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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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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
Who's going to want a Nokia phone running Windows?
Er...me?
is it lonely?
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.