Well maybe if Symbian wasn't a total piece of shit they wouldn't be shutting it down. Seriously, I owned an N97 for a while and that was the flagship product of Nokia for sometime, the OS is complete shit. Hardware was awesome but the OS was almost as bad as the old Windows Mobile OS.
1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
121–130 of 170 posts
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#122Let's see 1. Hire someone from Microsoft to run the company 2. He says "our platform is burning, we have to do something drastic" which most people interpret as "prepare to come up with a strategy and fight like hell to win". 3. Guess what, he already had something in mind! It was "throw out our current reasonably successful development efforts and become a licensee of Microsoft's failed platform instead". And piss o…
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1. Board isn't impressed with current inhouse developements, and wants a "modern" mobile OS. There aren't really many alternatives to WP7.
2. Old CEO doesn't want to bend over to MS
3. Kick old CEO out and get a guy from MS to do negotiations with MS to license WP7
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's amazing how hyperbolic people are being about this, presumably out of blind Microsoft hatred. Pretty much everyone agreed that Nokia's Symbian/MeeGo strategy was a failure, that Nokia were quickly losing marketshare and that they needed a new OS. The only options were Android and Windows Phone 7. WebOS would have been a better fit than either, but that option had already been and gone. I think there are compelli…
People also seem to have forgotten that the bulk of Nokia's sales don't come from smartphones. All they're doing here is replacing the OS of their 'flagship' lineup. Since Nokia smartphones have barely entered into the consciousness of the wealthy Western consumers who have been buying Apple/Android in the last few years, this /has/ to be an improvement.
That depends on how you define a smartphone. Chinese manufacturers as well as Samsung have pushed price of Android phones down to around $150 - unlocked. Samsung's Android phones are not crap. At that price point, it steals the show because the competing Symbian phones were not at all good. Just compare the FB app for Android and that for Nokia. Smartphones will keep getting pushed to lower price-points. Also, they might be offered at cheap rates with 3G data plans. India - one of Nokia's biggest markets just finalized 3G spectrum allocation and there are rumors that operators here will start subsidizing smartphones with fixed data contracts. Nokia denmocratised mobile phones. It won't want to miss out when smartphones become democratised.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#124Whether it was Android, Microsoft, or slowly dying, people working there would be affected, so I'm not sure the choice of Microsoft changes things too much from that point of view. With Android, perhaps they could have kept more people on board to hack on it and customize it, but still, the axe was going to fall. Should be interesting to see how this is handled in Finland. Stock is down, layoffs, and some "arrogant f…
Android could be built/merged with MeeGo. They have the same kernel and all hardware-specific work would be reused. Both userlands could run side by side.
I don't think you realize how different Android and MeeGo (or atleast Maemo) are. They aren't running the same kernel and their userland is completely different. The fact that both have bits of linux inside doesn't really make them alike. It probably would be easier to port Qt for WP7 than integrate Android on top of MeeGo.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
No doubt there is plenty of MS hatred... I guess my question is maybe a little different, if Nokia is in that much trouble, then isn't WP7 a gamble? Its not just flying off the shelf where Android on the other hand is. Two losers don't usually make a winner. I don't know, seems like Google is all in with Android, they've got a pipeline, they've established themselves and proven themselves and they are legitimately co…
I think it's actually the other way around, moving to Android would be the bigger gamble. What would differentiate Nokia from any other company that develops phones for Android?
Nokia could go back and focus on great hardware.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#126Turns out Nokia gave those workers the rest of the day off. Journalism fail.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't follow the exact numbers, but my impression was that there were a hell of a lot of Nokia phones running Nokia OSes sold in world. Do you have a source handy? It would be interesting to see how Nokia's market penetration (however declining it may be) compared to Microsoft's.
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1543014
Wow. Android is really eating everybody's pie.
But Nokia dropped far less (47.6% -> 37.9%), proportionally, than Microsoft (8.7% -> 4.2%).
No question that Microsoft is the winner here.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Symbian was not a failure... it was a giant succes for quite a long time. That's like calling MS-DOS a failure.
A success by what metric? As a platform, surely not. The wheels came off by the end of 2008 when S60 5th Edition went touch-only, leaving keyboard devices still shipping with the hopelessly outdated 3rd Edition. Symbian touch devices never gained any platform traction. Was it a success as a software foundation upon which handset makers could innovate, as had been the original idea behind Symbian? No. Everyone that us…
A success by what metric?
how about global market share?
2008: 52.4% of smartphones (RIM 17%, Apple 10%) [1]
2009: 47.2% of smartphones (RIM 21%, Apple 15%) [1]
Android came in at 0.5% and 5% for those two years.
Gartner forecasts that Symbian will remain in the number one smartphone OS position until 2014 when it is contested by Android [2]
Sure, it's in decline now, but it's been a phenomenal success.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
People also seem to have forgotten that the bulk of Nokia's sales don't come from smartphones. All they're doing here is replacing the OS of their 'flagship' lineup. Since Nokia smartphones have barely entered into the consciousness of the wealthy Western consumers who have been buying Apple/Android in the last few years, this /has/ to be an improvement.
That depends on how you define a smartphone. Chinese manufacturers as well as Samsung have pushed price of Android phones down to around $150 - unlocked. Samsung's Android phones are not crap. At that price point, it steals the show because the competing Symbian phones were not at all good. Just compare the FB app for Android and that for Nokia. Smartphones will keep getting pushed to lower price-points. Also, they m…
Certainly true - but arguably, cheap Windows machines democratized personal computing. I wouldn't discount Nokia's future in the developing world because of Microsoft's involvement.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Symbian was not a failure... it was a giant succes for quite a long time. That's like calling MS-DOS a failure.
yes but MS-DOS was followed up by windows 3.1 and then windows 95 both of which were a huge success. What followed up symbian was not. I think this is very sensible for them to focus on hardware while let somebody else do the software. Though I must agree their choice of MSFT is startling. I expected them to fragment Android even further. Glad that didn't happen.
I'm actually not surprised by the choice of wp7, and not simply because the new ceo is ex-MS. Going with Android would make Nokia just another Sony/Samsung/HTC, but throwing all of their eggs in the WP7 basket at least gives them a chance to maintain some relevance as a distinct entity. It's going to be rough on the hardware guys though, making every new phone with a Windows logo on it.