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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"

#41

Post by WrkInProgress »

rbanffy wrote: post #33
cooldeal wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fair enough. All four of them.

How many do they need ?

They have the two largest smartphone manufacturers outside of Apple and RIM, in HTC and Samsung.

Among the large manufacturers, all they are missing is Sony Ericsson and Motorola. And I believe only Motorola has hinted that they are Android only.

And Nokia is still larger (not for long) than #2 and #3 in terms of worldwide sales.

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

#42

Post by rbanffy »

WrkInProgress wrote: post #41
rbanffy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. All four of them.

How many do they need ? They have the two largest smartphone manufacturers outside of Apple and RIM, in HTC and Samsung. Among the large manufacturers, all they are missing is Sony Ericsson and Motorola. And I believe only Motorola has hinted that they are Android only. And Nokia is still larger (not for long) than #2 and #3 in terms of worldwide sales.

Actually, they could line up a couple dozen WP7 phone manufacturers and still fail. What they need is not manufacturers, but people buying and using the phones. This is not happening.

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

#43

Post by rbanffy »

alex_c wrote: post #36
rbanffy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Having the choice between 100% certain doom and 95% certain doom, I'd go for the second. Just not very enthusiastically.

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

#44

Post by crs »

"Secondly, another big client of the company, the operators, unanimously voted for a partnership with Microsoft as this will bring a third contender to the marketplace."

That sentence stood out the most from that article. For Nokia to say they choose this partnership because the operators want another choice seems insane to me. Basically I am interpreting that to mean the operators want more platforms to help give them leverage when negotiating with phone manufactures. Which could potential hurt Nokia in the future too.

Am I reading to much into this, or does Nokia's logic there strike anyone else as funny too?

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

#45

Post by brudgers »

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…

Interesting point, but the net result is the same.

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

#46

Post by kogir »

Given that Nokia owns Navteq, my interpretation of "Microsoft has actually partnered with Nokia to include Nokia Maps in all their service platforms" is that Microsoft will use Navteq data everywhere.

Microsoft's big sell to developers has been freedom from device targeting. I'd be very surprised if they allow Nokia to change any fundamental elements, including Live Tiles and Notifications.

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

#47

Post by wmf »

rbanffy wrote: post #43
alex_c wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having the choice between 100% certain doom and 95% certain doom, I'd go for the second. Just not very enthusiastically.

I think this argument could go either way. As a "commodity" WP7 phone maker, Nokia might be able to get 20% of the WP7 market on brand recognition alone. But a crappified version of WP7 might earn them 0% of the market instead.

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

#48

Post by r00fus »

crs wrote: post #44

"Secondly, another big client of the company, the operators, unanimously voted for a partnership with Microsoft as this will bring a third contender to the marketplace." That sentence stood out the most from that article. For Nokia to say they choose this partnership because the operators want another choice seems insane to me. Basically I am interpreting that to mean the operators want more platforms to help give th…

No what this means is that the operators don't want to be stuck with Android vs. iOS; they would prefer a strong third option, which would be Nokia/MS.

Back in 2006, operators used to have dozens of manufacturers of smartphones at their disposal each with relatively weak OS platforms (RIM/Blackberry being the top at the time).

Then the iPhone came out and disrupted that market by offering the iOS platform. Then Android matured (using some iOS cues) and became the 2nd leading platform.

Right now, the third platform (Blackberry) is getting weaker by the day, while WP7 is not gaining traction. So a combined Nokia/MS could provide a strong 3rd option for worldwide operators.

None of this makes sense unless Nokia is the preferred manufacturer for Microsoft and not just another commoditized handset maker of Windows phones.

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

#49

Post by brettnak »

keso wrote: post #20

I don't understand the negative and suspicious comments. How is this different from HTC Sense and Samsung TouchWiz in Android phones?

I don't think anyone is saying it's that much different. To me, that's what makes it suspicious. Sense, MotoBlur, & TouchWiz all fragment the android platform, break/change certain view widgets, and lag behind the major release. If you've ever written an android application, you probably remember how you have to remember to set the fonts, colors, font sizes, and just about every property of every widget just to make sure your app looks consistent. WP7 being brand new has the same advantage that iOS does. You don't have to guess what you're UI will look like on someone's phone because they all have the same environment. On Android, it's absurd.

[Edit]

I'll take this a step further and say that this is at least one of the reasons that there aren't as many high quality apps in the Android Market. Though, there are obviously several more.

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

#50

Post by yason »

cooldeal wrote: post #27
keso wrote: post #20

I don't understand the negative and suspicious comments. How is this different from HTC Sense and Samsung TouchWiz in Android phones?

Sense and Touchwiz fragment the UI and generally lag more compared to stock Android UI. On top of that, it takes them ages to port the UI skins to the latest Android version which delays the upgrades by several months

It's not the UI which is fairly high-level code. See the Android source code for the default Launcher application. What takes time is porting a new Android distribution and kernel to that custom hardware of yours, test all of your hardware-facing kernel code again completely, and make sure your kernel ABI can still talk sensibly with your userspace counterparts since things and APIs might have changed since the last Android version.
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