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Nokia and Microsoft Make Smartphone Alliance
pbahra writes "The smart money was right. Nokia has jumped into bed with Microsoft and will produce phones running Windows Phone 7. The cynics would say that, here, we have two lumbering dinosaurs of the technology world clinging to each other hoping that the other gives them a future. Optimists would point to two companies that need each other, both bringing vital components to the alliance. The big winner is Microsoft. Windows Phone 7, while reasonably well received by commentators, has not set the world on fire. An alliance with Nokia gives it access to the world's largest phone maker and its huge mindshare — in many developing nations a mobile phone is known as a Nokia. The biggest loser is MeeGo, the ugly, unloved step-child of operating systems."
Nokia wrote to developers, "Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same."
Enough said.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Stephen Elop must be the best mole since Kim Philby.
After Sendo en Palm yet another mobile vendor commits suicide-by-Microsoft. But this is the biggest yet.
I really liked Nokia devices, but my E71 is probably going to be my last one.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
This is a good read on the whole matter. Writing's a bit crude in some parts but raises some good points.
These charts also illustrate the point. Nokia is alienating both its development community and its customers. Qt is put on the sidelines. Who's going to develop for a dying platform? A lot of people I know buy Symbian because of the generally familiar UI, which is similar to the Series 40 phones. Windows Phone is radically different.
Ugh.
Nokia bought Qt not so long ago, presumably because they were aiming for embedded Linux based devices and Qt is one of the best toolkits for that. Now that they are in bed with Microsoft, getting a great Linux/crossplatform GUI toolkit hardly can be a priority any more, so it makes a lot less sense to spend money on developing Qt. Particularly as unlike Trolltech, they were focussing on making it as popular as possible even at the expense of the commercial version (GPL->LGPL license change).
So now Qt just became an irrelevant, money losing division, didn't it?
Or do they plan to keep Qt but just use Windows as the underlying OS? I can't believe MS will be entirely happy with that, having .NET as competition and all...
all the editors must be asleep this has been everywhere else for hours....
Slashdot submissions are not about beating the news/blog sources to a story, its about creating a decent discussion with some like and not so like peers. There is no reason to rush to be the first to post like some kind of lame FIRST POST FTW! Furthermore if you had looked at the submission you would see some research went into it with no less than 5 different resource pointers. Research isnt instant you know?!
you sir are a douche.
AC
"Two's company, three's a crowd." Supporting three platforms requires a lot of resource. So one of the old ones will be facing cutbacks, if not being kicked entirely. Now, let's see "MeGoo" -> "Me Go". Oh, what a giveaway.
It's really too bad. I have a Nokia N800, which I love, and was really looking forward to buying a N900. I decided to wait and see how the reviews were. Then came the Maemo -> MeGoo announcement and the departure of Ari Jaaksi, and that really unsettled me. I really liked Maemo. Getting Intel on board was bound to lead to conflicts in direction, which would slow down development.
So now, I will wait still longer to see how things with MeGoo move along. And I am not buying a Nokia with Windows 7. So it's probably time to start looking at Andriod. Way to blow it, Nokia.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I've always been a big Nokia fan. I'm currently using my 6th or 7th one since 1999. Stirdy, trustworthy devices (well, except for one clam type phone, but could be blamed on my abuse of it). The one I have now (E51) is the 'smartest' phone I have, but it will also be my final Nokia. Would have loved to see them jump to Android, but they chose this. No, I can't put this down with facts or figures, it's just a feeling: it will not help Nokia remain the biggest phone manufacturer and I believe their market share will decline more and more. Too little, too late, this move. Such a shame, as the N8 (Symbian) is such a gorgeous device (but seriously, no Ogg support?) and I really love many of their phone designs. From fun to casual to business. Thanks for 12 years of fun, Nokia, but this is one customer less. :(
Here's the secret to immortality:
Any shares you have in Nokia.
They put an ex-Microsoftie in charge of a consumer electronics company. I'd laugh if it wasn't such a tragedy.
QT will be taken out and shot as soon as possible. Here's how it will happen: Microsoft will offer Nokia a Business Development Agreement which lets Nokia get discounts off the price they pay for operating system licences. The discounts will be related to Nokia doing one of a number of 'entirely voluntary' (hence not illegally coerced) things. Things like enhancing QT in some way to make it compatible with some pointless and unused feature of Windows PhoneOS. After a few of these it will be cheaper to just kill QT.
Then KDE will be screwed.
Any guesses how long Symbian will last?
Innovate or die.
And according to these charts, they are starting to innovate by cutting R&D spending.
Nokia, you've come a long way from rubber boots and bicycle tyres to mobile phones. But I fear this is where the story starts to end.
An alliance with Nokia gives it access to the world's largest phone maker and its huge mindshare — in many developing nations a mobile phone is known as a Nokia.
I was a little confused by this quote as the minimum requirements for Windows Phone 7 far exceed the vast majority of those developing nation cellphones. I believe those are mostly the candy bar cell phones or "dumbphones." I was under the impression that developing nations had a vast population of users who weren't in the market for smartphones. That might be changing but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the current models Nokia enjoys widespread distribution hinge on a trim microkernel operating system with little to no system requirements and I'm unaware of a version of Windows Phone 7 that satisfies these hardware constraints. Simply put, it's going to be a long time before Microsoft's WP7 dominates the developing nations as the de facto operating system. And good luck piling those licensing rights of WP7 on top of the cost of the phone to people who struggle to find potable water!
My work here is dung.
Bye bye Nokia...
While they make awesome hardware Nokia has got to get their act together wrt getting R & D to deliver: they spend almost 3 times as its peers
With the IOS concentration camp, Android bootloader lockdown, and Windows Phone 7 copying everything that we hated about IOS it looks like a bleak future for anyone who wants to do cool stuff with their phone beyond the simple apps you get on the common platforms. If Nokia abandons MeeGo with this deal then any hope we have of being able to get new phones with the same freedom as the N900 will be fed to the meat grinder.
Looks like I will have to take great care of my N900. It's the first and last of it's kind.
Unicode in Slashdot
"15 years of rivalry ends with Losers Alliance"
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I guess that the N900 is the last Nokia that I will ever own.
Out of the choices of operating systems to go for, why on earth did they choose Windows over Android? What were they thinking? They would have hammered the iPhone in a year or two if they had chosen Android.
They really need their heads examining.
Glad I don't have shares in Nokia.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flamebait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Mockia
AT&ROFLMAO
I loved Nokia, they worked hard to make good quality phones with advanced features. I'd reluctantly switched to iPhone about 3 years ago as Nokia fell behind on the Smartphone race, but I never loved Apple and was ready to make the move when a good competitor arrived. Microsoft are not ready for the new era, they are the Mubaraks of the IT world. Nokia is finished, it might sell a few million phones but will never again excite consumers or enthuse developers - I feel really really sad & sorry for enthusiastic Nokia employees.
Elop will certainly go down as a Hero for Microsoft, he managed to give Microsoft everything it would want from a Nokia Purchase, but without spending a dime.
No small coincidence that he is a former Microsoftie.
QT was a profitable company with a large number of employees BEFORE Nokia bought it.
Not everyone realizes - QT is licensed by companies not just to develop applications that run on both Windows and UNIX, but also Windows and Mac OS. This is where they make a lot of money.
QT is not going anywhere, it has a huge install base. If anything it would be sold by Nokia or spun-off into it's own company again.
I would offer a different theory:
Imagine you're a theoretical large speculative investor. You talk to microsoft and nokia leaders, through investing money in both. You make a deal where MS shill is hired as a nokia CEO when nokia is ailing, with the ultimate goal of dismantling the company, selling it's devices-making part to MS and putting the rest under hammer.
How much would MS be willing to pay you off for the nokia stock that will allow you to get such shill elected as CEO and essentially save their dead on arrival WP7? I imagine we'd be talking quite a bit of profit. MS benefits from this in every way, nokia will likely get dismantled into pieces and sold off with those behind the deal walking off with hefty profit and execs with their golden parachutes.
Just a theory of course.
Actually they will gradually shutdown Symbian. As for MeeGo, they will release a N900-esque one off device this year at MWC, but just like it's predecessor, expect it to starve off due to neglect.
Wonder what Nokia will do with Qt? It has no use in WP7, and the few measly MeeGo phones they provide will not support the continued expense of maintaining Trolltech.
To me, it's a massive loss for Open source.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/rip-symbian/
Is it a loss to open source? I think that anyone can fork the GPL or LGPL versions. It would be more of a loss for commercial Qt users. Interestingly I think that you could develop commercial applications for the LGPL version, as long as you released the source to any changes to the Qt code.
It's depressing, the guy involved with Windows Phone 7 becomes Nokia's CEO and the first thing he does is move Nokia completely onto WP7. Nokia's strategy of moving Symbian onto their feature phones and offering Meego for the Smartphone market made sense.
I could understand Elop when he was complaining about the slow release rate of Nokia's, I would even get on board of a multiple OS strategy (putting out the same phone with different operating systems).
This move annoys me, it's shutting down Ovi, killing off QT and telling any developers not to bother developing for your platform. All so the CEO can have his pet project rolled out.
What's worse is Nokia has always thought long term, his actions (mass firings) are the typical kind of stock market decided actions which are short term and will ultimately lead to a worse phone ecosystem.
WP7 was my fore-runner for my next phone, it isn't any longer. There's no point buying any Meego or Symbian phone because Elop won't have it supported. Guess I'll have to get an andriod phone.
RIP NOKIA.
"I hate to say it but $CURRENT_MOBILE_MICROSOFT_OS is great (unlike prior versions)".
Time and again I read this, and time and again people don't ever learn.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
Nokia will have to compete on hardware quality/price level which they cannot do/afford to do (Finnish labour is very costly).
Nokia has factories around the world. Not just Finland, but also China, Korea, Hungary and Mexico amongst other places. So the cost of Labour in Finland is not so relevant.
As to the cost of engineering staff who create the phones - Nokia's Finnish engineers earn far less than equivalent American engineers. Less than half.
Who's going to want a Nokia phone running Windows?
Er...me?
is it lonely?
Or Microsoft uses them as a flotation device for WinPhone until it starts to gain some traction, then encourages other hardware makers in a race to the bottom on hardware price and downgrades Nokia while they sit back and rake in the money on software fees. There is a fundamental disconnect between the aspirations and needs of the two companies, and the use and abuse by MS of other partners like HP is not a promising precendent. Very suspect too that a guy moves from MS WinMo to Nokia and then moves Nokia to what is effectively a subsidiary position under Microsoft, which Microsoft controlling the crown jewels (the OS), and Nokia left as just another hardware partner. The strength of Nokia used to be in a great synthesis between software and hardware (some time ago, before they got lost in the smartphone quagmire), and this deal will leave them as simply yet another hardware manufacturer which leases their software from MS. I imagine WinPhone will do OK (mediocre or not), but the hardware partners will not, as they will be squeezed for cash like other MS hardware partners. So the fundamental problem here is that Nokia needs MS, but MS doesn't need Nokia.
Partnering with Microsoft was an incredibly stupid move from Nokia, and the beginning of the end for their company - unlike someone like IBM, they don't have other major streams of revenue that will insulate them from this partnership when it goes bad.
This article gives a very good overview of Microsoft's previous strategic partners and how well each one of them ended.
(it's currently missing Sendo and Ericsson although the author has indicated that he'll update it to include them soon)
Personally I think it would be a good thing to have iOS, Android, WebOS and Windows Phone thriving in the marketplace as it means that each one will be forced to innovate to stay relevant - which can only be a good thing for the consumer.
However on the basis of Microsoft's past performance, I wish Nokia the very best of luck as they are going to need a lot of it.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I'll come out and say Windows Mobile was better than WP7.
Why?
You could install whatever you wanted and develop freely for WinMo. WP7 is an iOS-like locked-down sack of shit.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Nokia's strategy was doing nothing be hemorrhaging market share and money for the past several years. They were pretty much screwed on the road they were heading down so moving over to another that may seem just as precarious doesn't leave them much worse off, especially if it works out in the long run.
/. crowd.
/. crowd might have put up with that, but the mass market consumers would have hated it.
Here's an analysis of this along with some nice charts that show how iOS and Android have really eaten Nokia's lunch over the past few years. Their stock has dropped from around $40 per share in 2007 to $10 in 2011. The only people who had faith that they were doing the right thing were the
MeeGo has already been plagued by serious delays and there was no indication that when it did ship everything would magically work. It's easy to point to this new deal and say that MeeGo got axed, but couldn't it be the other way around? It's just as possible that MeeGo was behind schedule and wouldn't be ready for a release for a few more quarters and even then would still need a lot of work to get it up to snuff. The
I don't know whether this move will pan out for Nokia. From my point of view it's more beneficial to Microsoft. However, Nokia needed to do something because they were watching the rest of the market move past and weren't able to respond. Maybe this deal ends up killing them, but they were probably dead either way.
Is the other N900 sitting in a nice, dry box with the battery out. Unless webOS comes good, I have to eat humble pie over everything I've said about HP in the last 5 years, and HP returns to making engineering products for engineers, please.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You have no inkling of how powerful this makes the combined companies. It basically takes Microsoft's WM7 which is pretty polished, and pairs it with a dedicated hardware maker that has a built in global reach and relationships with a ton of carriers.
Furthermore, those relationships mean WM7 can get carrier billing for apps ad in-app purchases, world wide, almost instantly due to agreements in place - Apple can get by without them because so many people have iTunes account, but any other application provider pretty much has to work with carrier billing.
This makes Microsoft and Nokia a very strong horse indeed in the mobile space. I can even possibly see Microsoft dropping all other carriers for WM7 just to focus on this specific pairing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley