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Sendo Can't Get Microsoft Source; Ditches Windows
An anonymous submitter wrote: "Just when you thought the award-winning data leech Microsoft had become invincible... cellphone manufacturer Sendo, in a statement on the front page of its web site, announces the termination of its Z100 smartphone development on the Microsoft platform, licensing the rival Symbian from Nokia instead. (Further reports by ZDnet and Heise.)"
I guess this is the way that vendors can get a change out of Microsoft. If you don't like someones product, take your business somewhere else.
~S
phones. When you are trying to packet send and receive while jumping from cell to cell, you don't want the OS hung while a Window repaints, or an icon flickers on and off. You want an realtime OS tied down to the actual sending/recieving packets and doing the d/a a/d conversion on the speaker and microphone. You want a steady stream of conversation, you don't want the equivalent of an oral hourglass.
This is also why Windowing software is also the wrong paradigm for industrial strength routers. The reason CICSCO certified people make such great money compared to test passsing MCSE monkeys is that the Cisco OS is all commandline/terminal driven, when you're routing a T3, you don't the overhead for pretty graphics.
Who the hell is "Sendo" and why should I care that this company no one has heard of has "stood up" to Microsoft?
Although many will doubtless claim this is insignificant to MS - the fact they're further delayed in getting their own hardware out there will do them serious damage in the mobile device arena. Nokia and other phone manufacturers have a growing army of 3rd party developers writing new software for their devices, which in turn makes them more desirable for anyone who wishes to expand their capabilities. Although the phone manufacturers are making some mistakes (mostly messing about with the J2ME standard classes, and offering little support) the number of apps is increasing very quickly.
;-)
Contrast this with MS, who have no platform, no 3rd party developers (as far as I know), and very little to offer over the established brands. The other mobile makers already have software to sync their devices with Windows/Linux/Mac OS', and they're pretty reliable.
MS is going to have a very very hard battle trying to convince anyone to buy their phones, even moreso than the XBox - which isn't doing well compared to the competition.
This is a good thing
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Microsoft is trying to hook it's claws into all things digital (including phones, appliances and cars). The fact that their programs are unqualified for such activities is irrelevant to them. This is, fortunately, a setback. Hopefully, a big one.
Yes the article states that they are ditching MS, but other than stating the openness of Symbian source code, there doesn't seem to be any specific reference stating that Sendo ditches Windows because it "can't get Microsoft source".
Great links ... the last paragraph of Dan Gillmore's article gets to the crux of this and many other modern problems:
The one chance is for people to realize what's at stake and do something difficult: Make choices that mean less convenience today in order to have liberty tomorrow. Americans are lousy at this, but a lot is now at stake. You may not care. You should.
Yup. Americans ARE lousy at this, at least nowadays. We are the proud, the free, willing to fight for liberty justice for all, as long as we can do it with a remote from the couch. Today's America is a golden land of opportunity for anybody who can figure out clever ways to exploit our overriding aversion to inconvenience. That's the problem. Come up with a good solution to that, and the rest is details. My great fear is that fixing our sheep-like mentality is going to take something starkly real and immediate, like guerrilla warfare in our streets or an economic depression on the scale of the 1930s.
The day will come when a competitor of Cisco develops a router that is easily configured by a Sysadmin who isn't a CCIE that knows the Cisco IOS terminal-driven interface like the back of their hand.
When that day comes, Cisco will feel the pressure and follow suit. Why pay a CCIE $80,000 to do your configuration when you can pay somebody $35,000? Same reason why many companies choose Windows instead of Linux. I'm not saying its right or even cost effective, but its a lot cheaper (up front) to hire someone to set up a Windows server than a Linux server. Especially for simple things like file and printer sharing.
There will always be a place for a CCIE expert, however their choice of places may become fewer.
That being why many marketing gurus have psychology degrees. People don't have anywehre near as much free will as they'd like to believe. We're creatures of habit and instinct, and we're very easily manipulated.
--- They may take our lives, but they will never take our FREEDOM!!!
Normally I would have a smart ass comment, but I don't think I need to say anything here.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
From now on, every IT vendor knows: if he turns away from Microsoft and uses other's products, an article describing this will be immediately published on /. and his Web site will be immediately slashdot'ed.
This will obviously stop those IT vendors from doing such a crasy thing.
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
Why pay a CCIE $80,000 to do your configuration when you can pay somebody $35,000?
Because if you offer 35k/year to someone who knows this stuff, whether CCIE or not, they're gonna laugh all the way to their interview with your competitor.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
People don't care about what OS the phone is running nearly as much as the telcos that have to support it. Also, phones are not percieved as computers and the branding of the software that runs on them matters little because the branding is on the device. Folks buy a Nokia or Motorola phone, not a Microsoft or Symbian phone.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
A common conclusion have been something like "Yeah, it looks like windows a bit, yeah, it can do some nice things but it is not really an good as pda, it takes 40 seconds to start and it is not a very nice telephone either."
A few reviews have contained rather nasty hints that it was *painfully* obvious that Microsoft was involved (original emphasis).
Faced with that, I'd probably cancel the product too, jump ship and be happy I didn't end up with an inventory of 100000 phones I couldn't sell.
Poul-Henning Kamp -- FreeBSD since before it was called that...
They're a private company.
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
Where do you get the idea that people would rather buy a Microsoft based _phone_ than a Symbian based one?
Maybe in the mobile backwater of the US but not europe or asia. Symbian is far from the potential success it could be but it is light years ahead of any challenge from MS in the phone market. Over a million Symbian phones have already been bought and that is with only a small amount of the announced Symbian phones actually shipping yet.
Oh please.
CCIE is not about configuring a single router. It's not about "knowing how to configure ciscos".
It's about being an expert at internetworking, and being able to deal with many, many different types of protocols and situations and hardware. Of course it's primarily focused on Cisco hardware, because the Internetworking business in general is primarily led by Cisco.
CCIE expert.. ist hat like an LCD Display or a CRT Tube? an ABS System? an MD Doctor or a CGA Accountant? A CEO Officer?
If you can hire a CCIE for $80k a year, more power to you.. his certification is probably fake.
Of course in time there will be less of a market; the same can be said for most technology trades. But don't mix up CCIE with normal everyday cisco adminsitrator certifications, they are very different things.
So it's nothing to do with the fact that they announced this phone YEARS ago, never released it and now orange have gone a developed their own similar phone which is actually going to be available and for much less money than sendo were planning on charging? I think is entirely possible they were simply unable to produce a competative phone and decided to blame someone else.
Sig is taking a break!