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

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

#81

Post by visakhcr »

eli wrote: post #31
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.

Lots of local brands have suddenly gained some traction in Indian market. Mostly because of their cheap prices (Micromaxx brought out an Android one for $130!).

Also, if you look at the PR of these new mobile companies, they are mostly targeted at the people living in rural areas. So, they are in fact eating a part of Nokia's pie, but a final verdict can be said only a couple of years later. Micromaxx is going public soon, so, lets wait and see how many of them make it.

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

#82

Post by asmosoinio »

brudgers wrote: post #67
blub wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaMe is not that cross-platform from what I've been told. Qt runs on Linux (including embedded), Mac, Windows, BeOS and Symbian/Maemo.

Only one of those operating systems, Symbian, is used on phones to any extent. JavaME runs under both Symbian and Android - and that's a lot of Mobile platforms. So if one is developing a mobile app on Symbian, Qt may not be the most flexible option once other currently available mobile platforms are considered.

From what I've seen, all Android phones do not have JavaME installed as default. My Samsung Galaxy I5700 did have it, but another phone my college tested with didn't have it.

This killed "hey we can just use our current MIDlet for Android users" -idea for us.

If anyone knows better, please let me know. Working on porting a MIDlet to Andoid right now. :)

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

#83

Post by stcredzero »

While Americans carry dogs around in handbags, Koreans eat them.

This is racist shock-talk aimed at Americans. Yes, this happens in Korea. My understanding is that some older people believe that by eating a dog, you gain the creature's vitality. I know that the majority of Koreans who live in the United States do not do this and their only involvement with the practice is to find such talk embarrassing. In many european countries, people also eat horses, which many Americans would find just as shocking. In parts of Louisiana, a lot of people will happily cook and eat just about any mammal.

Personally, I find this hypocritical, as many Americans happily (likely unknowingly) feed their family dog the processed meat of other dogs.

http://www.bukisa.com/articles/294021_is-there-dog-meat-in-d...

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

#84

Post by kolinko »

samstokes wrote: post #77
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…

Nokia makes smartphones. Sure, they make (a lot of) dumbphones, but they also make (a lot of) smartphones. That graph was of app store visits , and thus only counts smartphones. I've not heard an agreed definition of smartphone, but by all the various definitions I've heard, Nokia devices like the N8 are smartphones: * Downloadable apps? Check. * Downloadable apps written in a language that can segfault? Check. * App…

It's like comparing an Audi to a Rolls-Royce: - Four Wheels? Check - Electric windows? Check - Radio? Check and so on...

It's not about the features - it's about the polish. Before iPhone came Nokia was the best (IMO) producer of the phones in the world. But today? They are far behind Apple and far behind any producer that uses Android. Their phones are buggy, their OS is a crap, software development for Symbian is a hell, and the market..

Well - I don't know about the market. Numbers show that Nokia has 57% in China, but what about sales? Apple brags that they've put something around $1.5bln in the hands of developers. What about Nokia?

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

#85

Post by kolinko »

Tichy wrote: post #47
notahacker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Betting that learning an app development framework plus Mandarin to sell apps on $35 phones probably isn't the best strategy for developers is more reasonable though.

Why not? Long before the iPhone, several people got rich by selling J2ME apps to low end phones.

Can you name one or two J2ME apps that you ever purchased? I can't and I don't know anybody who did. It was a disaster trying to publish back then.

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

#86

Post by Tichy »

kolinko wrote: post #85
Tichy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Long before the iPhone, several people got rich by selling J2ME apps to low end phones.

Can you name one or two J2ME apps that you ever purchased? I can't and I don't know anybody who did. It was a disaster trying to publish back then.

I published a J2ME app that was bought 20000 times. I also worked for a J2ME games company for a while.

Not sure if I ever bought a J2ME app myself. But then I have only bought one app for iPhone/Android so far: Monkey Island.

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

#87

Post by Tuna-Fish »

daliusd wrote: post #80
huertanix wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia also doesn't cut deals with carriers to subsidize the cost of their phones like many Android phone manufacturers do. "$520 for a phone? I can almost buy a laptop for that!"

My coworker from USA couldn't believe that I have paid 200$ for smartphone. I'm from Europe.

You can comfort yourself with the fact that after comparing the contracts, he probably paid a lot more for his.

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

#88

Post by borism »

gyardley wrote: post #73

Whenever I read an article like this, I wonder what exactly they'd like me to do. Build software for customers whose markets I'm not familiar with, languages I don't speak, and customs and tastes I'm ignorant of? Sounds like a recipe for failure to me.

they want you to have a perspective
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