Nokia and Microsoft Make Smartphone Alliance 479
pbahra writes "The smart money was right. Nokia has jumped into bed with Microsoft and will produce phones running Windows Phone 7. The cynics would say that, here, we have two lumbering dinosaurs of the technology world clinging to each other hoping that the other gives them a future. Optimists would point to two companies that need each other, both bringing vital components to the alliance. The big winner is Microsoft. Windows Phone 7, while reasonably well received by commentators, has not set the world on fire. An alliance with Nokia gives it access to the world's largest phone maker and its huge mindshare — in many developing nations a mobile phone is known as a Nokia. The biggest loser is MeeGo, the ugly, unloved step-child of operating systems."
Nokia wrote to developers, "Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same."
Rest in piece, Nokia (Score:5, Insightful)
Enough said.
I second this (Score:2)
Rest in piece, hacker friendly mobile future (Score:5, Insightful)
With the IOS concentration camp, Android bootloader lockdown, and Windows Phone 7 copying everything that we hated about IOS it looks like a bleak future for anyone who wants to do cool stuff with their phone beyond the simple apps you get on the common platforms. If Nokia abandons MeeGo with this deal then any hope we have of being able to get new phones with the same freedom as the N900 will be fed to the meat grinder.
Looks like I will have to take great care of my N900. It's the first and last of it's kind.
Re:Rest in piece, hacker friendly mobile future (Score:5, Informative)
The Android bootloader lockdown? What? Just stop buying Motorola devices and all will be fine... you've still got HTC and Samsung building decent phones with completely open bootloaders.
Re: (Score:3)
But for how long? The N900 activley encouraged users to hack around. There was a fucking xterm in the main menu. With Android you have to first research if the handset has an active community that provide modded images if you want all the fun.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Avoid Sony Ericsson as well. I like their hardware, but not the way they treat their customers.
Re: (Score:3)
Agreed. As a former fan but now a much abused PS3 owner I will not buy anything from Sony ever again.
Re:Rest in piece, hacker friendly mobile future (Score:4, Informative)
According to the German Spiegel [spiegel.de], Alberto Torres [nokia.com] (responsible board member for MeeGo) just left the board. So yeah, MeeGo is basically left for dead.
Re: (Score:2)
It's really depressing. I was looking forward to using a MeeGo handset in a few years once my N900 would start getting old. Please let there be another handset manufacturer who will take up MeeGo or a similar full Linux OS, else my N900 will be the last phone I'll ever have.
Re: (Score:3)
Isn't webos essentially 'full linux'? My friends that had webos certainly used xterms on them, and afaik it's very hackable - having said that, didn't know many with it and never played with it myself. Looking at getting one of the hp webos tablets, since they still aren't selling the wetab here.
Re: (Score:2)
I completely forgot about WebOS. Though I haven't seen it for myself yet, all I have read about it is that it's more Linux geek friendly than Android. Perhaps there is hope, let's wait and see.
Re: (Score:3)
I think MeeGo will live on as a "DD-WRT for phones," but it's going to be about as popular as Gentoo from here. Openness on mobile devices is pretty much dead now :-(
Re: (Score:3)
Pretty sad for the business end of things.
I think you'll be happy with an Android device, though... they are really hacker friendly for the following reasons:
* Manufacturers don't release updates for older phones forcing some planned obsolescence : This is actually a big *win* for hackers, because then they can then buy these phones for *cheap* from the lusers upgrading their handsets to get the latest OS, and then install the current CyanogenMOD to get the whole shebang. I've picked up all three of my And
My successor to my N900 (Score:3)
Re:Rest in piece, hacker friendly mobile future (Score:4, Informative)
Not even close to the same thing. At least a Nexus has a reasonable open OS that can do real multitasking.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Rest in piece, hacker friendly mobile future (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Rest in piece, hacker friendly mobile future (Score:5, Funny)
I think we all know what "microsoft embrace" is followed by.
Re:Rest in piece, hacker friendly mobile future (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Android, IMO, is that the entire ecosystem composing it and much of what surrounds it is entirely insular, and to no great benefit.
It shares no common libraries or interfaces with what you find in most Linux distributions. It uses a unique libc that no other distribution uses. It uses a file system layout that is not found anywhere else. Its GUI rendering subsystem is completely unique and incompatible with all others.
The end result is that changes to Android stay within the Android system and do not benefit open source projects outside of it. And projects outside of it require heavy rewrites to work, at all, on Android. Not to mention that Android has no real repository type system, so you're left trading .apk files and latching on to the market, which is only available on the default builds of some devices and not at all on others.
Maemo was developed with that compatibility in mind, and is a large part of the reason I bought it. It was most of what the OpenMoko Freerunner tried to be, and MeeGo only improved the openness aspect of it. MeeGo allowed mobile devices to retain continuity with the rest of the open source ecosystem you find in most desktop Linux systems, thus changes and improvements to both ends benefits everyone. In addition, it removed the non-device-specific closed bits and created a platform independent of any one handset vendor.
Android leaves you a second (or more likely, third) class citizen in this effort, as the AOSP does not, last I checked, flow upstream into the Android core and the AOSP only receives the latest changes to Android after it's been delivered to device manufacturers (see Honeycomb and Motorola.)
So this is very much a Microsoft victory against Open Source, if not Free Software, projects in the mobile space. And Android is not a way forward that is very fair to end users and non-corporate developers.
Re: (Score:3)
And projects outside of it require heavy rewrites to work, at all, on Android.
They would require this anyway. You don't want desktop apps running as-is on a primarily touchscreen device. It is shit, as the mode of interaction is completely different between a touchscreen and a keyboard/mouse combo. Its the same reason why Windows based tablets were never popular.
Re: (Score:3)
Attn: Nokia:
Was nice knowing you
Re:Rest in piece, Nokia (Score:4, Informative)
Attn Nokia: Was nice knowing you [wikipedia.org]
Totally wrong (Score:3)
You have no inkling of how powerful this makes the combined companies. It basically takes Microsoft's WM7 which is pretty polished, and pairs it with a dedicated hardware maker that has a built in global reach and relationships with a ton of carriers.
Furthermore, those relationships mean WM7 can get carrier billing for apps ad in-app purchases, world wide, almost instantly due to agreements in place - Apple can get by without them because so many people have iTunes account, but any other application provid
Re: (Score:2)
Well, problem is, those zombies are as "stable" as Microsoft ME release :)
Re:Rest in piece, Nokia (Score:4, Funny)
Apple and also Android Manufacturers must be rubbing their hand with glee. Nice way you shoot yourself in the foot Nokia. Also, the patent trolls will be gearing up to sweep up the pieces.
Re: (Score:3)
hmmm.. I would seriously not be surprised if the entire idea of this linkage is to create a patent toll organisation. Expect Nokia and MS to spin off a body for patent licensing together under the cover of cooperating Windows 7 phone. The idea that Windows Phone 7 which is commercial disaster for Microsoft already is going to help Nokia is laughable. The idea that they could both together get all their competition banned is not so stupid.
Elop comes from Microsoft of exactly the era after they had com
That new CEO... (Score:5, Insightful)
Stephen Elop must be the best mole since Kim Philby.
After Sendo en Palm yet another mobile vendor commits suicide-by-Microsoft. But this is the biggest yet.
I really liked Nokia devices, but my E71 is probably going to be my last one.
Mart
Re: (Score:2)
I used an e71 for a while and Nokia's hardware is second to none. They still make the best keyboards you can get on a phone. I wish my Droid's keyboard was made by them. I might actually be interested in buying a Nokia that was running something other than Symbian.
Re:That new CEO... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mole ? He worked for MS up to september. That's not MS planting a mole, that's Nokia dropping pants and bending over.
I've also been a Nokia guy up until now; currently got an N97. Wonderful toy even with Symbian being a bit of a bugger at times; but I'll be keeping a very sharp eye on where this is going.
Re: (Score:2)
I also love my Nokia E71, and was holding out for a Meego handset. I guess I will have to give up and join the Android masses. Shame to see Nokia die, but I can't see Win7 phones taking off. I guess the next best thing is going to be the Samsung Galaxy S Pro, with the slide-out keyboard.
Phillip.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Many of these ideas are actually apps that you are free to implement yourself. And this profit from. If you patent them, you might even make a few more bucks when MS decide the ideas are good enough to be implemented in the base OS.
Shocking (Score:5, Informative)
This [blogs.com] is a good read on the whole matter. Writing's a bit crude in some parts but raises some good points.
These charts also illustrate the point. Nokia is alienating both its development community and its customers. Qt is put on the sidelines. Who's going to develop for a dying platform? A lot of people I know buy Symbian because of the generally familiar UI, which is similar to the Series 40 phones. Windows Phone is radically different.
Ugh.
Re: (Score:2)
The aforementioned charts [engadget.com]
Re: (Score:2)
If the rumored iPhone Nano is true and the upcoming low cost Android phones will make it that much harder for this Nokia/WP7 combination to make meaningful dent in the marketshare - perhaps for MS, compa
Re:Shocking (Score:4, Informative)
This whole thing is even more crazy if you take in account that Nokia shelled out more than $400 million for two assets (Symbian and Qt/Trolltech) which are now pushed into irrelevance. Nokia even open-sourced the entire Symbian operating system under the EPL, a huge move unlike what has been done by any company, only to dissolve the Symbian foundation after Mr. Elop joined the company.
What's more, Symbian and Windows phone are not perfect replacements. As some other posters have noted, the hardware requirements for Windows Phone are egregiously high, whilst Symbian is known to be frugal with hardware requirements because it was built from the ground-up to be an operating system for low-power devices. The user-interfaces are radically different.
The main issue with Symbian is that it was hard to develop for. This was supposed to be resolved with Qt, but now what? Nobody will develop for a platform that's going to eventually die.
Re:Shocking (Score:4)
Qt desperately needs to be spun off into its own company. It's a great cross-platform framework without any clear contender. I develop several applications at work using Qt and there is no alternative. I need my stuff to run on OS X and Windows, and I'm using pretty much all that Qt gives, at least when it comes to the graphics scene framework and model/view system. The oft-repeated alternatives of GTK and wxWindows just aren't anywhere near where I'd need them to be.
We used to pay for Qt, but once Nokia took over we figured: why feed the beast? As soon as Qt would be spun-off, we'd begin paying again for two commercial licenses...
Re:Shocking (Score:4, Insightful)
The open letter [nokia.com] from CEO to everyone has a *lot* of comments. I can paraphrase for you in case you don't want to read them:
"WTF? Goodbye Nokia".
Its a great pity all round. Microsoft *still* won't sell any more phones, Nokia will just destroy itself. Shares down 8% today and I'm sure will fall further.
Snake oil (Score:2)
Sweet! Does this mean Nokia will start bundling Microsoft's NIBBLES.BAS with handsets instead of their snake game?
Not so Qt (Score:4, Insightful)
Nokia bought Qt not so long ago, presumably because they were aiming for embedded Linux based devices and Qt is one of the best toolkits for that. Now that they are in bed with Microsoft, getting a great Linux/crossplatform GUI toolkit hardly can be a priority any more, so it makes a lot less sense to spend money on developing Qt. Particularly as unlike Trolltech, they were focussing on making it as popular as possible even at the expense of the commercial version (GPL->LGPL license change).
So now Qt just became an irrelevant, money losing division, didn't it?
Or do they plan to keep Qt but just use Windows as the underlying OS? I can't believe MS will be entirely happy with that, having .NET as competition and all...
Re: (Score:2)
Expect a fork of Qt as Nokia slowly drains resources away from it.
Re: (Score:2)
QT will not be used for Window Phone development. It was in one of the many links at Engadget.
Re: (Score:2)
They've already announced that Qt will not be available for WP7.. It seems to me that they are essentially dumping Qt, so question is what the Trolls will do now? Start up Trolltech again?
QT is not "money losing" (Score:3)
QT was a profitable company with a large number of employees BEFORE Nokia bought it.
Not everyone realizes - QT is licensed by companies not just to develop applications that run on both Windows and UNIX, but also Windows and Mac OS. This is where they make a lot of money.
QT is not going anywhere, it has a huge install base. If anything it would be sold by Nokia or spun-off into it's own company again.
Re: (Score:2)
QT was a profitable company with a large number of employees BEFORE Nokia bought it.
Lehmann Brothers was a profitable company with a large number of employees before...
Not everyone realizes - QT is licensed by companies not just to develop applications that run on both Windows and UNIX, but also Windows and Mac OS. This is where they make a lot of money.
Unfortunately, Nokia upset that significantly by relicensing from the GPL to the LGPL. I haven't seen the exact financials, but logically this has to reduce the revenue from selling commercial versions, as you just removed the most important reason to get a commercial license. I got one for Qt 3.x but there has been no reason to get a new one for Qt 4.5+
The question is if the remainder (consulting, ports-for-hire, ...) is en
Bad news for MeGoo, indeed (Score:3)
"Two's company, three's a crowd." Supporting three platforms requires a lot of resource. So one of the old ones will be facing cutbacks, if not being kicked entirely. Now, let's see "MeGoo" -> "Me Go". Oh, what a giveaway.
It's really too bad. I have a Nokia N800, which I love, and was really looking forward to buying a N900. I decided to wait and see how the reviews were. Then came the Maemo -> MeGoo announcement and the departure of Ari Jaaksi, and that really unsettled me. I really liked Maemo. Getting Intel on board was bound to lead to conflicts in direction, which would slow down development.
So now, I will wait still longer to see how things with MeGoo move along. And I am not buying a Nokia with Windows 7. So it's probably time to start looking at Andriod. Way to blow it, Nokia.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Sell sell sell (Score:4, Insightful)
Any shares you have in Nokia.
They put an ex-Microsoftie in charge of a consumer electronics company. I'd laugh if it wasn't such a tragedy.
QT will be taken out and shot as soon as possible. Here's how it will happen: Microsoft will offer Nokia a Business Development Agreement which lets Nokia get discounts off the price they pay for operating system licences. The discounts will be related to Nokia doing one of a number of 'entirely voluntary' (hence not illegally coerced) things. Things like enhancing QT in some way to make it compatible with some pointless and unused feature of Windows PhoneOS. After a few of these it will be cheaper to just kill QT.
Then KDE will be screwed.
Any guesses how long Symbian will last?
Re: (Score:3)
QT will be taken out and shot as soon as possible. ... Things like enhancing QT in some way to make it compatible with some pointless and unused feature of Windows PhoneOS. After a few of these it will be cheaper to just kill QT.
Then KDE will be screwed.
It will be messy, yes. But this happened before with Xfree86->Xorg, it's happening now with OpenOffice.org->LibreOffice and if QT shows any signs of sickness it's pretty certain that will be forked too, if only by the KDE folks.
FWIW I don't see QT ever being compatible with WP7, since you can only develop in Silverlight for that or at a pinch, C#. Not even managed C++...
Re:Sell sell sell (Score:5, Informative)
Then KDE will be screwed.
Nope [kde.org].
It had to happen, and probably won't help. (Score:2)
Nokia has seen Apple and Google jump in on the high-end, taking almost all of the high-profit margin of the market. On the low-end they're going to be increasingly attacked by Chinese firms pumping out phones that are good enough to use, and cheaper than Nokia can make them. They can only try and regain some market share from Google/Apple and there is no way Symbian was ever going to do that. It's a dead OS in terms of mindshare. I think the hardware looks great (The new E9 is stunning) but they need to cha
Time to switch I guess (Score:2)
I really liked the N900, but from the looks of it that may not be going anywhere anymore.
So, what's a good Android phone? I'd like one as open as possible, with good hardware specs and a hardware keyboard.
Re: (Score:2)
Google Nexus S, developed by Samsung? I have heard lot of good things about it.
Android is quite open - yes, phone vendors and Google still ship numbers of closed apps with standard platform, but rest of it is documented and open sourced quite nicely. Also I usually buy phones not from mobile networks, so I avoid all lockdowns and such stuff.
I have HTC Wildfire, and it is niffy, good looking thing. I had reserved thoughts about Android before but now I think Google knows how to do that.
Still looking forward
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably not switching just yet, unless I happen to break it soon. But I figure it's time to start looking at what else is out there.
I think I'll wait to see if that MeeGo device works out. It sounds like support for it within Nokia won't be great, but if it works well enough and gets a community it could be worth getting anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
The best one according to PCPro's megatest of phones is the HTC Desire. They do a version of it with a slide-out keyboard called the Desire Z [htc.com]
the keyboard is very very good, we have them on our (windows 6.5) phones and although everyone hates the OS, they like the keyboards a lot.
Minimum Requirements for Windows Phone 7? (Score:4, Interesting)
An alliance with Nokia gives it access to the world's largest phone maker and its huge mindshare — in many developing nations a mobile phone is known as a Nokia.
I was a little confused by this quote as the minimum requirements for Windows Phone 7 far exceed [wikipedia.org] the vast majority of those developing nation cellphones. I believe those are mostly the candy bar cell phones or "dumbphones." I was under the impression that developing nations had a vast population of users who weren't in the market for smartphones. That might be changing but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the current models Nokia enjoys widespread distribution hinge on a trim microkernel operating system with little to no system requirements and I'm unaware of a version of Windows Phone 7 that satisfies these hardware constraints. Simply put, it's going to be a long time before Microsoft's WP7 dominates the developing nations as the de facto operating system. And good luck piling those licensing rights of WP7 on top of the cost of the phone to people who struggle to find potable water!
Re:Minimum Requirements for Windows Phone 7? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Qt (Score:2)
I was planning on buying the first MeeGo device when it eventually came to market, but now that WP7 is the "primary OS" for smartphones, it doesn't feel as if they're going to invest the resources they needs to pull it off properly, if at all...
Even worse, they're essentially abandoning Qt. They've announced that there will be no Qt support on their WP7 devices. They had a great plan to use Qt for both MeeGo and Symbian devices, allowing cross-platform application development. It really was a great strategy
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft isn't allowing any native programming on Windows Phone 7 right now, so Nokia couldn't port it over even if it was a good fit (it's not) and they wanted to.
The only way I could see Microsoft caving on this is for game developers -- Microsoft is going to feel a sting when high-end game engines run across Android and iPhone but leave WP7 in the dust. I have a feeling they know this, too, because all the WP7 devices out right now have unimpressive 2 year old GPUs in them.
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft isn't allowing any native programming on Windows Phone 7 right now, so Nokia couldn't port it over even if it was a good fit (it's not) and they wanted to.
What Microsoft let the world in general do, and what they let their new mobile phone partner do are two different things.
But Nokia have already said that Qt isn't going to be a platform for WP7, so opinions aren't needed here. Qt is now as legacy as Symbian and Meego from Nokia's point of view.
Last Nokia I buy (Score:2)
I cant believe people can be so stupid!
Re: (Score:2)
Most Apple and Android users will have gone through 2-3 handsets since 2007. If Nokia hasn't been able to motivate its users to upgrade it's hardly shocking that they are in a hole.
Re: (Score:2)
Depends what country you are in. Here in France most people have to get 24 month contracts to make the phone affordable, and so are unlikely to change phone every single year like the population you apparently live in. I deliberately pay 2x the price for my handset in exchange for a 1 year contract, but I am in the minority here.
Phillip.
Nokia R & D expenses (Score:3)
While they make awesome hardware Nokia has got to get their act together wrt getting R & D to deliver: they spend almost 3 times as its peers [engadget.com]
Not very reassuring slides (Score:2)
"Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices"
Yes, but they also say this:
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/02/nokiawebcast-4.pdf-page-30-of-38.jpg [blogcdn.com]
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/02/nokiawebcast-4.pdf-page-32-of-38.jpg [blogcdn.com]
Adding new programmers to a project already late.. (Score:2)
You can produce the same effect by making a last-minute switch to a new OS after carefully stabilizing and making an OS pefectly matched to your needs and hardware for several years. It will not be faster to use the new OS and if you main positive reputation is "It just works" then you can only loose more.
Palm crawled back to their original idea after getting distracted on the windows path and nearly died. The just wasted energy, confused the community and lost more time
I am really sad to see that history r
The Register's view on this (Score:5, Informative)
"15 years of rivalry ends with Losers Alliance" [theregister.co.uk]
Nail in the coffin (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess that the N900 is the last Nokia that I will ever own.
Out of the choices of operating systems to go for, why on earth did they choose Windows over Android? What were they thinking? They would have hammered the iPhone in a year or two if they had chosen Android.
They really need their heads examining.
Glad I don't have shares in Nokia.
So sad (Score:2)
I loved Nokia, they worked hard to make good quality phones with advanced features. I'd reluctantly switched to iPhone about 3 years ago as Nokia fell behind on the Smartphone race, but I never loved Apple and was ready to make the move when a good competitor arrived. Microsoft are not ready for the new era, they are the Mubaraks of the IT world. Nokia is finished, it might sell a few million phones but will never again excite consumers or enthuse developers - I feel really really sad & sorry for enthus
Free Cellphone Company for MS, nice work Elop. (Score:4, Interesting)
Elop will certainly go down as a Hero for Microsoft, he managed to give Microsoft everything it would want from a Nokia Purchase, but without spending a dime.
No small coincidence that he is a former Microsoftie.
2 OS goes to 3 OS.. (Score:2)
Throw away current decent dev tools for new ones never makes sense
This seems like an all out gamble that they can take on RIM in the corporate market with MS's backing
They can't completely dump Symbian and Meego will continue without them.
Time to go shopping for a Nokia Phone! (Score:2)
No, Nokia isn't supporting Symbian. (Score:2)
"Nokia wrote to developers, "Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same.""
Meanwhile... http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/02/nokiawebcast-4.pdf-page-32-of-38.jpg [blogcdn.com]
Symbian, QT, are dead to Nokia.
I wonder what will happen to KDE too. I mean, they rely on Nokia to spit out QT releases, I doubt they can handl
Microsoftâ(TM)s previous strategic mobile par (Score:5, Insightful)
This article [asymco.com] gives a very good overview of Microsoft's previous strategic partners and how well each one of them ended.
(it's currently missing Sendo and Ericsson although the author has indicated that he'll update it to include them soon)
Personally I think it would be a good thing to have iOS, Android, WebOS and Windows Phone thriving in the marketplace as it means that each one will be forced to innovate to stay relevant - which can only be a good thing for the consumer.
However on the basis of Microsoft's past performance, I wish Nokia the very best of luck as they are going to need a lot of it.
Re: (Score:2)
In fact, MeeGo can't be even killed by Nokia dropping it, because it is open source project and there are lot of companies who are planning to use it in their products. Yes, Nokia was big supporter, but other than that - if there will be usage for it, it will live on. Not sure about WP7 if Microsoft fails to make a dent in market share with their bought love from Nokia.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Symbian will be phased out completely, and the future of MeeGo appears unclear, they might make a single device, probably not giving the team sufficient resources to do it. It seems to me that Nokia (or rather Elop, I highly doubt this is an engineering decision) is dumping Qt, what possible use could they have for it if they're not going to use Symbian or MeeGo, and aren't going to port it to WP7?
Re: (Score:2)
Actually they will gradually shutdown Symbian. As for MeeGo, they will release a N900-esque one off device this year at MWC, but just like it's predecessor, expect it to starve off due to neglect.
Wonder what Nokia will do with Qt? It has no use in WP7, and the few measly MeeGo phones they provide will not support the continued expense of maintaining Trolltech.
To me, it's a massive loss for Open source.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/rip-symbian/ [engadget.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Actually they will gradually shutdown Symbian. As for MeeGo, they will release a N900-esque one off device this year at MWC, but just like it's predecessor, expect it to starve off due to neglect.
Wonder what Nokia will do with Qt? It has no use in WP7, and the few measly MeeGo phones they provide will not support the continued expense of maintaining Trolltech.
To me, it's a massive loss for Open source.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/rip-symbian/ [engadget.com]
Is it a loss to open source? I think that anyone can fork the GPL or LGPL versions. It would be more of a loss for commercial Qt users. Interestingly I think that you could develop commercial applications for the LGPL version, as long as you released the source to any changes to the Qt code.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah! I should have said Linux, not open source as such. Typical "Linux=OpenSource" fallacy. Maybe I better explain.
The problem with Linux (and by that I mean a Linux "distro" like Ubuntu, not Linux-kernel based "variants" like WebOS or Android) is that it lacks the numbers to convince "commercially" interested parties to develop for it with the same gusto as for Windows or MacOS.
What the MeeGo dream was that, as MeeGo was aggressively marketed on three fronts, cellphones by Nokia, laptops and tablets by Inte
Re: (Score:2)
Just out of curiosity... why an N900 and not, say, an HD2? Do you require a hardware keyboard? Or is it Debian you're after?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
all the editors must be asleep this has been everywhere else for hours....
Slashdot submissions are not about beating the news/blog sources to a story, its about creating a decent discussion with some like and not so like peers. There is no reason to rush to be the first to post like some kind of lame FIRST POST FTW! Furthermore if you had looked at the submission you would see some research went into it with no less than 5 different resource pointers. Research isnt instant you know?!
you sir are a douche.
AC
Re:Nokia's last gasp (Score:5, Interesting)
Innovate or die.
And according to these charts [engadget.com], they are starting to innovate by cutting R&D spending.
Nokia, you've come a long way from rubber boots and bicycle tyres to mobile phones. But I fear this is where the story starts to end.
asphyxiation (Score:2)
I've know many die hard Nokia loyalists that've tuck with Symbian phones as iOS and Android surpassed them, as well as many Maemo fans, both Nokia loyalists and new blood. I've never know anyone who actually liked Windows Mobile however. And all these high -end Nokia users are among the least likely WM7 converts. All will now migrate to Android.
You might ask how many new smartphone users Microsoft will bring, well some no doubt. Microsoft has payolaed some good reviews for WM7, but users are not pleased
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, either they sink and take WinPhone7 with them, or they swim and turn WinPhone7 into a viable competitor for Android and iOS...
Re: (Score:3)
Or Microsoft uses them as a flotation device for WinPhone until it starts to gain some traction, then encourages other hardware makers in a race to the bottom on hardware price and downgrades Nokia while they sit back and rake in the money on software fees. There is a fundamental disconnect between the aspirations and needs of the two companies, and the use and abuse by MS of other partners like HP is not a promising precendent. Very suspect too that a guy moves from MS WinMo to Nokia and then moves Nokia t
Re: (Score:3)
I could understand Elop when he was complaining about the slow release rate of Nokia's, I would even get on board of a multiple OS strategy (putting out the same phone with different operating systems).
This move annoys me, it's shutting down Ovi, kill
Re:Nokia's last gasp (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's an analysis of this [asymco.com] along with some nice charts that show how iOS and Android have really eaten Nokia's lunch over the past few years. Their stock has dropped from around $40 per share in 2007 to $10 in 2011. The only people who had faith that they were doing the right thing were the
MeeGo has already been plagued by serious delays and there was no indication that when it did ship everything would magically work. It's easy to point to this new deal and say that MeeGo got axed, but couldn't it be the other way around? It's just as possible that MeeGo was behind schedule and wouldn't be ready for a release for a few more quarters and even then would still need a lot of work to get it up to snuff. The
I don't know whether this move will pan out for Nokia. From my point of view it's more beneficial to Microsoft. However, Nokia needed to do something because they were watching the rest of the market move past and weren't able to respond. Maybe this deal ends up killing them, but they were probably dead either way.
Re: (Score:2)
Hell, Micr
Re:Nokia's last gasp (Score:5, Insightful)
I would offer a different theory:
Imagine you're a theoretical large speculative investor. You talk to microsoft and nokia leaders, through investing money in both. You make a deal where MS shill is hired as a nokia CEO when nokia is ailing, with the ultimate goal of dismantling the company, selling it's devices-making part to MS and putting the rest under hammer.
How much would MS be willing to pay you off for the nokia stock that will allow you to get such shill elected as CEO and essentially save their dead on arrival WP7? I imagine we'd be talking quite a bit of profit. MS benefits from this in every way, nokia will likely get dismantled into pieces and sold off with those behind the deal walking off with hefty profit and execs with their golden parachutes.
Just a theory of course.
Re: (Score:2)
Who's going to want a Nokia phone running Windows?
Er...me?
Re:Nokia's last gasp (Score:5, Funny)
Who's going to want a Nokia phone running Windows?
Er...me?
is it lonely?
Re: (Score:2)
would be a smart move. Nokia owns thousands of patents that Apple licenses
Re: (Score:3)
Re:"Alliance"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I hate to say it but $CURRENT_MOBILE_MICROSOFT_OS is great (unlike prior versions)".
Time and again I read this, and time and again people don't ever learn.
Re:"Alliance"? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll come out and say Windows Mobile was better than WP7.
Why?
You could install whatever you wanted and develop freely for WinMo. WP7 is an iOS-like locked-down sack of shit.
Re: (Score:3)
Nokia will have to compete on hardware quality/price level which they cannot do/afford to do (Finnish labour is very costly).
Nokia has factories around the world. Not just Finland, but also China, Korea, Hungary and Mexico amongst other places. So the cost of Labour in Finland is not so relevant.
As to the cost of engineering staff who create the phones - Nokia's Finnish engineers earn far less than equivalent American engineers. Less than half.