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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
Oh, I'm sure they'll repent to everybody they ever screwed, now that they know what it feels like. NOT! They'll probably just use more Halloween stuff to kill Nokia and Sendo. Anyway, it's nice to see a company slap M$ in the face on their front page. It kinda give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Or mabe that's just the caffeine.
Karma: Bizzare (mostly affected by varying internal caffeine levels.)
Windows keeps on getting better and better. From it's award-winning design to it's revolutionary kernel architecture, Windows is the best in the biz. Says Internet Guru Dan Hertzfeld, "I rely on Windows and Office for Windows every day to deliver top-notch performance and it has never let me down." Many others praise Windows, too, including Chief Technology Officer Bill Patterson of Ford Motor Company, "Windows allows us to leverage our most valuable assets, people, into a world-class synergy to delight customers all over the globe."
Gentlemen, how about a mirror? Their site appears to be served on a cell modem.
Sendo Z100 NOT TO LAUNCH
Company Statement
Sendo has terminated its Smartphone development program utilising the Microsoft Windows Powered Smartphone 2002 software.
As a result, Sendo regrets to announce that it will not be shipping the Z100 Smartphone.
It has been a very difficult decision for Sendo given its leadership position in the development of smart devices. We are disappointed that we will not be able to ship the Z100 given the high level of interest shown in the device.
Although a set back, we are pleased to announce today that we have licensed the Series 60 platform from Nokia for our smartphone category. We believe this will create the opportunity for us to continue as a lead player in the development of smartphone products for 2003.
SENDO CHOOSES NOKIA'S SERIES 60 PLATFORM FOR ITS SMART PHONES
Thu Nov 7 2002
Sendo, a British mobile phone manufacturer, today announced that the company has decided to license Series 60 Platform from Nokia for its smart phone category. The Series 60 is a software platform for feature- and application rich smart phones that Nokia licenses to mobile handset manufacturers. The platform is optimised to run on top of the Symbian OS. Sendo joins as the newest member to the Series 60 licensing community with Matsushita, Samsung, Siemens and Nokia.
"Earlier this fall we reviewed our smart phone strategy. While our mission of providing customers with feature-rich and ubiquitous devices remains unaltered, seeing that the Series 60 fully embraces both our mission and the new strategy we decided to approach Nokia," said Hugh Brogan, Chief Executive Officer of Sendo Holdings Plc. "The platform utilises open standards and technologies, such as MMS and Java , jointly developed by the industry. The platform is robust, yet uniquely flexible, bringing great benefits to licensees, operators, developers and consumers."
"We welcome Sendo, a pioneer in smart phone development, to join our Series 60 community. We see that a combination of Sendo's technical expertise and growing market presence will bring significant contribution to the mobile market with Series 60 devices. Interoperable solutions that are built on open and common industry standards are proving to be the winning formula in meeting demands of business users and consumers alike," said Niklas Savander, Vice President and General Manager, Nokia Mobile Software.
Nokia licenses Series 60 Platform as a source code. The model enables licensees to contribute to the development of the platform while fully executing their individual business strategy, brand and customer requirements in fast developing and highly competitive mobile communications market. Licensees will be able to include the Series 60 into their own smart phone designs, thus speeding up the rollout of new phone models at lower costs.
The Series 60 is a comprehensive software platform for smart phones, created for mobile phone users that demand easy-to-use, one-hand operated handsets with high-quality colour screens, rich communications and enhanced applications. The Series 60 platform consists of the key telephony and personal information management applications, the browser and messaging clients, as well as a complete and modifiable user interface, all designed to run on top of the Symbian OS, an operating system for advanced, data enabled mobile phones.
Who the hell is "Sendo" and why should I care that this company no one has heard of has "stood up" to Microsoft?
I'm not sure where the "can't get source" comment in the title came from. I clicked through to the announcement, read both stories, and even translated the german text, and nothing in there said they terminated the agreement due to inability to get the source.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Sendo junks MS smartphone, joins Nokia camp
:-(
BTW, What happened to theregus.com? It seems to be gone.
but I have to question the business heads of those who cancel a product DAYS BEFORE THE LAUNCH...
;) ) then surely its worth showing your stock holders that you HAVE something for the millions spent on R&D
Sure, it must have been a hard decision, but unless they made some huge fkup working out the per-device costing (did they forget to license windows?
But, as I said at the start of the article... good luck to them
Now, not only have they "wasted" millions, they will probably have the beast on their back
...would have been nice, before giving Nokia full ownership of Symbian. As the article says the licensed software is optimised to run on Symbian, but it is not Symbian. From the Symbian website: "Symbian was established as a private independent company in June 1998 and is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Matsushita (Panasonic), Motorola, Psion, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. Headquartered in the UK, it has offices in Japan, Sweden, UK and the USA."
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.
Many others praise Windows, too, including Chief Technology Officer Bill Patterson of Ford Motor Company, "Windows allows us to leverage our most valuable assets, people, into a world-class synergy to delight customers all over the globe."
<sarcasm>It's no surprise that Ford relies on Microsoft products, because Ford sure knows quality.</sarcasm>
I can't help but wonder how delighted their customers must be, when they have to bring their Focus back into the dealership for yet another safety recall every month or so.
Ford ought to be partnering with Microsoft to put a "Critical Update Notification" feature into next year's model: "...Simply plug a phone line into your Focus every night, and the car will dial into Ford's headquarters and download a list of that day's newly-discovered critical safety flaws that you'll need to have repaired immediately..."
Thankfully, I don't own one of the little beasts, but one of my friends does.
~Philly
I was stuck at the Hyatt in downtown Chicago this past weekend and was watching Forbes on Fox. Steve Forbes and his writers and editors were speculating on tech futures when they brought up hopeful Nokia and Motorola sales increases. One of the panel, via satelite, discounted the possible sales increase with the reasoning that Microsoft is entering the cell arena with OEMs rather than traditional cell phone manufacturers and that that would stimey Moto and Nokia. To which one of the enlightenned panel members replied:
I've had to agonize with Microsoft on my computer, I certainly don't want them on my cell phone."
It was an unexpected comment and I couldn't stop chuckling.
put the what in the where?
Oh please. I didn't know whether to respond or mod you down on this one. I choose the former.
Of course Stingray (Windows for cellphones) uses an underlying RTOS. I interviewed with that group. We talked about it. All of the fancy UI/Windows stuff is in a low-priority task.
Just like with the Palm OS. The "Palm OS" doesn't actually run the PDA. It runs on top of a small RTOS kernel that handles interrupts, hardware drivers, and other real-time things that have little to do with the UI. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the same Palm OS runs on different RTOS kernels. In fact, I can almost guarantee you that the Qualcomm Palm thingy they had a few years ago likely did not use the same RTOS kernel as my Palm Vx.
And you comment about Cisco Certified Internet Engineers and Command-line interfaces is a joke, right? A CCIE doesn't make more money because he or she can use a terminal instead of dragging icons. They make more money because internetworking is more of a niche and is arguably more complex than setting up Windows. It also costs much more to become CCIE than MCSE. Trust me, Cisco's next generation routers will be configured remotely through a graphical interface. I guess when that happens, CCIE's will be making just as much as a MCSE, huh?
Book description of "Programming for the Series 60 Platform and Symbian OS" here
For some reason, I'm beginning to think that this could signify a slow paradigm-shift in certain tech-savvy industries.
I worked for a telecommunications company that had started using NT 3.51/4.0 for embedded system work, because we were using off-the-shelf industrial servers, and at the time, Microsoft' Systems Architect for NT was gearing things toward being fairly decent as an embedded system. When the latter iteration of NT 4.0 and then 2000 came out, they had clearly changed their intent, and our product, to use a technical term, was "fucked". Ultimately, an investor with cold feet spelled the end of the company, but it was taking quite a long time to adapt to the new platform, and this was seen as a big problem.
We had trusted Microsoft to keep the platform stable for our uses, and they failed to do so. Had we had the source code to the OS, we could have potentially rewritten the parts that we needed to make things work, while still giving them their licensing fee for the newest product. We never (obviously) had the chance.
Now, I work for an organization that has to maintain a massive database, and while we bought the software that we use, we also received the source code, so we actively maintain our end. We and our vendor work to determine what changes we as an organization made, and sometimes these changes are rolled back into the next release or step of the product, if they're universally beneficial. Others aren't, and we simply have to go and check the new versions to make our changes. This approach works very well.
Even if 'open source' isn't the answer to everyones' problems, simply having the source at all can be very beneficial. Hopefully, more and more medium to large companies and organizations will realise this, and that this, rather than lawsuits, attacks, etc, will cause people to abandon Microsoft.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Microsoft is trying to hook it's claws into all things digital (including phones, appliances and cars).
;)
I work in the auto industry as a sysadmin, and I can confirm that last one for y'all if you're sitting their scratching your heads. I picked up an automotive industry trade rag one day and there it was, in big letters on a yellow BMW: Microsoft Windows CE for Automotive. Had the Windows CE logo and everything. I'm not even kidding. I wish I were.
My journal has hot
No, Vern. They just let him in.
They'll no doubt bring the same fine usability and security features they've perfected in Outlook to my cell phone's address book.
Just think of all the new capabilities we'll have! Helpful users (especially those swell guys in eastern europe!) will no doubt quickly create vbscript autodialers. Heck, my phone will probably call my friends more often that I do!
And that's the Microsoft Promise: "We do things so you don't have to!"
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
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.
Windows keeps on getting better and better.
After Windows ME, it couldnt really get worse could it?
I was reporting a murderer on my Z100 Smartphone, and it was like, bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep. And then it was like, half the call was gone, and I was like hhggnnngnn? It devoured my call, and it was a really good call. I described him good, 'cause I like looked at him when he was after me. I had to call again really fast, but it wasn't as good 'cause he stabbed me, and it was, like, a bummer.
I'm Ellen Feiss, and when this sucking chest wound heals, I'm like, getting a Nokia.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I own a ford, the biggest safety flaw is me!
(Aside from the tree that drove into me, and the minibus that reversed into me, and fell apart, at a red light)
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!