could have bridged their low-end symbian devices with newer, more powerful high-end devices. Their install base alone would have given them the largest target market for developers. But, ack, their execution. It just seems to have been one clusterfsck after another.
Rather than throwing out the baby with the bathwater, Esop should have focused on slashing the management layer, consolidating the business units and focusing the business on specific goals. But then again, he’s from Microsoft, and they have pretty much the same mentality.
Nokia certainly needed to do something, but they were hardly in such a desperate state that they had to do this. Even carrying WP7 as a boutique brand while continuing their current development, or something along those lines. But selling their brand out and dumping their massive investment to date? WTF.
This was really poorly handled, and I can’t see how Nokia benefits in the long run. Nor can their shareholders, apparently. Or their employees, several hundred of whom walked out today after the announcement was made.
Heavy sigh. I was looking forward to see what they were going to do with Meego. Guess it’s back to waiting to see what the next Nexus will hold, although HP has peaked my interest.
Welcome to the club
I was sceptic about the MS-Nokia thing too but I guess we now know what Elop/Esop/Whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is was sent out to accomplish: give MS access to Nokia’s brand, userbase and sales channels.
Thank you for making a point I was also wondering about – why does anyone think the market share will magically move from Symbian to WP7 just because Nokia chooses WP7? Who says that Android / iOS won’t just take larger chunks for themselves?
I’m not seeing this WP7 momentum that indicates it’s suddenly going to make huge inroads, and it’s not like this is going to be an upgrade for existing Nokia phone holders, this is a new phone purchase, at which point… why not look at the market leaders?
The decision comes from the conclusion that in the future market share = app store share.
So the current sales of symbian phones are meant as irrelevant. A very US centric POV to say.
Indeed. Alaso remember that no WP7 phones are going to appear until at least 2012 and Symbian is going to be put on life support until then. What do Nokia expect to sell, and do they not expect their market share to sink faster than it has been?
When WP7/8/9/10/11 etc. etc. finally appears Nokia is going to have virtually nothing left.
Thank your for your great post!
That is exactly what I am thinking.
…but I will never get tired of saying that you’re making the wrong assumption with both Symbian and MeeGo.
Such a long-term strategy will screw the company well before its first results arrive in Q4 2012 or Q1 2013. Nokia will have to sell smartphones based on a dead platform for two years from now. There’s no future here.
If you care about Nokia (as I most certainly do), you can’t with a straight face advocate they stick to such a platform. If you care about MeeGo and don’t give a rat’s bum about Nokia – well, that’s a different story.
I _used_ to care about Nokia, right before they pissed all over their promises about Qt and teamed up with Microsoft.
bla bla bla. nokia was going nowhere and windows phone 7 is critically acclaimed. this could work.
Critically acclaimed? Hehe. It’s critically crippled, without an NDK.
http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/12/nokia-new-strategic-direction-w…
“Nokia cannot differentiate on Android”?
Android is distributed with the Apache license, which means that Nokia could take it, adapt it and never give back to the community. They can steal it and it will be legal. Only the Linux kernel comes with the GPL, so they need to abide to the GPL for the kernel only.
In addition, Nokia has Linux/open-source expertise, due to Meego and somewhat with Symbian. However, with WP7, they need to hire the FULL developer team!
You mention about ‘Nokia needs Google’ and ‘Google does not need Nokia’ as if it was some slumber party or something. What kind of shallow analysis is this?
Google needs all the manufacturers they can get, and Nokia needs an open platform.
This Elop guy from Microsoft is gutting out Nokia. RIP Nokia, 2011. ;-‘(
~1000 employees left the company after the announcement, and Nokia assured themselves no business from me.
Go Nokia!
MS can’t make tablets or phones without antitrust facing lawsuits.
Nokia has a strong phone brand that can be leveraged into tablet sales.
Symbian is not suitable for a tablet OS.
Nokia has now become the de facto MS tablet and phone hardware division.
Nokia doesn’t need to spend its’ own money on software development.
Like they have already commented:
“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.â€
“Nokia will have to compete with the likes of Samsung and equal terms, which builds RAM, systems on a chip, and displays and they will always be cheaper and faster. MS wants WP7 to succeed, they couldn’t care less for Nokia.“
Nokia won’t be just another phone maker. Nokia will be the unofficial MS phone and tablet hardware division. So they will get massive support from MS.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-11/former-microsoft-exec-to-h…
Elop is putting his old friends into key management positions. The US is the key smartphone market.
Shares of Nokia Corp. plunged $1.48, or 13.6 percent, to $9.40 during Friday 11 afternoon trading.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-11/former-microsoft-exec-to-h…
I dont think a lot of people quite get the point of this.There’s nothing stopping Nokia from supporting multiple platforms. If you ask me Symbian was overdue to be dropped. With the recent Nokia touch screen phones the Symbian platform just seemed hacked up and to be frank insulted customers who were loyal to the brand. The interfaces were just awful.
Qt won’t be dropped by Nokia, neither will Meego. Nokia is simply going to ALSO support WP7.
I think its about time. Samsung manages to support a whole range of platforms and phone types. I have a Samsung Focus and love it. I’ve also had a Galaxy S and loved it. I’ve also used and played with their lower end phones that supported Bada, which felt like an imitation Android phone but was still a nice experience.
In the end all this merger means is that Nokia will now support WP7 on some of their featured devices.
All I see is a bunch of MS haters ignoring the obvious and crying out pure fud.
yep…
Windows Phone will be the primary OS for Nokia. Earlier, it was planned to be MeeGo.
I don’t know whether these were linked earlier:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704657104576142333949…
http://blog.mardy.it/2011/02/committed-to-linux.html
Google should take control on Qt, they have the resources, and they should make Qt a platform for developing Android applications.
Maybe Google should hire some developers from Nokia also.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/13/us-mobile-fair-samsung-id…
Relevant quote FTA:
South Korean electronics giant Samsung, whose telecoms division accounted for nearly half its profit last quarter, has sold around 10 million Galaxy S smartphones since its June 2010 debut, and 2 million Galaxy tablets.
It still has a long way to catch up with Apple, which sold more than 7 million iPads and 16.2 million iPhones last quarter alone, but is gaining ground on Nokia, which announced a crucial tie-up with Microsoft on Friday.
“If I were (chief executive) Stephen Elop heading up Nokia, I would be looking over my shoulder at Samsung and feeling extremely nervous,” said Ben Wood, lead analyst at telecoms research firm CCS Insight.
http://identi.ca/notice/64310301
Hope you didn’t buy too many options…..
Stephen Elop is the 8th biggest individual stockholder of Microsoft, so Elop’s actions are probably criminal.
http://imgur.com/3nN2k
http://www.dailyfinance.com/company/microsoft-corporation/msft/nas/…
He holds Microsoft shares worth 3 million dollars, and 0 of Nokia.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=ca&sl=fi&tl=en&u=http%…
Every cellphone I’ve ever owned was made by Nokia. Not really in the market for a smartphone yet, so I’m mostly concerned with how much longer Symbian phones will be produced. Probably a good long while for the low- to mid-end market.
Never used any incarnation of Windows Mobile/Pocket PC, but I am reading reviews for Windows Phone 7 handsets. Still, I’m leaning towards an Android from Samsung or HTC when I do buy a smartphone. Then again by that time Windows Phone 7 2.0 or up will probably be out. In any case I’ll be buying an Xbox 360 first.
Unfortunately moving to non-symbian devices involves moving to considerably more expensive and powerful devices to do the same functions.
That is unless you go for a cheapo low end android device whereupon you’ll suffer from a bad user experience as android stretches the devices limits.
Windows phone has the same requirements as the average higher end android device so you don’t win much by going to either.
Here’s to hoping Nokia still works on improving Symbian, then. I do like having a phone that lasts a few days between charges. My current phone is probably good for another year or two at the very least, though it would be nice if it had 3G.
Hahahahahaha. Even lately when they were improving it they had very little to show for it, that is even more unlikely now.
But I do know what you mean. All my symbian phones last forever and do a lot with their anemic processors in comparison to my android beast.
Well, I’m currently collecting data for an article about another, much less known project which aims at targeting the mid-end phone market : Samsung’s bada.
Sounds like an interesting platform so far. It’s still in its infancy as compared to Symbian, but it’s impressive how much they have achieved already. Could be a nice successor to Symbian, although there are some things which bug me about it… More on that in the article.
Edited 2011-02-15 09:14 UTC
With Symbian out of the picture is is the only game in town for resource constrained smartphones. Android currently is too heavy but it still does not stop people from trying to shovel it into cheap hardware. Perhaps unsurprisingly people can’t stop buying these cheap android phones (and tablets).
I have two coworkers that just bought some incredibly tacky android tablets, they seem relatively happy with them (I wouldn’t be, but I’m far more discerning).
Edited 2011-02-15 12:33 UTC
I must correct this : Blackberry OS also works on mid-end hardware, AFAIK
Edited 2011-02-15 12:56 UTC
True, but I doubt blackberry would ever market to the low end or not add a markup due to their infrastructure. So the OS is low end and Hardware is low end but that does not directly translate into low end (possibly one of the reasons BB is failing).
Heh
Current BB phones are mid-end slowly turning to the low end as BBOS becomes increasingly outdated, they just don’t admit it publicly yet.
Though the acquisition of QNX makes it sound like they are aware of the problem. I don’t know if this is going to work out, but if so it could make Blackberry a big player again.
For this to happen, they really should stop going Sony and putting silly restrictions on great products, though… Seen their latest “you need a blackberry phone to use all the functions of your shiny QNX tablet” ? I understand the intent, but they’re simply not enough of a major player to play this game anymore.
Edited 2011-02-15 18:11 UTC
Nokia will be butt f*cked just like every other Microsoft ‘partner’ in the past. Remember PlaysForSure? Remember how Microsoft gave every vendor the middle finger several years ago when they told them that they [Microsoft] would not compete with them? The result was the Zune and Zune marketplace.
And remember what they did to Sendo?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/06/microsofts_masterplan_to_sc…
This is what is going to happen to Nokia:
“(…)Sendo’s 27-page filing in a Texas court – disclosed here for the first time – is a rich litany of double dealing, betrayal and larceny – if the dramatic (and at times apoplectic) allegations can be believed.
Formally, Sendo is throwing the book at Microsoft. The handset manufacturer, created in 1999 with some of the best Philips and Motorola talent, was to be Microsoft’s “go to market partner” for the Stinger smartphone platform, and even received an equity investment from Redmond, and it’s now very, very angry.
The claim alleges – are you ready to start counting? – misappropriation of trade secrets, common law misappropriation, conversion, unfair competition, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, two counts of negligent misrepresentation, two counts of breach of contract, fraudulent inducement and tortious interference. (…)”
RIP Nokia.
Edited 2011-02-14 18:25 UTC
Nokia and Yahoo signed an strategic alliance to integrate services. Will Nokia break it?
Its pretty much a given that Symbian is on its way out. Its a shame, as its a fantastic OS but it really needed reworking from the ground up to catch up to the likes of Android, PalmOS and other various smartphone oses available today. As its now open source, that could still happen.
I think Nokia could flourish with this deal with Microsoft. The hardware side for Nokia is excellent, and providing they keep innovating with that and come up with some great designs, I’d be happy to go to a Nokia phone with a MS Mobile OS on it anytime.
I have a HTC Desire HD, and a HD7. Love both Android & WinMo7, and had no issues with either. (Well asides from battery life on both can be a bit abysmal). My last Nokia phone was an N97 and although I liked the hardware, the Symbian OS on it was not great. Same with the the N8 – I work for a tech and mobile support company so I’ve had a good play around with it. Again I love the hardware and the camera is excellent but the OS leaves the hardware high and dry. If it had Android on it or WinMo7 it would have been a different experience.
The N9 which is meant to be coming out with Meego (if it ever does) looks equally good and I really hope Meego is a success. I think it’s a bad idea for Nokia to drop Meego, they should throw some engineers and R&D at it along with the Intel folks and get it off the ground properly. Have that on phones for people who like to tinker, and then have WinMo7 for people who want a phone that just ‘works’. I’d include Android here somewhere but Nokia seem intent on avoiding it like the plague.
Anyway, providing that Microsoft and Nokia go about this the right way, and interact and share freely with each other, this could be a partnership that will bring some fantastic phones to us the consumers and turn their fortunes around in the mobile market.
Sidenote to Microsoft: Please get the WinMo7 updates out sooner rather than later! In fact, just send them me now and I’ll test them for you…lol. Seriously though, try and get them out this half of the year!
Good luck to both companies in this new venture, hope it all works out. We need three or more strong mobile oses competing and innovating to keep things interesting!
Hi Thom,
I usually agree with your point of view on things, but I have seriously problems supporting your view on the Microsoft and NOKIA cooperation. Microsoft obviously installed two former employees into NOKIA to gain influence. One the two new NOKIA CEOs is still Microsoft’s 8th largest share holder, IIRC. So it’s obvious what his motivations are.
Furthermore, history has shown that almost all companies cooperating with Microsoft in the mobile sector didn’t have any serious success and dropped Windows Mobile sooner or later:
http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/11/in-memoriam-microsofts-previous-st…
I also fear that this will happen to NOKIA. It’s ridiculous that an innovative with such good software developers (think about Qt and MeeGo) company like NOKIA drops their own good software in favor of the mediocre software from Microsoft. WP7 is mediocre because it still lacks too many features compared to the competition. And furthermore NOKIA is giving up their independence which is a bad thing. The argument that they’re gonna save money by using WP7 is ridiculous unless they fire half of their employees. Remember, both Symbian and MeeGo were completely developed in-house, so NOKIA doesn’t have to pay NO license fees as compared to the amount they have to pay to Microsoft. If the idea of the cooperation with Microsoft was to stop all in-house software development and fire most of their developers, they’d actually save money (nowadays that is called “outsourcing”), but you can be sure that they won’t make many people happy. They already ran into serious business problems when they closed down their plant in Bochum, Germany. As a result of that, a lot of people in Germany started to boycott NOKIA.
Since people working at NOKIA in Finland fear their jobs now, they actually started a short protest last Friday. In Tampere I think it was, where 1000 NOKIA software developers suspended their work and went out to demonstrate. As a matter of fact, many NOKIA employees and share holders have a better foresight on things and thus they’re against the cooperation and have started a counter plan, called NOKIA Plan B:
http://nokiaplanb.com
Adrian
I have a Nokia Symbian phone, and I would guess this is unlike all the people who say Symbian is no good. I have no idea what the complains are about. I have little icons for apps, I can scroll through them. And the best thing is I can link my web contacts to the phone over the air. I would love to hear what it is that Symbian can’t do as a phone OS.
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and don’t be surprised when he switches your phones to run Windows 7.
What experience did the new Nokia head get working for a company with an OS and Office Suite monopoly that applies to a company involved in the competitive cell phone industry anyway?