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Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

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Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#141

Post by masklinn »

msh wrote: post #121
thomasz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locked Phones are the norm in Germany too. If this holds true for France too, the vast majority of mobile phones in Europe is being sold locked. I don't know the details about the "illegal" claim, but normally those things are governed by EU laws, making it somewhat hard to believe that contracts common in the UK and Germany would be considered illegal in the Netherlands or Portugal.

I dont know about UK/germany, but in Scandinavia the carrier must unlock the phone for free when the contract is up. The max length of a contract in denmark i 6 months, longer in norway/sweden.

In France, I believe you can get it unlocked after 6 months, even if your contract is for 24.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#142

Post by EnderMB »

blub wrote: post #140
EnderMB wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big problems with Android at the moment is phone manufacturers not playing ball with its customers. Samsung have repeatedly neglected their phones in favour of releasing more new Android phones. At the moment, HTC is probably the king of Android phones, and most non-casual Android users will probably want to go with them, or with a newer hyped phone. If Nokia were to enter the Android market and promote th…

Please stop thinking like a HN-er when discussing the entire market. If Nokia were to enter the Android market they would be just another Android producer. No one cares about drivers except hackers.

People don't care about different drivers, but they care when they want to download the Twitter app, only to realise that their new phone is on 1.6 and that they require 2.1, and Samsung will not upgrade their phone. A lot of open-source projects for community builds of Android get plenty of casual users wanting to get the most out of a phone they're currently tied to that the manufacturer has effectively dropped support for.

These problems exist because manufacturers have not thought about these issues, and would rather line their pockets with new customers than provide support for existing customers/suckers.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#143

Post by masklinn »

thomasz wrote: post #100
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlocked handsets don't count: almost no one is paying that much for a phone. Most mobile phones in the world are bought unlocked. Carrier-locked phones holding most of the market is an US/UK quirk, and in many European countries, carrier-locked phones like used in the US would actually be illegal.

Locked Phones are the norm in Germany too. If this holds true for France too, the vast majority of mobile phones in Europe is being sold locked. I don't know the details about the "illegal" claim, but normally those things are governed by EU laws, making it somewhat hard to believe that contracts common in the UK and Germany would be considered illegal in the Netherlands or Portugal.

> but normally those things are governed by EU laws

There are EU laws, but each member is free to add its own rules.

In Belgium, tied sales are illegal (or were mostly illegal until very recently), and subsidized phones linked to contracts are considered tied. Which makes them illegal in Belgium.

And nobody is going to buy a locked phone for the same price as an unlocked one.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#145

Post by thomasz »

limmeau wrote: post #109
thomasz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locked Phones are the norm in Germany too. If this holds true for France too, the vast majority of mobile phones in Europe is being sold locked. I don't know the details about the "illegal" claim, but normally those things are governed by EU laws, making it somewhat hard to believe that contracts common in the UK and Germany would be considered illegal in the Netherlands or Portugal.

Locked as in "locked to one network"? Except for prepaid 20EUR-phones and perhaps the iPhone, which phones in Germany come locked?

Phones are usually "bought" for 1€ with a 24 month contract attached. At the end of the contract, the lock is lifted and you can use your phone on all networks.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#146

Post by rbanffy »

msh wrote: post #121
thomasz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locked Phones are the norm in Germany too. If this holds true for France too, the vast majority of mobile phones in Europe is being sold locked. I don't know the details about the "illegal" claim, but normally those things are governed by EU laws, making it somewhat hard to believe that contracts common in the UK and Germany would be considered illegal in the Netherlands or Portugal.

I dont know about UK/germany, but in Scandinavia the carrier must unlock the phone for free when the contract is up. The max length of a contract in denmark i 6 months, longer in norway/sweden.

In Brazil they must unlock it upon request. The subsidies are tied to the service contract - if you break it, you pay a fine. I believe carriers are no longer bothering to have their phones locked up.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#147

Post by roel_v »

EnderMB wrote: post #142
blub wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop thinking like a HN-er when discussing the entire market. If Nokia were to enter the Android market they would be just another Android producer. No one cares about drivers except hackers.

People don't care about different drivers, but they care when they want to download the Twitter app, only to realise that their new phone is on 1.6 and that they require 2.1, and Samsung will not upgrade their phone. A lot of open-source projects for community builds of Android get plenty of casual users wanting to get the most out of a phone they're currently tied to that the manufacturer has effectively dropped sup…

Frankly, I don't think most people care, either. They just want a phone that works, where they can find the features they use, and maybe some useful other things, like syncing contacts with gmail.

Most people I know with Android devices have never downloaded apps, some have downloaded a few in the first few days they had their phone, and only my most hard-core tech friends download any regularly. Most studies seem to confirm this behaviour. Most people don't even know what a 'phone update' is, and are caught off guard when their phone asks them about it.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#148

Post by CaptainZapp »

thomasz wrote: post #100
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlocked handsets don't count: almost no one is paying that much for a phone. Most mobile phones in the world are bought unlocked. Carrier-locked phones holding most of the market is an US/UK quirk, and in many European countries, carrier-locked phones like used in the US would actually be illegal.

Locked Phones are the norm in Germany too. If this holds true for France too, the vast majority of mobile phones in Europe is being sold locked. I don't know the details about the "illegal" claim, but normally those things are governed by EU laws, making it somewhat hard to believe that contracts common in the UK and Germany would be considered illegal in the Netherlands or Portugal.

  Locked Phones are the norm in Germany too.
You forgot to add that this is only the case for subsidized phones. Nobody stops you from going to Media Markt to purchase an unlocked, uncrippled phone for full price.

In addition: SIM locked (i.e. only able to use a designated network) is not quite the same as a crippled phone (like in intentionally crippling the Bluetooth stack to force users to use a crappy service to upload photos for a couple bucks a pop).

I can't speak for Germany, but in Switzerland the only SIM locked phones are the ones that you buy together with a pre-payed deal. And then they have to unlock it for you after a couple years.

Personally I perceive the development of locking down devices as rather disturbing and I really hope that this trend doesn't swap into European mobile phones. That's why, yeah, I feel that Nokia matters a lot.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#149

Post by rbanffy »

blub wrote: post #138
wmf wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO a GNU/free fork of Android would still be a better platform than MeeGo or Symbian, and would be cheaper to develop.

There is no such thing as a free Android, except if you tear the whole Java user space away. And I'm REALLY curious about why you and 14 other people think that Android is such a good mobile OS. The VM is both a legal and speed liability, the Android UI is not GPU-accelerated and the entire OS is still immature (see the embarrassing bugs with the SMS or the browser security holes).

> There is no such thing as a free Android, except if you tear the whole Java user space away.

Isn't that part BSD-licensed?

> the Android UI is not GPU-accelerated

It's a bit hard when you have to support more than one device, but I believe it's a matter of time. As more and more hardware gains hardware acceleration, I assume it will come (if not already in the latest 2.x and 3.x series)

> the entire OS is still immature(see the embarrassing bugs with the SMS or the browser security holes)

Don't confuse the OS with the programs that run on it. You don't blame Windows when SharePoint eats up all your intranet, do you?

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#150

Post by roel_v »

mkramlich wrote: post #67
robryan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way forward, a company that wants to develop native apps for mobile must already work with so many different systems. A new startup is going to focus on an iphone app, if they are successful or well capitalized from the start then they will look at android. The third choice in the market is shaping to be windows 7 phone. Expecting companies to develop for then yet another platform, one which seems to be r…

> This is the way forward, a company that wants to develop native apps for mobile must already work with so many different systems. A new startup is going to focus on an iphone app, if they are successful or well capitalized from the start then they will look at android. The third choice in the market is shaping to be windows 7 phone. I agree with what you said here. But to take it a step further I'd say that the num…

If your goal is to provide for a nice developer experience, sure. Thing is that developers are paid to do non-pleasant things in order to maximize the end user experience. Most web apps are crap on the desktop already, but not enough to be worse than desktop apps (because of other advantages); but on a mobile, they're 10x worse and in almost no cases equally good let alone better than the native app.

What web apps do you know that work great on a phone? Maybe my experience is skewed, but the slickest web-based phone app is the mobile version of Reddit, and that thing still sucks when you actually use it.

Color me unconvinced - native dev isn't going anywhere just yet.

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