Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious • Hacker News Board

Re: Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious

#11

Post by kenjackson » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 7:47 PM UTC

nextparadigms wrote: post #2

I've always thought that Meego would be a much better 3rd platform than WP7. Meego is a much better competitor to Android than WP7 is. Meego can go in the same places Android can go because of its opensource and free nature. It can be on everything and built by "anyone" just like Android. WP7 on the other hand can only be used on mobile phones, and even then only by manufacturers that either want to pay the license f…

Actually I think just the opposite. Meego is a poor competitor to Android, because of how similar they are. In fact Meego today looks too much like the Samsung skin on Android (it would be funny if Samsung sued Nokia over trade dress).

There's no reason to get a Meego device over an Android device. But plenty of reason to get Android over Meego, at least today.

Whereas with Windows Phone, it is fundamentally different than Android. There's a lot of reason to pick WP over Android (and vice-versa). Nokia can exploit that space for at least a few years -- at which point Meego might be ready to really differentiate itself.

Re: Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious

#12

Post by andreasjansson » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 8:40 PM UTC

In February, Tomi Ahonen compared dropping MeeGo for WP7 to Microsoft in the 80s dropping the first version of Windows a few months before release, and going for Mac OS. Now I think he was right. I guess I'll just hold on to my 2330.

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/02/first-a...

Re: Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious

#13

Post by brudgers » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 8:48 PM UTC

nextparadigms wrote: post #2

I've always thought that Meego would be a much better 3rd platform than WP7. Meego is a much better competitor to Android than WP7 is. Meego can go in the same places Android can go because of its opensource and free nature. It can be on everything and built by "anyone" just like Android. WP7 on the other hand can only be used on mobile phones, and even then only by manufacturers that either want to pay the license f…

The issue with Meego isn't it's technical merits, it's adoption by Nokia's best customers. WP7 is designed to integrate vertically into the enterprise technology stack - just as Android is designed to facilitate integration with Google's services in order to allow data mining and iOS is designed to sell Apple hardware. WP7 facilitates B2B sales for Nokia in a way which Meego probably never could.

For Nokia, WP7 almost certainly offers better potential globally in the high margin corporate smartphone market than the alternatives. Because of it's .NET capability one can implement some of the same objects on the phone the enterprise implements elsewhere, e.g. it's servers. While this is also possible with other approaches, there are not the same incentives for development tool providers to invest in the level of cross platform compatibility as the incentives which Microsoft has to do so.

Based on the evidence, it looks like Nokia evaluated the WP7 roadmap to be better than those created internally for Meego and Symbian, and given the IP uncertainty surrounding the JVM their reluctance to become just another Android phone manufacturer does make some sense.

Re: Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious

#14

Post by keeperofdakeys » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 9:39 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #3

Isn't Samsung still holding on to Meego?

IBM are too, from what I have read.

Re: Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious

#15

Post by dave1010uk » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 9:57 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #9

How much of the software on the N9 is open source?

The MeeGo platform is pretty open source. You can see the components the N9 uses here: http://harmattan-dev.nokia.com/unstable/beta/Fremantle_Updat... (lots of cool stuff if you're a Linux geek).

Nokia's "UX" and built in apps, however, are not open source.

Re: Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious

#16

Post by kwantam » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 10:16 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #11

nextparadigms wrote: post #2

I've always thought that Meego would be a much better 3rd platform than WP7. Meego is a much better competitor to Android than WP7 is. Meego can go in the same places Android can go because of its opensource and free nature. It can be on everything and built by "anyone" just like Android. WP7 on the other hand can only be used on mobile phones, and even then only by manufacturers that either want to pay the license f…

Actually I think just the opposite. Meego is a poor competitor to Android, because of how similar they are. In fact Meego today looks too much like the Samsung skin on Android (it would be funny if Samsung sued Nokia over trade dress). There's no reason to get a Meego device over an Android device. But plenty of reason to get Android over Meego, at least today. Whereas with Windows Phone, it is fundamentally differen…

    There's no reason to get a Meego device over an Android 
    device. But plenty of reason to get Android over Meego, 
    at least today.

I'll be the first to admit I'm a highly atypical case, but this certainly isn't true for me. I want a UNIX userland on my phone, and for that Maemo/MeeGo is pretty much the only game in town.

Re: Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious

#17

Post by Lewisham » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 10:22 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #11

nextparadigms wrote: post #2

I've always thought that Meego would be a much better 3rd platform than WP7. Meego is a much better competitor to Android than WP7 is. Meego can go in the same places Android can go because of its opensource and free nature. It can be on everything and built by "anyone" just like Android. WP7 on the other hand can only be used on mobile phones, and even then only by manufacturers that either want to pay the license f…

Actually I think just the opposite. Meego is a poor competitor to Android, because of how similar they are. In fact Meego today looks too much like the Samsung skin on Android (it would be funny if Samsung sued Nokia over trade dress). There's no reason to get a Meego device over an Android device. But plenty of reason to get Android over Meego, at least today. Whereas with Windows Phone, it is fundamentally differen…

Agreed. Windows Phone does offer differences to Android, and honestly, there was very little chance Nokia was going to push Meego to the 3rd platform position.

If anything, Nokia probably learnt from WebOS. A great OS is not enough to save your company. You have to have the developer support, and you have to be able to push enough devices. Meego would have been limited to just Nokia handhelds, and the chicken/egg developer problem was very, very unlikely to resolve itself.

No longer having to bleed money on a software division, spending time on getting Nokia's core hardware competency and riding Microsoft's coattails to a 3rd place in the smartphone space sounds like a much better proposition. Nokia can go all-in on WP7 in a way HTC and Samsung haven't, and quickly become the flagship device provider.

I think the strategy makes perfect sense.

Re: Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious

#18

Post by riams » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 10:22 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #13

nextparadigms wrote: post #2

I've always thought that Meego would be a much better 3rd platform than WP7. Meego is a much better competitor to Android than WP7 is. Meego can go in the same places Android can go because of its opensource and free nature. It can be on everything and built by "anyone" just like Android. WP7 on the other hand can only be used on mobile phones, and even then only by manufacturers that either want to pay the license f…

The issue with Meego isn't it's technical merits, it's adoption by Nokia's best customers. WP7 is designed to integrate vertically into the enterprise technology stack - just as Android is designed to facilitate integration with Google's services in order to allow data mining and iOS is designed to sell Apple hardware. WP7 facilitates B2B sales for Nokia in a way which Meego probably never could. For Nokia, WP7 almos…

Wow, this was a very insightful and good analysis to which I agree. Thanks.

Re: Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious

#19

Post by bad_user » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 10:27 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #13

nextparadigms wrote: post #2

I've always thought that Meego would be a much better 3rd platform than WP7. Meego is a much better competitor to Android than WP7 is. Meego can go in the same places Android can go because of its opensource and free nature. It can be on everything and built by "anyone" just like Android. WP7 on the other hand can only be used on mobile phones, and even then only by manufacturers that either want to pay the license f…

The issue with Meego isn't it's technical merits, it's adoption by Nokia's best customers. WP7 is designed to integrate vertically into the enterprise technology stack - just as Android is designed to facilitate integration with Google's services in order to allow data mining and iOS is designed to sell Apple hardware. WP7 facilitates B2B sales for Nokia in a way which Meego probably never could. For Nokia, WP7 almos…

     Because of it's .NET capability one can implement...

Quite the contrary; considering how on WP7 you're forbidden to run native code, while on Meego/Maemo you're not, it's actually easier to port anything you can think of to Meego/Maemo.

Also, AFAIK Intel was working in cooperation with Microsoft to port Silverlight to Meego. There's also Mono which has excellent characteristics for smartphones.

    given the IP uncertainty surrounding the JVM

Nokia has the biggest and most relevant portfolio of patents related to mobile phones. Apple is paying them royalties already.

No, Android does not make sense for Nokia. Considering their expertise and size, they can do better. And WP7 will be their doom.

Re: Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious

#20

Post by herval » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 10:28 PM UTC

Does anyone really believe Nokia's actual product will look like that demo? I kinda recall this not happening quite a few times in the past.. (n97 anyone?)