A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world • Hacker News Board

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#31

Post by eli » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 1:37 PM UTC

nobody_nowhere wrote: post #5

Nokia has a pretty unparalleled manufacturing/delivery/logistics chain for low end phones. They like to claim they can put a phone on a shelf anywhere in africa for less than competitors' manufacturing costs. That's pretty impressive, if true. But we're talking about phones that retail for $35. The smartphones are a joke. But the software! I sure hope Qt is starting to pay some dividends for them. When i was dealing…

The big threat there isn't Motorola or Samsung figuring out a way to ship phones around the world more efficiently -- it's local competitors in emerging markets. For example, India-based Micromax is gaining serious market share in the country at Nokia's expense.

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#32

Post by tdoggette » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 1:38 PM UTC

rospaya wrote: post #23

Joakal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until the internet capabilities on smartphones get realised. On a bus for 30 minutes? Use the phone to browse HN. etc

Almost any phone can browse the web today.

Yeah, but not in a way that approaches the usefulness of a desktop browser.

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#33

Post by daliusd » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 1:38 PM UTC

Joakal wrote: post #20

greyman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the penetration of smartphones is increasing, but I personally know a lot of people who don't want smartphone. For example, 2 out of 3 of my friends who owns iPhone said to me that "...but my previous nokia [dumbphone] was better", and are not planing to buy another smartphone. So it's still an open question what the ratio between smartphone and dumbphone will be in the future. But Nokia's dumbphones are certainl…

Wait until the internet capabilities on smartphones get realised. On a bus for 30 minutes? Use the phone to browse HN. etc

You can do that with old phones that have WAP browsers. OK. Someone needs to write WAP proxy for HN :)

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#34

Post by eli » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 1:41 PM UTC

alxp wrote: post #15

latch wrote: post #6

Isn't there quite a bit of data though to make this very static picture of the market somewhat irrelevant? I'm not trying to spread FUD. I would seriously like enlightenment if I'm wrong, but these are the conceptions that I have with respect to the more fluid nature of the market: -The trend, throughout the world, is going heavily against Nokia -Nokia's margins on each unit is a fraction of the competition -Nokia's…

Betting against high-selling low-margin products would be like betting against Wal-Mart. You can co-exist with them but you can't beat them at their own game, and their game is around to stay.

I agree with that, but I'm not sure Nokia's going to remain the king of the low-end phones. The barriers to entry are lower and competition even at the low end is increasing.

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#35

Post by brudgers » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 1:53 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #7

iwwr wrote: post #3

Any tales of HN-ers experience with Symbian?

The only way to do productive Symbian development in a non-deprecated environment is to use Qt. Run away from anything that says "Symbian" but isn't Qt. The latest Symbian ships with a version of Qt (4.6.3) that isn't the cutting edge, but is good enough. In typical Nokia manner, they've managed to make a dog's dinner of the SDK options: there's a regular Qt SDK, a Nokia-branded Qt SDK, a Symbian^3 SDK, a technology…

Easier of cross platform development is a good reason to use JavaMe in lieu of Qt when developing for Symbian because Android does not fully support C++ development.

[edit] eSWT provides access the GPU under Java.

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#36

Post by rue » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 1:53 PM UTC

daliusd wrote: post #27

nobody_nowhere wrote: post #5

Nokia has a pretty unparalleled manufacturing/delivery/logistics chain for low end phones. They like to claim they can put a phone on a shelf anywhere in africa for less than competitors' manufacturing costs. That's pretty impressive, if true. But we're talking about phones that retail for $35. The smartphones are a joke. But the software! I sure hope Qt is starting to pay some dividends for them. When i was dealing…

Just writing to agree. I have started learning native development at first. That was good experience from the point that you get some inner understanding how Symbian works but overall it is too hard to develop using native code. As well I am developing actively two Qt based Symbian applications during my free time currently. I really love it because I can in relatively small time develop nice and working applications…

Just yesterday I attended a presentation on the upcoming Qt Quick toolkit and QML, the language for defining UIs. Should have support for both Meego and whatever Symbians remain. QML looked quite nice in itself and a definite improvement but, in historical context, I'm not yet convinced…

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#37

Post by iwwr » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 1:54 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #26

iwwr wrote: post #3

Any tales of HN-ers experience with Symbian?

[HN meta] Btw, why is the parent comment being ranked as the second-to-last? It's got enough upvotes and discussion that, intuitively, it should be higher. Has something changed about the HN comment ranking algorithm lately? [/HN meta]

I think it depends on commenter karma (mass) and is inverse (square?) proportional with time elapsed. Comments with the highest 'gravity' float to the top.

Child comments don't modify the parent's gravity, do they?

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#38

Post by Pulpertank » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 1:55 PM UTC

ashutoshm wrote: post #24

nokia is ubiquitous in India.heck the subaltern has a song about it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjpKodZMQr8

Never thought that the word 'subaltern' would ever turn up in tech discussion. Good one. :)

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#39

Post by memr » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 2:08 PM UTC

Nokia sells alot of dumbphones right? Nokia sells more smartphones than dumbphones. Oh, and they've also been the most successful in transitioning customers to smartphones (60-70% of nokia dumbphone users become nokia smartphone users). Reading the US-centric blogs and tech-sites makes it seem like only the US companies are in the smartphone market (Google with Android, Apple with iOS, etc)

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#40

Post by ladon86 » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 2:08 PM UTC

Joakal wrote: post #20

greyman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the penetration of smartphones is increasing, but I personally know a lot of people who don't want smartphone. For example, 2 out of 3 of my friends who owns iPhone said to me that "...but my previous nokia [dumbphone] was better", and are not planing to buy another smartphone. So it's still an open question what the ratio between smartphone and dumbphone will be in the future. But Nokia's dumbphones are certainl…

Wait until the internet capabilities on smartphones get realised. On a bus for 30 minutes? Use the phone to browse HN. etc

That's what I do every time I'm on a bus :)