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Nokia: "We will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is seen today"

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Re: Nokia: "We will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is seen today"

#31

Post by edw »

Seems like there are a lot of Nokia people doing a lot of rationalizing about whether Nokia's the top or bottom in their new relationship with Microsoft. Exhibit A:

"In this question [Kai Öistämö of Nokia] revealed that Microsoft has actually partnered with Nokia to include Nokia Maps in all their service platforms."

Sure it did.

Regarding the UI customization, this is just delusional-slash-magical thinking that is par for the course with makers of commodity products under the thumb of their commodifier-master. They're always thinking that their "value add" is going to make them stand out when in fact it makes them like one more art student with dyed hair in the oh-so-individual clone army: interchangeably weird.

Re: Nokia: "We will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is seen today"

#32

Post by cube13 »

brudgers wrote: post #19
S_A_P wrote: post #7

My take on this- how much can they really modify here and make sure they don't break compatibility with the 3rd party apps? If things were not so dire that they needed to dump a platform they have years invested in, is it really smart(arrogant?) to think that the OS that has actually shipped and seems to be pretty good is not good enough for them?

Since Windows Phone is based on .NET, a lot of changes can be made by Nokia without breaking compatibility with third party applications, e.g. .NET allows multiple versions of a library to exist simultaneously for different applications because it was architected with backwards and forwards compatibility in mind.

.NET isn't what allows that to happen, though, since, AFAIK, MS has not committed to binary compatibility between .NET versions. While the framework makes it easier to leverage these features(you can still use it with non-managed C++ but it's quite annoying to get working), the Windows kernel is what allows the multiple versions to exist.

In the case of .NET, it's the side-by-side deployment of the .NET runtimes that allow multiple versions to be present on the system at the same time.

Re: Nokia: "We will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is seen today"

#33

Post by rbanffy »

cooldeal wrote: post #26
rbanffy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's best that they leave it to MS. If they do it, they'll be a commodity phone maker and will have to compete in price with other WP7 phone makers. All three of them.

> All three of them. Three? There's atleast 4 in the US, HTC, Samsung, LG and Dell.

Fair enough. All four of them.

Re: Nokia: "We will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is seen today"

#34

Post by rbanffy »

alex_c wrote: post #30
rbanffy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's best that they leave it to MS. If they do it, they'll be a commodity phone maker and will have to compete in price with other WP7 phone makers. All three of them.

If they don't, past experience suggests they'll end up with smartphones that no one in North America will want to buy.

> they'll end up with smartphones that no one in North America will want to buy.

It's not like everyone in NA wants to buy a WP7 phone now. If they change the UI enough, maybe someone will want it.

Re: Nokia: "We will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is seen today"

#35

Post by hvs »

poundy wrote: post #29

What many people probably don't know is that Nokia started as a company manufacturing paper in 1868, it moved into electricity generation, footwear, etc before creating the first phone in 1960s (100 years after it started). It is hard to find a company that survived this long in business. I wish they do well, but the MS path does not seem right.

Now that's what I call, "pivoting"!

Re: Nokia: "We will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is seen today"

#36

Post by alex_c »

rbanffy wrote: post #34
alex_c wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't, past experience suggests they'll end up with smartphones that no one in North America will want to buy.

> they'll end up with smartphones that no one in North America will want to buy. It's not like everyone in NA wants to buy a WP7 phone now. If they change the UI enough, maybe someone will want it.

I don't disagree. I just haven't seen any evidence from Nokia, based on their own UIs, that they can make the WP7 UI more desirable, rather than less or the same.

Re: Nokia: "We will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is seen today"

#37

Post by conover »

Kilimanjaro wrote: post #12

Nokia, an agonizing downward spiral into irrelevance.

I wouldn't consider 30%+ percent of the global mobile phone market irrelevant. There market share is, in fact, up in the 4th quarter of 2010 according to Wikipedia.

Re: Nokia: "We will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is seen today"

#38

Post by daeken »

cube13 wrote: post #32
brudgers wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Windows Phone is based on .NET, a lot of changes can be made by Nokia without breaking compatibility with third party applications, e.g. .NET allows multiple versions of a library to exist simultaneously for different applications because it was architected with backwards and forwards compatibility in mind.

.NET isn't what allows that to happen, though, since, AFAIK, MS has not committed to binary compatibility between .NET versions. While the framework makes it easier to leverage these features(you can still use it with non-managed C++ but it's quite annoying to get working), the Windows kernel is what allows the multiple versions to exist. In the case of .NET, it's the side-by-side deployment of the .NET runtimes that…

> the Windows kernel is what allows the multiple versions to exist.

I don't think you know what the Windows kernel does. Multiple library versions have nothing to do with the kernel because 1) the kernel doesn't know anything about libraries, 2) the kernel doesn't do userspace binary loading (even for completely unmanaged code), and 3) the kernel does nothing at all with .NET.

Side-by-side deployment of binaries is actually completely separate from the functionality in .NET that allows multiple versions, which is the GAC (Global Assembly Cache); SxS binaries (which are used by unmanaged code) are completely separate, although they both reference their respective binaries via manifest files.

Re: Nokia: "We will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is seen today"

#39

Post by prewett »

edw wrote: post #31

Seems like there are a lot of Nokia people doing a lot of rationalizing about whether Nokia's the top or bottom in their new relationship with Microsoft. Exhibit A: "In this question [Kai Öistämö of Nokia] revealed that Microsoft has actually partnered with Nokia to include Nokia Maps in all their service platforms." Sure it did. Regarding the UI customization, this is just delusional-slash-magical thinking that is p…

"Interchangeably weird": that is a great description of extreme individualism!

Re: Nokia: "We will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is seen today"

#40

Post by WrkInProgress »

cooldeal wrote: post #17
teyc wrote: post #13

At the moment, I believe it is only the Android phones which sport GPS. (Although Nokia feature phones already have Ovimaps). Bringing maps to the table means WP7 will be on par with Android on such a basic feature. Does this mean MS has basically bought themselves a mapping company for a couple billion dollars? On top of it, they've secured a solid brand with a good distribution channel and pre-existing relationship…

>At the moment, I believe it is only the Android phones which sport GPS. Huh, almost every smartphone from the last 4 years sport GPS. What the agreement means is that Bing maps will be able to use Ovi maps in places where it's currently lacking, i.e Europe and Asia.

I think what 'teyc' meant was that Android is the only platform that offers free turn by turn navigation among the major platforms.

Nokia has provided this recently with their version of Ovi Maps as well (not sure if it's free on all S60 devices). So it is possible that the Ovi Maps & Bing Maps integration may include bringing the free turn by turn navigation to Windows Phone 7.

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