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Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

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Re: Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

#41

Post by subway »

pavlov wrote: post #38
subway wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a compatibility layer alone is far from sufficient. BBOS 10 (at least on the Z30) was downright miserable to use. There was also a huge open source developer community surrounding Maemo/Meego that I'm not sure BBOS has ever seen.

I had multiple Maemo devices — the 770, 800 and N900 tablets. I really tried hard to like the system, but let's not exaggerate its strengths. The open source software was mostly amateur ports from desktop Linux. I remember back in 2008 demoing my Nokia 800 mini tablet to someone who had got a brand new iPhone 3G. There just wasn't any contest. The Maemo software felt like a product of the '90s, and the hardware clear…

I completely agree about the software on Hildon based Maemo devices, but Meego on the N9 (Harmattan/QT based) was downright gorgeous, and managed to see some quality official apps for services like Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify.

Re: Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

#42

Post by toast0 »

cannam wrote: post #28
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty confident that the choice of Windows Phone over Android really didn't have to do with the UI, or even with Elop's past Microsoft connections: it had to do with services. Nokia wanted to bring their own services to the platform, especially relating to maps and navigation, and they wanted to have the new OS vendor be a full branded partner. With Google, that was an either/or choice: they could have used AOSP…

I like your explanation about services. One thing - > I was a little shocked that they didn't release a Qt compatibility layer for Windows Phone Windows Phone 7, which was current at the time of the switch, was managed-code only (i.e. .NET). There was no way to port Qt to it and no way to leverage any experience that developers for their existing platforms already had. That was one reason the switch was so dramatic.

WP 7.5 let you run some native code if you tried hard enough. Manufacturer signing gave more permissions than developer signing, so it might have been possible? I'm not sure if native code (such as it was) was an addition to 7.5 or part of 7, though.

Re: Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

#43

Post by bitmapbrother »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #40
bitmapbrother wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm pretty confident that the choice of Windows Phone over Android really didn't have to do with the UI, or even with Elop's past Microsoft connections The book says otherwise. Elop met with Ballmer twice during the negotiations. He never once met with Google representatives even once. Elop kept a physical distance from the negotiations. He and Schmidt had not met in a real negotiation even once. There were two or t…

Interesting. That (obviously) contradicts what I heard at the time from folks I was still in contact with, but I'll take the book's word on it. What you quote doesn't entirely contradict the notion that Microsoft offered what Nokia considered a better deal, though, especially if Nokia wanted only their services rather than "side-by-side" services. (Although Nokia traded away a lot, anyway, as it played out.)

>Microsoft offered what Nokia considered a better deal, though, especially if Nokia wanted only their services rather than "side-by-side" services.

Then why were Nokia services side by side with Microsoft services on Nokia Windows Phones? Also, the Nokia app store was nowhere to be found.

Additionally, according to a review of the Lumia 800, by The Verge[1], there was almost nothing to differentiate the device from any other WP device produced by HTC or Samsung. The extent of the Nokia modifications amounted to nothing more than Nokia Drive, Nokia Music and sounds, ringtones and wallpapers. Is this what Nokia had in mind when selecting Windows Phone to showcase their services and USP? Unique Nokia sounds, ringtones and wallpapers?

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ZbwCI_nZY

Re: Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

#44

Post by nradov »

cannam wrote: post #25
edent wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever try using it? It was awkward to use and slow. Even on the hardware that was specifically designed for.

When they announced the move to Windows Phone, I thought it seemed like a good idea. Meego clearly wasn't ready, Symbian was an antique, and Windows Phone was promising in so many ways -- even now I believe we will never see another smartphone OS as well-designed as Windows Phone 7. Then some months later, for some reason, I ended up owning a phone with the last release of Symbian on it (Symbian Belle). And I realise…

I doubt it. Symbian was held together with duct tape by that point. They managed to make some things sort of work in the short term through heroic engineering efforts but it was clearly unsustainable. There were fundamental limits which couldn't be fixed without seriously breaking backward compatibility.

Re: Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

#45

Post by mtgx »

pavlov wrote: post #21

The old Nokia crowd seem to have a tough time admitting that all of Nokia's old software operations were beyond salvage by 2010. Symbian had turned into a sprawling pile of crap, and Maemo/MeeGo was painted in a corner by internal politics that had marginalized its development. Nokia was spending ten times as much as Apple on R&D, yet had very little to show for it. Having two competing OS teams was a bad choice made…

I agree with you until the WP part. WP was always destined to be a failure in the context of that time. It didn't matter that Microsoft paid Nokia billions, because you can't fix everything by throwing more money at the problem. Microsoft learned that the hard way with its investments in the app stores, too, and in other markets, too.

People who followed the ecosystems very closely then knew that even Android was lucky to see the success it did against iOS, and that success was almost exclusively due to the fact that "it was there first" to allow the OEMs to unite against iOS as an ecosystem. But even that wasn't easy at all and the fans had to suffer through ~4 years of Android phones being "close, but no cigar" compared to the iPhone. This is why WP had no way of winning a significant portion of the market being multiple years behind in development, interest, and ecosystem.

If the roles had been reversed for WP and Android, and WP launched in 2008 and Android in 2011-2012, I don't think Android would've seen too much success either, even though it would be open source. Maybe it would've gotten like 20% of the market if Google played its cards right, but I think WP would have dominated.

But yes, the time to shine for Meego (Maemo actually) was immediately after they announced it. However, it was obvious the leadership didn't want to "rock the boat" for the Symbian cash cow. By the time they had to pick between WP and Android, it was of course way too late for Meego.

Re: Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

#46

Post by mtgx »

raverbashing wrote: post #26
oldcynic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never did figure out what was supposed to be wrong with MeeGo/Maemo. Always thought it had a lot of potential and some great UX ideas that were nowhere else.

The problem was twofold: - Internal politics and the "old school" symbian developers not buying into this ecosystem - MeeGo/Maemo was more worried with Free Software "circle self pleasing" and rewriting stuff every couple of months than actually shipping a product How did Android approach the same problem? Kept the kernel and replaced X and most of userspace with dedicated libraries and binaries. Focused on shipping…

Pretty much this. Lack of interest/willingness to invest aggressively from the CEO, even though Maemo looked quite promising when announced.

Meego was a distraction and pretty much a mistake. I think it was mainly pushed by Intel so they have a reason to sell Atom. People may not remember but before "netbooks" Atom was supposed to go into Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), which were much smaller than netbooks but larger than smartphones.

Netbooks pretty much came out as a "trial and error" device from PC manufacturers, who were failing with MIDs. If I remember right, Microsoft also had to extend selling new XP licenses post-Windows 7 launch, because of the netbook popularity, and because it didn't want Linux to become popular on them.

Re: Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

#47

Post by mtgx »

cannam wrote: post #25
edent wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever try using it? It was awkward to use and slow. Even on the hardware that was specifically designed for.

When they announced the move to Windows Phone, I thought it seemed like a good idea. Meego clearly wasn't ready, Symbian was an antique, and Windows Phone was promising in so many ways -- even now I believe we will never see another smartphone OS as well-designed as Windows Phone 7. Then some months later, for some reason, I ended up owning a phone with the last release of Symbian on it (Symbian Belle). And I realise…

Yeah, but Symbian Belle was like their third try at "touch OS" by that time. It was too late just like it was for BlackBerry with QNX.

At that point it was all about the ecosystem. It didn't matter anymore even if they did get the OS right.

Re: Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

#48

Post by WorldMaker »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #27
pavlov wrote: post #21

The old Nokia crowd seem to have a tough time admitting that all of Nokia's old software operations were beyond salvage by 2010. Symbian had turned into a sprawling pile of crap, and Maemo/MeeGo was painted in a corner by internal politics that had marginalized its development. Nokia was spending ten times as much as Apple on R&D, yet had very little to show for it. Having two competing OS teams was a bad choice made…

I'm pretty confident that the choice of Windows Phone over Android really didn't have to do with the UI, or even with Elop's past Microsoft connections: it had to do with services. Nokia wanted to bring their own services to the platform, especially relating to maps and navigation, and they wanted to have the new OS vendor be a full branded partner. With Google, that was an either/or choice: they could have used AOSP…

> Personally, I think they should have gone with AOSP

It's certainly complex to armchair quarterback the idea, but I don't think Nokia would have had any more luck than Amazon's FireOS (or the failed/doomed commercial attempt at Cyanogen, for that matter) if they had attempted that. AOSP has long been a seemingly open carrot with far too many hidden and closed sticks in Google's control.

Re: Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

#49

Post by abdulmuhaimin »

subway wrote: post #24
pavlov wrote: post #21

The old Nokia crowd seem to have a tough time admitting that all of Nokia's old software operations were beyond salvage by 2010. Symbian had turned into a sprawling pile of crap, and Maemo/MeeGo was painted in a corner by internal politics that had marginalized its development. Nokia was spending ten times as much as Apple on R&D, yet had very little to show for it. Having two competing OS teams was a bad choice made…

Meego could have been killer, if they'd made the devices available, and shipped Alien Dalvik to bootstrap off of Android's app ecosystem. I've been using a Xperia X running Sailfish for the last week, and can't get over how well Android apps run along side beautiful native Sailfish apps. While Google Play Services are kinda hacky to get up and running, if you can live out of F-Droid and/or the Amazon app store, every…

I dont think Meego even have to bootstrap off Android app ecosystem at that time. I bet people would still be willing switch to Meego since its so good and intuitive, and dev(especially those symbian dev) naturally will fill in the gap created.

Re: Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

#50

Post by WorldMaker »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #43
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. That (obviously) contradicts what I heard at the time from folks I was still in contact with, but I'll take the book's word on it. What you quote doesn't entirely contradict the notion that Microsoft offered what Nokia considered a better deal, though, especially if Nokia wanted only their services rather than "side-by-side" services. (Although Nokia traded away a lot, anyway, as it played out.)

>Microsoft offered what Nokia considered a better deal, though, especially if Nokia wanted only their services rather than "side-by-side" services. Then why were Nokia services side by side with Microsoft services on Nokia Windows Phones? Also, the Nokia app store was nowhere to be found. Additionally, according to a review of the Lumia 800, by The Verge[1], there was almost nothing to differentiate the device from a…

IIRC, Windows Phone 7/8/8.1 defaulted to HERE Maps platform wide (not just Nokia devices, but certainly on Nokia devices) in the main Map app due to the partnership, despite Microsoft's large investments into Bing Maps. Maps on mobile I think only "recently" reverted to Bing in Windows 10 with the expiration of the deal with HERE Maps.

The Lumias always had a number of exclusive Nokia-only "accessory" apps like Glance that were so well embedded they seemed like built-in Windows Phone apps (and unsurprisingly subsequently became built-in platform-wide apps post-Nokia acquisition) that a lot of people didn't notice they were Nokia services/value adds. On the one hand, that was part of why the Lumias were so great at the time was how seamlessly they upgraded the platform as a whole, but on the other hand, it's a weird marketing failure that comparison shoppers may not have realized what was an important value-adding Nokia app/setting/feature and not a Microsoft app/setting/feature, and what value Nokia was adding on top of the platform.

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