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Intel CEO: Nokia Should Have Gone With Android
nk497 writes "Intel CEO Paul Otellini has said Nokia made a mistake choosing Windows Phone 7, and should have gone with Android — but admitted the money on offer may have been too much to ignore. 'I wouldn't have made the decision he made, I would probably have gone to Android if I were him,' he said. 'MeeGo would have been the best strategy but he concluded he couldn't afford it.' Otellini said some closed mobile platforms will 'certainly survive,' but said open systems will 'win' in the end."
Reader c0lo notes a followup to yesterday's news that open source software was banned from Windows Marketplace. It seems even Microsoft's own MS-RL open source license runs afoul of the Application Provider Agreement (PDF). The article suggests that these rules should give Nokia pause about their new partnership.
They aren't prohibiting "Free Software", they are prohibiting software that is under a license that requires the distributor to pass certain rights along to the recipient. Hence GPL like licenses that require distribution of source code, and that you grant redistribution rights to everyone you distribute it to are being explicitly prohibited. (And in fairness I can see why those licenses would cause problems for Microsoft as distributors) On the other hand BSD like licenses that allow you to repackage and distribute without source and without passing rights forward are acceptable.
The guy's more comfortable with Microsoft, he's got shares in it, he talks to the people, he knows Microsoft. Now, Google is a totally different beast there - they're doing exactly the same thing, i.e just make an OS, but they're not really Mr Elop's circle.
And oh, yeah ... it is also a very distinct conflict of interest when SEC stops him from selling all his MS Stock and buying NOK instead. It's like the rules tilted this particular crusade to a windmill.
I love my Nokia phones and I've never bought any other. For the brief period I worked for Ericsson, I was shocked to realize the depth of their patent portfolio, especially when it comes to UX stuff. I can guess those guns will be aimed at Apple first, while it's leaderless without Steve, but eventually the aim's going to turn around and point at Android.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Nokia should not "choose" an operating system. Make a phone, and make it available with any and all operating systems (Windows, Android, maybe even Symbian). Sell them all on the open market, and give the *consumer* the choice.
Nokia's stock would've fallen even if they'd announced they were partnering with Jesus to bring an open-source version of iOS with Android's user interface to the market. They've spent absurd amounts of money acquiring and developing Symbian and collaborating on MeeGo as their primary platforms for the next decade, so switching to any alternative is a tacit admission that they'd thrown that money down the drain. A new partnership also involves a big transitional period in which it's very difficult to make much money. Investors do not like that kind of news.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
They also shouldn't risk biting a major player in the market. WP7 has a lot of big corporate backers, now obviously including Nokia. Whether they will be successful or not depends on a lot of factors, but Intel should be aiming to sell chips to nokia, whether it's for MeeGo, Droid, WP7 or some other OS, not criticising their management choices publicly.
Like it or not, Nokia still sells a LOT of phones, meaning there's a lot of money to be made as a part supplier, and a good chance than the sheer mass of Nokia + WP7 will be able to sustain that ecosystem. I know a lot of people coming over from Europe (I live in canada) regularly laugh at how terrible a lot of our supposedly wonderful iPhones etc. are, when Nokia phones have had better call quality, voice dialling, very good integration with MS office (without extra fees), maps etc. long before Apple or Google started bringing that to market. They still have a lot of brand loyalty, and a strong brand if they call pull it together.
Their problem is that the stock market, and the tech press, seems to see USA as the place to observe the future of mobile tech happening...
If one ignore Nokia's inability to get traction in the US market, they where doing fine.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Pundits like to state this, but I always wonder how Windows is an open system?
Compared to many of the alternatives it was: with Windows on a PC you didn't have to pay thousands of dollars for a development license to get API documentation and build applications as we did with some other hardware. The end result was cheap software on cheap hardware, at least when compared to paying $20,000 for a Sun workstation.
Today though, hardware is so cheap that paying $100 for Windows is starting to be a big problem on a $300 PC. Netbooks would be running Linux if Microsoft hadn't cut deals with OEMs to make Windows free or almost free.
The press round the whole move of Nokia to M$ is very focussed on Nokia's choice. It could also be that Microsoft chose Nokia as an attempt to obtain share with a reputable hardware vendor to gain some share in a segment that they clearly see themselves losing this time round. Who is the bigger party here? Who needs this most? Sure, Nokia is also falling around on its feet and had an eight count a few times in the last decade, but from the way I see it, this is a deal driven squarely by Microsoft.
!
Funny, I've had mine now for over a year and wouldn't give it up for anything. It's not a perfect phone, but it's a great pocket computer with phone capabilities. Perhaps one device and one OS doesn't work for everyone, unlike what Jobs and Ballmer would have us believe.
Remember this? Intel lost in this deal already. They are probably quite angry with Nokia for betraying the partnership they had with MeeGo. Intel has a right to criticize their former partner Nokia, and I think it's good that the Intel chief has the balls to do so for what, in the end, will probably turn out to be a terrible decision, one that harmed both Nokia and Intel all just to help Microsoft.
Making unprovoked personal insults is pretty moronic in my opinion.
GPL3 is cited as an example, not as the only specific case or as one of a set of specific cases - the more generic wording found around that example would exclude quite a few licenses for the same reason(s) it is not compatible with GPL3.
Whatever operating system that IBM chose for the IBM PC and that Compaq would have chosen so they would have been compatible (along with all of the other clones) would have been the dominant operating system. It wasn't MS-DOS that caused the penetration of PCs, it was the penetration of PCs that caused the proliferation of Microsoft operating systems. And, IBM almost went CP/M which would mean there wouldn't be a Microsoft today, at least not the one we know.
As for settling on some other architecture, there wasn't one. The main manufactures pretty much used a 650x or an 808x processor. Sure there were a few z80s but not in the business world which is what drove pc adoption. You have to remember that the IBM PC/XT with it's 10MB hard drive was the price of a good used car. It wasn't until the clone makers drove the price point below $2,000 that the PC took off in other than business markets. The Apple II could be had for around $1,000 at the time, which is why schools sucked them up. But when the Mac came out, it was significantly more expensive.
Saying that Microsoft caused the market penetration is like saying gasoline engines caused the market penetration of the automobile. Henry Ford almost went with a diesel engine on his assembly lines. If he had pioneered relatively inexpensive mass produced diesel powered cars, that is what we would all be driving today. However, Ford standardized on a gasoline engine and so did everybody else to remain competitive.
To be fair, and I'm no more an MS fan than anyone, the GPL puts an onus on Microsoft to do things that they don't want to be arsed to do. As the owner of the "store" Microsoft becomes the "distributor" of GPL software. That means if you, AC, put a piece of GPLed software on the store, you are effectively obligating MS to host the source code and GPL somewhere as the distributor. You can say, "Well, I'll handle that, they don't have to worry about it.", but they do have to worry about it. If you decided next month to stop "handling that" and the software is still on the store, MS is left holding the bag. By forbidding GPL code they are covering their asses.
This will become a problem as time goes on and more of these online "stores" pop up. As "distributors" these stores take on certain obligations that they may not want to deal with. Free software is easy enough to deal with when every computer has a compiler (or can easily get one). With the limited space and processing power on mobile devices "app stoes" make a lot of sense, but the GPL is decidedly unfriendly to the way most of them are setup. Maybe if the GPL put the onus on the developer to redistribute the code and license rather than the distributor? I dunno, I don't see Stallman changing the GPL to accommodate app stores, since he hates most of the companies that own them. It'll be interesting to see how it play out.
I'm not saying that either position is right or wrong, just that there are some intractable issues that may make them unable to work together.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! The store is not the distributor, they are the retailer. You can buy Ubuntu DVDs online, that does not make the person selling it responsible for the gpl, unless they are the ones who also put it together, in which case they are a developer.
If I repackage LibreOffice and call it MyOffice and I sell it to people online or in a retail store, I as the developer are responsible for adhering to the GPL or whatever licensing agreements of the components use, not the retailer.
Open source projects are fond of using "Free as in beer" as their slogan. You can go into the grocery store and by a case of it. If you then go and drink it all and do something stupid or even criminal, the grocery store is not responsible, nor is the brewery. On the other hand, let's say the beer was tainted with something. Again, the grocery store isn't responsible, but this time the brewery is.
GPL software works the same way. It is not the retailer (grocery store in the example above) that is responsible for ensuring the licenses are followed it is the author/developer. At most, if Amazon or anybody else was selling software that turned out to be in violation, they would need to pull it off their shelves (website), but they themself would not be liable or in violation of anything.