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Nokia Invested In Mozilla?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the dial-m-for-money dept.

Pine UK writes "The Register, is reporting that Nokia has invested in the Mozilla Foundation. This news should come as a shock to Opera, who in recent times have had a very large market share in the area of portable device browsers. Opera has also been the browser choice for Nokia, who ship it with all their Symbian 'smartphones.' Nokia have not yet confirmed nor denied their investment in Mozilla."

7 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Which is better.... by JoeShmoe950 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I always found Opera fast, and much lighter than Mozilla. But, with the advent of Firefox, I'd have to say theres not much reason to stick with Opera. I just don't see very many advantages (plus, Firefox is open source).

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  2. Nokia's day has gone... by lewko · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I loved my first Nokia when a phone was a phone. Now that my phone needs to be a PDA/browser etc. (AKA Smartphone) I'm not interested in any of their current products.

    It seems I'm not alone.

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    1. Re:Nokia's day has gone... by Ilgaz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Nokia sees where future is and concentrated to that point. YOU aren't interested in their current products as I , as a Siemens C55 user which has java (with 320kb of ram!), gprs and midi etc not interested in new Siemens models too. In fact, I plan to use it until 3G stuff becomes standard.

      What I try to mean is, 99% of population is not like us nor reads slashdot etc. For some, taking stupid lo res pictures and sending to their friends for a real stupid expensive rate (mms) is fun for them.

      I really wonder if Nokia didn't go for Symbian and selected Win CE etc crap, what kind of a nightmare we mobile users would live.

      So thank you Nokia :) and all Symbian supporters/coders

  3. Hello? Microsoft, wake up call!! by Lispy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hmmm...I really wonder how Microsoft will respond to the recent movement in the browser market. Of course they are still market leaders on the desktop but have you ever used their stripped down version of IE on a PocketPC? It's just a joke!

    I wonder where Microsoft will turn in the near future since all work on IE seems to be on hold up until Longhorn and their smartphones never really took off. If I were in their shoes I would start acting. I always considered Microsoft as a serious competitor but lately they haven't made any real progress and seem to fall behind in a lot of markets. Not that they will be gone anytime soon but I wonder if they really are asleep or if they are up to something big nobody has thought of yet. This silence is suspicious...

  4. Torn by levell · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've always liked Nokia phones but I wasn't going to get another one because of their stance (and their campaigning) on software patents but if they are investing in Mozilla - I'm really torn.

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  5. Re:Interesting by vondo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    They have three choices:
    1) Hire new developers to learn the mozilla code and make the changes, then release them to the public (since it is GPL)
    2) Hire existing mozilla developers to work for Nokia to make the changes
    3) Contract with the existing developers to get what they want done.

    3) is the perfectly logical choice. 1) involves a lot of start-up time. 1) and 2) involve a commitment by Nokia to keep those people on the payroll or severance if they don't work out. In 3) Nokia just drops the contract if it doesn't get the results it wants.

  6. This makes sense by jsebrech · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This does make sense to me:

    - no licensing costs (fixed costs like this investment you can make up for in volume, but per product licensing costs are a constant drag on profit)
    - no need to wait for a port from the browser maker, you can do it yourself, or have the user community do it for you (very few phones have opera ports currently)
    - tied into that, user community assistance in general browser development
    - the pda opera is not a full browser, minimo is (by full I mean complete css, dom and js support)
    - open source (though from a corporate pov this is a tiny benefit)
    - better/easier customization than a proprietary product could hope to deliver
    - minimo picks up improvements to the mozilla trunk automatically, opera's ports need actual porting effort for updated features (afaik)
    - and in the future: possibility of running xul apps remotely on the phone, making developing/offering/selling new features for old phones a doable proposition

    Ofcourse, maybe nokia just wants competition in the pda browser market, and opera's steadily climbing marketshare worries them.