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Which Fading Smartphone Company Is More Valuable To Microsoft, RIM Or Nokia?
colinneagle writes "Nokia and RIM, the two former leaders in the early smartphone market, are now basically at the end stage of their downward spirals. This is an opportunity for Microsoft, which wants to make some inroads in the smartphone market, assuming Microsoft it can play its cards right. The question is which firm is worth more. Both have their values, especially in the patent areas. In terms of just smartphones, Microsoft would probably gain more from RIM, because it could integrate BlackBerry Enterprise Server into its own server products. Nokia, though, is a much older player and probably has a lot more of a patent portfolio. The question then becomes which is an easier purchase. Nokia is a 150-year-old storied company. The Finns may not be too keen to let it go to an American firm. There is the distinct possibility Microsoft acquires both firms and keeps the best of both worlds for hardware. But where does that leave OEM partners like LG, HTC and ZTE?"
This is because RIM is 'corporate' orientated, so its a natural for Microsoft. Nokia, is consumer oriented ( Apple's territory )
But, considering all their handset technology is different, would it be wroth the trouble/money just to get the BES, that wont work with a windows phone anyway?
More likely they will both just fade away and someone like Google will grab the patents just before they go under water forever.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
MS already owns Nokia
Just buy both in a two for one sale!
I dont see MS benefiting for buying either. MS has gotten what it needs from its deal with Nokia. If WP doesnt do well under Nokia, RIM isnt going to help.
"But where does that leave OEM partners like LG, HTC and ZTE?"
The same place where every Microsoft partner ends up.
I highly doubt OEMs took WP7 seriously. Samsung has clearly prioritized the Galaxy (Android) line. HTC also bet on Android. ZTE isn't big enough to make a difference in most markets and LG is pretty much invisible.
Besides, they'll probably get more money by licensing patents to Android users than by selling WP7 on phones that don't sell.
They already have Nokia in all but writing. They control it in every possible way. And whichever they choose, MS will not do the right thing and the phones will still not be popular.
Right now, Elop is the CEO of a company that's headed south. But if Microsoft buys Nokia, Elop will be the obvious candidate to succeed Ballmer the next time MS falters, for example if Windows 8 tanks.
Ballmer knows this. He didn't get to where he is by being dumb.
Why buy at all? Not everyone has to be like Apple.
People think this stuff is easy - but Nokia's having issues and it's 150 years old. RIM knew its market too. Why would Microsoft be any different?
Apple makes it look easy, but it isn't. Look at the corpses strewn behind the iPhone, iPod, and iPad and you'll see some of the best companies of the era. And Apple has just started, or so they'd lie you to think.
Thought this already happened. In any case, Tomi Ahonen has a long, detailed, analysis. Too long for me to read, sorry.
Anand Rangarajan anand@cise.ufl.edu
Anything to avoid creating a good product themselves, amiright?
Just as important for microsoft is their positioning versus these other companies, and whether buying one or the other as a defensive play is worth it. What would be the cost to Microsoft if one of these other companies bought RIM or Nokia instead, particularly the effect on their patent portfolios?
Good luck trying to buy both and getting it approved by the FTC and its European and Chinese equivalents.
My bet is for Microsoft to try for RIM. Who knows, Facebook may even try for a merger with one of these companies.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
As the title says. Microsoft would have to deal with the RIM corporate polices and conditions that are already in place for customers. Microsoft would have difficulty gutting the parts that don't make them money and filling them with new ones. Also with applying shittier restrictions. A blank(er) slate, however, would be much easier to start from.
I worked for Nokia when the MS alliance was announced. Elop is ex-MS, he brought in some higher management from MS. The company is already drinking the MS kool-aid internally, the takeover is complete in every way except financially. Nokia shareholders would not object to getting the company out of Finland, it's expensive to hire people there and expensive to fire them. Fortunately for MS a whole lot have already been fired.
Regarding smartphones Microsoft and Nokia is basically the same entity. Also I expect to replace my Google services and apps with Microsoft ones for various usability reasons, IF they won't sabotage crossplatform (otherOS) integration of their services and apps.
This brings me to RIM, wich I have considered dead since learning of their outdated solutions for non-existent problems. Their only usecase left is for security branche/paranoid enterprises.
Obviously Apple should purchase RIM and graft a RIM keyboard onto the next iPhone. It would be revolutionary....in a sick twisted what-if-Frankenstein-and-Nefertiti-had-a-bastard-child kind of way.
Maybe Microsoft could invest $150 million in Ap^WNokia!
Oh, wait, never mind... Apple in 1997 must have merely been having its "40 days in the wilderness" while Nokia after 150 years is "at the end stage of [its] downward spiral".
There's only one way for Nokia to certainly lose: to give up and follow some shitty trend, like most other non-Wintel companies in the late '90s (whither Acorn & friends), and accept sponsorship from some group ready to gut it.
I hope MS buys RIM and we can watch both of them fail out of the phone market, meanwhile they leave Nokia alone so they can go back to making awesome Linux phones from the n900/N9 line. Perfect!
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
This leaves Microsoft partners where Microsoft partners have always been ... Useful right up until Microsoft decides to steal your lunch, and go it alone.
They have done this numerous times and will continue to do so. Partnering with them has always been a two edged sword.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The premise of the article is that by purchasing a smartphone company then Microsoft would gain assets that will help them gain traction in smartphones. This is simply not going to work and a waste of shareholder assets. Microsoft is not gaining traction with their own phone because the ideas they have that work (or worked) for them on the desktop are not desired by customers looking at mobile phones - but they treat the phone very similarly to the desktop (who wants to have Office capabilities on their phone? no-one). Despite Microsoft generating enormous profits they can't get enough new ideas out that customers want. Buying an ailing smartphone company that also does have enough new ideas is hardly going to help them get new ideas that would affect their smartphone market penetration to the tune of their investment.
IMHO Microsoft should be looking at shoring up its desktop rather than fighting Android (Linux!) and Apple on phones. That battle is pretty much lost for them. By focussing on phones Microsoft seem a bit distracted from their core area of desktop - which has allowed Windows 8 to garner very unfavourable reviews. Concentrate on what you are good at Microsoft! By obsessing over growth they are starting to lose focus, making the new desktop experience worse, and rather than maintaining their high profits they are at risk of negative growth - especially if developers decide Anrdoid desktop or OS X are worthwhile targets for their desktop products (as well as smartphone apps), since the people will also follow. Windows 8 is a muddle of ideas and less suited to the existing users than Windows 7 (hint: tablets and desktops shouldn't have the same experience, one is for content consumption and the other for content creation and their needs are different - don't lose sight of this!).
I see Microsoft looking at these two like this: 1) Nokia wants to make Android handsets. By purchasing Nokia Microsoft will gain a solid handset manufacturer and eliminate some competition from the Android marketsphere. Not that it will make much of a dent, but every penny counts... 2) RIM really wants to be Microsoft's handset maker. Microsoft knows it. The corporate world is still a massive profit system for Microsoft and the corporate world can easily connect the Blackberry to their internal email system. And since a lot of IT departments still will not update policies to allow iPhones or Android handsets, Microsoft can bribe companies to stick with Exchange or use it if it's a new company, by giving out mobile email devices that can also substitute as cell phones. *) Then again, this is Microsoft. The company known for not giving us choice might not want a choice itself. It might decide to do both. Purchase both companies and move forward.
"Microsoft would probably gain more from RIM, because it could integrate BlackBerry Enterprise Server into its own server products."
Are you serious? Do you now anything about BES? Its architecture is completely failing, especially the integration with Exchange 2010 and CAS Arrays. Beyond that, the next version of BES is planned to utilize ActiveSync, so what exactly is the gain here?
The partnership with Nokia that Microsoft has is the most logical thing. RIM should be allow to die a quiet death. What a useless slashdot article.
Apple is proving neither is relevant outside of their patent portfolios.
Nokia is using Windows because its own software stack is worthless and it has been having trouble producing a credible handset. The Lumia is nice but is not really competitive.
RIM's software stack is notoriously bad - hence the death march to BB 10. Its hardware is woefully not competitive and its business phone moat seems to be evaporating very quickly as Apple is demonstrating that it is taking security and enterprise deployment and provisioning very seriously (the recent security white paper as a case in point) - convincingly enough that Fortune 500 companies are dumping BB in favor of iPhones.
Given that Microsoft is already in bed with Nokia it is likely cheaper and less risky for MS to bankroll Nokia for a while in the hopes that it lifts off the ground than to buy it outright. RIM on the other hand, offers nothing.
It leaves them fucked. That's what happens when you do business with Microsoft.
Have gnu, will travel.
They are not trying to be Apple, but more like Google. They are not attempting to make a play like Xbox, but rather a massive infrastructure play. RIM provided an interesting value proposition at the time. They would send somebody to install a thing in your server room that let the mail work on the phone. This was HUGE. Microsoft is attempting to not require RIM by making their mail servers aware that they are talking to a phone. And that they will be first class with Hotmail, and possible with Yahoo. And Gmail may well limp and work as well.
I think it will come down to the Windows environment and the ITunes environment. This race will become much closer over time. Apple found a huge wedge with iPod, in establishing the iTunes environment on top of a compelling UI and continual Internet Access and compelling and good enough environment to develop for. There was simply nothing else like it.
Android is simply too lasses faire and requires too much learning for your non-geek and simply doesn't "work" yet.
Windows phone definitely appears to match the compelling features of the Apple environment and will become easily a major player in the market place. Personally, they are very close. I love the 900, but I am going to live off contract for awhile while I get the last few drops of functionality out my 4. What happens next, I don't know. But I definitely do not think that Microsoft needs to spend resources buying a handset manufacturer.
Starting from scratch isn't easier. As evidenced by the HP and Palm story a few days ago. Without a lot of capital up front, Palm had trouble sourcing parts specifically because of Apple. They had hoped HP's big pockets would help, but new CEO Apotheker was not behind it partially because Palm was purchased by the previous CEO.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
MS is trying to avoid a future where the move to mobile leaves them behind if they focus only on desktop. The problem for MS is that despite a ten year head start on tablets and phones, they are behind the likes of Apple and Android. Instead of forging a separate effort in mobile, MS has decided to forcibly capture a large number of future mobile developers by pushing them to design for Metro by making Win 8 default to Metro.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
RIM, to get the business market which MS does OK in. If it bought Nokia, then Nokia would go the way that most MS consumer stuff goes, down the plug-hole.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
This summary reads like a corporate soap opera.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Microsoft needs to focus on raising its shareprice right now. If Gates & Balmer didn't own a majority stake, Balmer would be canned already.
The stock price has not moved in a decade and investors are getting impatient. They need to save cash, cut expenses, and invest wisely in what will bring back more capital and liquid assets. An expensive several billion buyout will lower the value of the company and hurts its shareprice more.
I do not see the value?
Worse, the other handset makers like HTC will shit their pants that they are supporting a competitor now and will cut Windows Phone sales and focus solely on Andriod. Ala OS/2 syndrome. All OEMs prefered OS/2 over Windows/DOS but they would be supporting IBM and a competitor if they did so they touted the NT and Windows 9x platform instead.
http://saveie6.com/
Google needs a big patent portfolio to beat down Apple and Microsoft; they should buy both Nokia and RIM. Microsoft has done a great job depressing the Nokia stock price. And if Google buys them, they can really kick Windows 8 Phone down, given that Microsoft has bet on Nokia. Oh, and they can fire Elop too.
what is a phone other than a computer in a tiny case. The main problems are screen size and input.
solve these and it might replace your desktop and it would be with you all day not in a bag but just a pocket.
do you really think a phone isnt powerful enough to do word processing for example. It is the io which is a problem now i could see that solved in the next few years
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
I *LOVE* my Lumia 900, so i dont really care what MS does other than provide the operating system.
Patents. Microsoft can use the patents to hold back their competitors.
Everyone says that. But how useful are these patents the companies own?
I mean, did they stop any of the RIM or Nokia competitors even slightly? Why would Microsoft fare any better using them as a road block?
Google spent way too much money for Motorola "for the patents" and look what happened there. Posner told them (and Apple) to go home and take a cold shower. It's going to take a lot of scrubbing to wash away the shame of mis-spending 12 billion dollars.
Yes there's a lot of patent action going down right now but it doesn't seem to be having any effect. To waste a huge sum of cash to buy either company just for mouldering patents is, well, a waste.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Isn't there a saying about the company you keep?
Facebook ATM is more valuable to Microsoft than both companies combined. That, of course, could change (is probably changing). As far as IP is concerned, Microsoft already has enough patents to troll Apple or Google. What Microsoft needs now is market-traction. It can do that by latching on to the company will a billion-people portfolio.
My company just shopped for new smartphones. We ended up with Android based because of limited phone selection (CDMA, yay). The windows phones looked so unbelievably non-business friendly, it took about 10 minutes to rule them out. But, I will say that the article is horribly wrong. Blackberry Enterprise Server is THE software from hell. It's one giant memory leak that runs slow, doesn't work half the time, has the worst interface imaginable, and would have to be completely rewritten from the ground up. So that's not a benefit whatsoever. Nokia just generally all-around sucks and has no place in businesses either. I wouldn't buy either of them. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I saw an article on slashdot that suggestedac Microsoft stop making phones and MP3 players.
It doesn't matter what they buy. They will still try and stick Windows Phone, or Windows 8 on it. That is the root of the problem. If Microsoft wants to make inroads into the mobile phone market, it needs to start selling its software for Android. Nobody wants a Microsoft controlled platform any more.
"...market, assuming Microsoft it can play its..." Really?
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
And BTW, that wasn't a defense in favor or MS. Just a simple fact.
why is it that every failing company that gets in the news, a bunch of wacks jump up with hands in the air, saying, "Ooh! Ooh! I know who should buy this outfit!"
answer: NOBODY buys them. they're FAILING. they are CRAP. you are BURNING YOUR MONEY.
patents are cheaper in chapter-7.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You can tell a CEO is not the vital leader he professes to be when, when confronted with the dilemma of whether to buy RIM or Nokia, decides to ask Slashdot.
What are you talking about? Windows Phones are business phones. Windows 8 will be used by 95% of all businesses, just like Windows 7/XP, etc.
I don't respond to AC's.
I agree with you. The problem is not computational power but screen real estate and physical space for input devices. But even if you did have more screen real estate would you really want to do a spreadsheet on your phone? for most people the answer is no. But Microsoft doesn't seem to grok this very well - they insist on trying to make you phone like a desktop (eg. phones with query buttons) when it clearly is not. Given the UI design fiasco with the latest Visual Studio it appears Microsoft has lost focus on what their users actually want - this was part of my point (I hope that came across in the spiel about phones).
RIM is practically a national asset of Canada. In its glory days, it would have been inconceivable to consider selling RIM to a foreign interest -much less an uncouth and arrogant American one. Now that RIM is crippled and tumbling down the stairs of doom, it is no longer inconceivable, but there still would be extensive conditions on the sale, such as retaining so many employees in Waterloo, or having the Canadian government own a big share of the company, etc.
There is virtually no scenario under which MSFT could buy the whole thing outright and do with it whatever they want. Which is exactly what MSFT would want. They don't need or want the handsets or the fab lines or warehouses full of handsets. They want the IP. Canada Inc. is not going to allow that stripmining sale and MSFT knows it, or else they would have bought the place years ago.
The only way for a clean IP sale would be if RIM collapses completely, and the government stays out of it (unlikely; they will probably prop it up and meddle) and the bits and parts go up for public sale to highest bidder. In that case, MSFT can come rolling in with a pile of cash and just outbid everybody -of course everybody else will know that's going on and drive the bids higher. But it could be done. MSFT knows this and they don't want to get caught in the bidding mess.
I expect to be wrong but I just don't see a way for MSFT to do the acquisition they way they theoretically would want to do. Who could? Some sort of white knight Canadian company or a group of companies with cash could buy RIM and that would bypass all the nationalism problems. No idea who that could be or if their investors would scream. Buying RIM is an invitation to lose a lot of money AND the buyer still has to gut the company. Nobody is going to buy RIM and still want to make the products. They have no value and buying the company is not in any way going to change the fact that BlackBerry is dying.
Nokia has similar problems in Finland, but they haven't made a lot or friends lately. The nationalism is probably a lot lower now. The layoffs have been bitter and unpleasant. MSFT might have a better shot at either a joint venture or outright buy . But there is a LOT of Nokia that has nothing to do with the things MSFT wants. What would happen to all those other parts of the company? Does MSFT gobble up the IP and close the doors? It's not going to be easy.
Meanwhile, MSFT is in danger of spending too much time and money on these companies. It will distract them from their key mission and it could be argued that they have enough problems already staying on mission. A botched RIM or Nokia buy could infect MSFT itself similar to how AOL and Time Warner looked good on paper and was a disaster in action. Sprint and Nextel. Compaq and HP. SBC and ATT and all the others that got gobbled up by the "new" ATT.
Sometimes the sum of parts is a negative number.
Sig for hire.
Why do you think Microsoft wants to be a Phone manufacturer?
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
Yes, it is the IO that is the problem. And if you solve all the IO problems of a phone you'll get either a desktop or a neural implant.
Are you sugesting that MS should be researching neural implants?
Rethinking email
The Finns may not be too keen to let it go to an American firm
The Finns cannot do anything about this, as these matters have been handed over to the European Union. The UE likes free trade (this is not a political choice of the people, this is carved in UE treaties), but it dislike trusts that may hamper competition, therefore I am not sure of the outcome.
Microsoft still need a tame hardware manufacturer, but they don't actually want to make phones, largely because the Europeans would never actually let them. So long as Nokia is, at least in theory, an independent company, everyone is cool. Nokia's patents are also unnecessary, partially because the whole endless destructive war thing has already happened and also because it would be Nokia actually being sued.
As for RIM, I don't think anyone really wants that company. They aren't corporate anymore, they're BBM in the third world which isn't exactly a money spinner. If they had any game changer patents they'd have sued someone by now to try and pay the bills.
...face down in the mud, with a sore ass...
...And losing blood fast...
As far as I can remember it's been the same for every company that has dealt with Microsoft. Nokia really self-destructed on that one.
Really? Maybe you need to get your memory checked and also get checked for delusions and hallucinations.
How many tens or hundreds of billions of profit and revenue have Intel,HP, Adobe, Compaq, Dell, Acer, Samsung, HTC(started as a WM OEM), Toshiba, Fujitsu made over the past two and half decades based on their partnership with Microsoft?
This space for rent.
It screws the OEM partners, which Microsoft has a history of doing.
As someone who works at RIM, keep Microsoft shit away and all these RIM haters can go jump off a cliff and die a painful death.
Enough said.
http://phys.org/news/2012-04-nokia-white-spaces-technology-indoor.html
http://phys.org/news/2012-03-super-dry-nokia-nanotechnology.html
Is very well populated with the corpses of 'so called partners'.
Having seen them at work first hand (ok it was 15years ago) I can testify that they are nothing more than Vampires.
They will suck the blood out of a partner until they are dry. The blood is the tech that that the partner has.
If they can't get it all, they will steal it. Yes, steal it.
There are documented cases where suddently MS comes up with some new idea. The idea having been 'pirated' from a partner. The partner sues and MS coughs up a whole heap of $$$$ to shut the partner up. The $$$$ is usually a good deal less than they'd be forced to pay if it got to court.
The money that the partner receives is enough to keep them on life support for a while but their goose is cooked.
I have no reason to expect that MS of today is any different.
The sooner someone drives a wooden stake through their heart the better.
Nokia is a 150-year-old storied company. The Finns may not be too keen to let it go to an American firm.
Nokia may be 150 years old, but Microsoft would only want their technological branch. That branch is much younger. The question is who gets the brand name, though.
"Microsoft would probably gain more from RIM, because it could integrate BlackBerry Enterprise Server into its own server products."
Oh. Like they did with Danger (SideKick). With unrecoverable data loss for most of their customers a year later?
Pass.
When Microsoft signed up with Nokia, at first i thought it was the worst idea ever, ive owned several nokia phones, my favorite was my n97. amazing phone would have been even better on android. Nokia can def make some quality handsets and appeal to both the consumer and the business. I just recently got a Lumia 900, coming from a Motorola Atrix, and i can honestly say my Nokia blows my android out of the water, maybe not so much in apps, but the speed and design of WP7 imo is pretty solid. Android may have a huge marketplace, but that phone used to want to force close apps randomly, would reboot whenever it felt like, and just sometimes froze altogether. It was even rooted running cyanogenmod 7. i love my nokia, and everything about it, the color, the screen, the OS, it all just fits together perfect and just makes the phone that much better. Plus the battery life of my nokia, 4.3" screen compared to the 4" on my atrix and the 1850mAh battery in my nokia compared to the 1920mAh in my Atrix, My nokia lasts me a good 2 days on one full charge, Atrix... i was lucky to get 8 hours. RIM on the other hand, ive had my share of blackberries too (8310 curve, 9700 Bold, 9550 Storm II, 9800 Torch) HATED each and every one. They were boring, reliable no doubt, battery lasted forever, their antennas were great too full service all the time everywhere. They had nothing to offer the normal user, everyone seems to be buying phones for the apps and colors now, not by what actually makes the phone great (eg; cameras, screen type, cpu, storage, OS). i usually dont get crappy phones, i always try to get the best of the best when it comes to phones, and from the great deal of phones ive had, my Nokia is really my favorite out of them all. I also think BB OS 10 isnt going to be all that great. RIM is trying really hard to stay in the market, and just no one wants a blackberry anymore, so its time for them to just stop trying. Stick with Nokia microsoft, they can make a great phone, and Windows Phone is a great OS for the phone to attract both the business user and the consumer.
Third place = "fading"? RIM and Nokia are contenders for third place on the smartphone sales list, let's just wait for the end of the race, shall we?
Nokia is still on the lead in emerging markets where people primarily want to be able to communicate(SMS and phone calls). They profit by volume and not by margin (the majority of the smartphone world).
Its death would be ignoring that value from developing companies, particularly when we are beginning to see an influx of low cost Android smartphones, debatably started by Huawei with its Ideos.
There's fortune at the bottom of the pyramid
*developing countries
I really am not talking about emerging markets -- the E-series devices have been corporate workhorses outside of the USA for a long, long time, and they do a lot more than RIM ever did.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
MS should buy companies in CHINDIA
Casteism
Yes, it is the IO that is the problem. And if you solve all the IO problems of a phone you'll get either a desktop or a neural implant.
Are you sugesting that MS should be researching neural implants?
The type of thing the Google Glass project is suggesting is way around the screen size issue; with eye tracking and head/body movement tracking, the screen area is potentially huge and easily navigable, I reckon. The next problem is to solve input, and I'd wager that will be a mixture of gesture, voice and eye/head movement tracking.
http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/11/in-memoriam-microsofts-previous-strategic-mobile-partners/
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Here are a few devices pico projectors (60" - 120" max size) many already connect to iPhones
http://www.amazon.com/Optoma-EP-PK-101-Pico-Pocket-Projector/dp/B001L4L7AQ
how about a digital pen.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=digital+pen+writer
I actually have one which has a small base unit which clips to a sheet of paper and tracks the pens position. i imagine it wouldn't be that hard to build it into the side of a phone clip it to the paper and start working maybe. Merging these two types of technology could work, the swipe keyboard were you trace from the letters you want to make the words or there was a system on ubuntu which traced letters moving the most likely letters to be closer to the horizontal path you moved the mouse.
or maybe
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/e722/
a projected full size keyboard (bluetooth)
See the technology is almost there and if built in to a phone you could have your desktop in your pocket. Admittedly the size might be closer to the early cell phones of the 90's
you might be able to slide on a small projection system on to a phone so your phone can be light and easy to carry with this one small peripheral for i/o
If I can think of these things presumably there are engineers already working on prototype phones with good i/o
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Microsoft really just wants the "Playbook" technology and inventory!
In terms of the "real" telecom world, both companies are not worth the trouble at this time and looking towards Korea or China may make more sense.
you have just described micro$oft. any bidders?
IMHO Microsoft should be looking at shoring up its desktop rather than fighting Android
That is exactly what they are doing. Some time in the next years, perhaps even months, there will be tablets and phones out there which plug into docking stations with keyboard, mouse and a big screen. It will be the ultimate in portability. If it doesn't support Office software it has lost in the enterprise space. Some of the tablets will be fully WinTel compatible, and they'll be hard as hell to beat in the enterprise. I don't know if Intel will manage to put x86 on a phone, but it won't matter all that much. The enterprise is using .NET for a huge portion of their vertical software. .NET will run fine on WinRT.
> .NET will run fine on WinRT. .NET devs had to use to get around .NET limitations won't work. There will still be pain for those working with .NET
Maybe, but all the PInvokes the
The PInvokes will typically not be a major problem for enterprise developers who build DB front-end apps that mostly collect and vizualize or integrate data. You don't need PInvoke for most of those.
In that case Java or GWT would have been better choices that .NET. If you are not developing solely for the Windows desktop then there are better, and longer-lived, technologies than .NET out there (the Windows desktop is what .NET is really designed for - which is why in the Enterprise space the ratio of Java to .NET is around 5:1, see the Tiobe Index for the actual figures).
If you are not developing solely for the Windows desktop
I wasn't saying it was not solely for Windows desktop, but you are still not correct in your assertion. .NET for web-based applications beats Java easily. .NET MVC, for example, beats every single Java framework out there. The Play! framework is getting close to .NET, but not close enough. Java is the COLBOL of this decade. Slowly murdered by slow-moving committee.
COLBOL? dontcha mean COBOL?
Do you even know what GWT is? it makes .NET's ASP look neolithic (the Microsoft equivalent of GWT, "Project Volta", has been abandoned as Microsoft struggles to maintain the same level of profitability by shedding research and re-shuffling finances). By .NET MVC do you mean WPF or ASP? both of them are neither best-of-breed nor (far more importantly these days) portable.
It's cool, you stick with your .NET, but it turns out a one-platform pony is the true dinosaur these days. In case you missed it Android is essentially the marketing name of Java on Linux - and it has been whipping both Microsoft and Apple in numbers of units shipped (one million new activations per day, apparently) which is hardly COBOL-esque if you have managed to peek out of the Microsoft reality distortion field for a little bit. .NET is not going away soon, but it is not growing significantly either. Java is not going away either but at least it is spreading to every platform it can (eg. Android, Linux, Mac, even crusty ol' Windows).
Yes, I meant COBOL. Java is the COBOL of this decade. Trust me, I was part of a team that developed one of the first commercial applications on Java, with our company featured in the New York Times ads Sun was running on Java back in the late 90s. Java was great then. Now it has stiff joints and is moving slowly.
Do you even know what GWT is? it makes .NET's ASP look neolithic
Wow. The amount of ignorance here is amusing. Yes, I know what GWT is. I have even deployed two in-house GWT apps on a JBoss server and I am in the process of putting a GWT app on IIS, probably late this summer. It works quite well with .NET MVC 4. The idea that it makes .NET look neolithic is like saying that the apple over there makes this car look ancient. It is an absurd statement. GWT is a client-side technology where you write Java code and compile it to Javascript. What technology you use to deploy said Javascript is irrelevant, and GWT plays well with .NET MVC, and even more so with version 4 and the REST api framework of this version. The main issue for us doing GWT on .NET was that we basically had to mimic our server-side stuff in Java for the development environment. This was not as much of an issue as one might think. I basically cross-complied a bunch of the C# code to Java. Not quite as easy as one might think since C# is a far more capable language than Java.
Would I do it again? No. GWT is a cool idea, but it is a one-platform pony. Integrating with just about any back-end is not a problem in production as such, but it is a pain in the neck to do easily in development. It is a great idea with a horrible tool kit. Would I use GWT again? No. It was a great idea whos time came and went before it caught on. Today I would use Ember, but Knockout,, SproutCore, Batman, Spine and lots of others are cool too. GWT simply was timed badly. Google is going to kill it once Dart gets traction. Darts beats GWT as a concept.
By .NET MVC do you mean WPF or ASP
Really, you don't know the MVC product from MS? Open source. Very similar (in so far as you can go similar to ruby with C#) to rails, and very clearly inspired by rails. .NET MVC is the product that the Play! Framework guys "copied" (the rendering engine) in Play! 2.0. .NET MVC puts all Java web frameworks in the rear view mirror, except Play (which is the only Java web framework I am willing to use now, Spring MVC in a pinch.)
It's cool, you stick with your .NET, but it turns out a one-platform pony is the true dinosaur these days
Even the fact that you think .NET is a one-platform pony shows how little you know. The GWT app I am talking about above is being deployed on the same Linux box that runs the JBoss server.
Android is essentially the marketing name of Java on Linux
I prefer to develop my Android applications in C#, but then again, you didn't know that C# development was possible on Android. Funny enough, it is also far more efficient and performant than Java on Android. Really. It is. But hey, you can develop slower Java apps on Android all you want.
lol. Actually I'm developing a modern jet combat simulator in Java. It screams in performance terms (that is, is enormously fast - although moving a lot of stuff to GPU shaders always helps). If you *know what you are doing* then Java is very fast, faster than C++, C and (that fastest language of them all) FORTRAN. You don't have to believe me but you ought to believe the French scientific supercomputing outfit INRIA, please refer to http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00312039/en That was five years ago. The JVM has not gotten slower in that time. So basically your statement is out of date - there are so many performance options on modern JVMs, but most Java devs are crap (because most devs are crap).
Using GWT with a .NET back-end? who's monstrous architectural decision was that? Why would anyone torture themselves with such a ridiculous mismatch, apart from some ideological determination to shoehorn .NET where it doesn't belong? Incidentally you made another incorrect assertion (probably inadvertently?), GWT contains both client-side and server-side components. Perhaps you know less about GWT than you think (and possibly have not used the most recent versions of GWT, along with wonderful extensions like vaadin).
Would I do it again? No. GWT is a cool idea, but it is a one-platform pony. .NET back end (obviously .NET didn't have GWT-like capability at the time; this is hardly an advantage of .NET).
Utter bullshit. So wrong as to be troll-esque and raises my suspicious about either your capabilities or motivations. Anyone who uses GWT knows it is truly multiplatform (I've deployed to customers using Win 32, Win 64, Linux, Solaris - and it works for me on Mac OS X; and to all sorts of browsers, including the fundamentally borked Internet Explorer series). If you mean GWT is single language only then you are correct, being able to do everything with a single language is a feature (clearly not the same thing unless one is trying to be disingenuous) - clearly your project wanted to use the capabilities of GWT while using a
Even the fact that you think .NET is a one-platform pony shows how little you know. The GWT app I am talking about above is being deployed on the same Linux box that runs the JBoss server. .NET does (eg. WPF, and the latest failure with the Silverlight clone - since Microsoft is letting this wither and die *as their business model dictates they must in order to sell different tools every few years*). Given a choice between Mono or Java for a long-lived national government or bank-level critical business system on it (the kind of stuff I write) I know which one I'd choose.
If you are using Mono then the software must be worse than I though. You must have discovered by now that Mono is hobbled as it does not (and furthermore, never will) implement all the libraries that Microsoft
I prefer to develop my Android applications in C#, but then again, you didn't know that C# development was possible on Android. Funny enough, it is also far more efficient and performant than Java on Android. Really. It is. But hey, you can develop slower Java apps on Android all you want. .NET and Java have gotten *much* faster since then). Only n00bs believe marketing spiels and
Another wrong assumption. I did know you can write Android apps in a variety of languages, including C#. Why you would want to is beyond me. The performance comes from using the *hardware* properly (eg. OpenGL ES, which I've alluded too I already write shaders and use them from Java). "Far more efficient and performant than Java on Android" - more utter bs again. Generally I regard Java and C# to be in the same performance league (although when I was using C# when it was first released its performance was so bad Microsoft prohibited when compared to even the old JVMs of the time - fortunately both
If you *know what you are doing* then Java is very fast ... basically your statement is out of date
Which statement? Did I state Java was slow? If you think I did you need to lay of your mothers meds. Did you see me state otherwise? What are you rambling about? I said Java is old and moving slowly, not that Java programs are slow. Java is old and moving slowly (in the same way COBOL is moving slowly - it's being killed by committee).
Why would anyone torture themselves with such a ridiculous mismatch
If you are sane, in today's world, your back end is some sort of standards-based interface. REST, SOAP (ouch) or some such. What you should not do is use the default GWT-RPC communications. Once GWT-RPC is out the window, what backend your GWT program talks to is irrelevant. It would be insane to use the default GWT server for this, which means that you would have to use the Spring or JBoss or similar GWT packages. Why limit your self in such a way. REST is more fun, and it isn't limited to GWT. Only a fool would use GWT-RPC.
GWT contains both client-side and server-side components
Nope, it is only you who have problems reading. I said "The main issue for us doing GWT on .NET was that we basically had to mimic our server-side stuff in Java for the development environment" - in other words, we had to make the GWT server stuff look a little like our .NET back end.
Anyone who uses GWT knows it is truly multiplatform
Do you even read what you your self write? You just said above that it wasn't. You claimed it was not particularly easy to integrate with a .NET app. Are you just trolling or are you this stupid? Most companies have a corporate policy on what app server to use. Websphere etc. Have you tried integrating GWT with any of those? With SOAP?
Mono is hobbled ... WPF
Wow. WPF. Where in this discussion would you use that?
I did know you can write Android apps in a variety of languages, including C#. Why you would want to is beyond me
Simple. C# is a far more mature and developed language than is Java. I have done Java since 1996. C# passed Java in version 3.5 and has been speeding ahead since. Java is standing still or even doing the wrong things. Generics in Java is a disaster. Autoboxing in Java is an example of how you should never do things.
performance comes from using the *hardware* properly (eg. OpenGL ES
Really? For enterprise apps? You know, the kind that companies pay millions for? Not some silly game for children.
Only n00bs believe marketing spiels and microbenchmarks
Given your reference to INRIA above, I guess you are a noob then. Only noobs spell noobs "n00bs".
and the latest failure with the Silverlight clone - since Microsoft is letting this wither and die
Now to this one. This is actually a misunderstanding. Really. It is. Look at Win 8. WPF is everywhere. You know the original name for SL right? WPF/E, WPF Everywhere. Microsoft is probably retiring WPF as a plugin. It is no longer needed in Win8.
Given your reference to INRIA above, I guess you are a noob then. Only noobs spell noobs "n00bs".
Here I give a *scientific* paper evaluating the performance of Java and rather than accept the *facts* (rather than your anecdotes) you switch to some lame excuse about how some l33tword is spelt. Double fail.
Simple. C# is a far more mature and developed language than is Java
Incorrect. Java is much older than C# (since C# is a Windows-oriented implementation of Java via the intermediate language Cool, the C# inventors said so [and were amazed they was not pulled up by Sun for this]). Fail. Java is more mature. If by more developed you mean more complicated and with a rapidly increasing number of constructs then C# is indeed ahead. This is the same mistake C++ made. If you value the strategic over the tactical then you value simplicity. In the example you gave of Java's generics, yes they are sub-optimal, but that was necessary so that the huge deployed code-base would still work. When customers choose Java for their *Internet scale* applications (too big to fail) then such things matter. Sun had their hands tied with that one, their business model is not to break their tools every few years so they can sell you new ones (which is Microsoft's business model).
If you are sane, in today's world, your back end is some sort of standards-based interface. REST, SOAP (ouch) or some such.
It depends. Will third parties access your back end? if not then it sounds like you have an unnecessarily complicated and inefficient back end (GWT-RPC uses JSON because the network is the bottleneck in dynamic web-based applications, there is nothing to fear with a JSON interface so it is strange you do). If you do really need third party access to your back-end then make a web-service for sure (and SOAP can be better than REST if you are dealing with third parties who want to auto-generate access code). In that case make a Java webservice client that uses GWT for the front end, but leave the GWT-RPC as it is. So much simpler than the shenanigans you describe (unless there was some other factor left out of the description).
Now to this one. This is actually a misunderstanding. Really. It is. Look at Win 8. WPF is everywhere.
Nope. Win8 is nowhere at the moment and Silverlight is effectively dead. Betting the farm on Microsoft and Microsoft tech is a strategy that people used to do a decade ago. It is bad judgement these days (nb: Mono is not going anywhere either, only a few people like it). This is why Microsoft (and their shareholders) are so worried and why Win8 is such a desperate move (and it looks like a failing move to - most desktop users will probably sick with Win7 and enterprises will stick with whatever they have). Only those buying new boxes and fanbois will get Win8 (and of course, Mac adoption is rocketing among those with a bit more money, intelligence and influence). So no, WPF isn't going to take over in any explosive fit of growth.
So by all means please keep using Microsoft tech and hope that your original statements come true .NET for a huge portion of their vertical software. .NET will run fine on WinRT.
I wouldn't advise holding your breath though. Meanwhile I'll be working with software that doesn't need changing no matter what the future holds (this is good news for my customers - since the tech I choose prefers the strategic over the tactical). Plus, I'll still be getting more and more lucrative contracts instead of begging to hold my position against the wave of barely skilled offshore .NET devs.
That is exactly what they are doing. Some time in the next years, perhaps even months, there will be tablets and phones out there which plug into docking stations with keyboard, mouse and a big screen. It will be the ultimate in portability. If it doesn't support Office software it has lost in the enterprise space. Some of the tablets will be fully WinTel compatible, and they'll be hard as hell to beat in the enterprise. I don't know if Intel will manage to put x86 on a phone, but it won't matter all that much. The enterprise is using
Here I give a *scientific* paper evaluating the performance of Java
Sigh. Here is what you did. You sited a paper, correct, that says, among other things "e first perform some micro benchmarks for various JVMs" (my emphasis), then you said "Only n00bs believe marketing spiels and microbenchmarks". See the problem?
Incorrect. Java is much older than C#
Sigh. If you don't understand the difference between "old" and "mature" then you need to stop conversing with adults. Yes, Java is (obviously) older than C#, but development in Java, that is, the development of the language it self, has been extremely slow, and Java has not incorporated newer and better language constructs at the pace C# has. Java was at the forefront of popularization of certain things like VMs etc, but that was long ago. Java has basically not evolved at all since Sun added (in a terrible way) Generics to the language. C# has evolved significantly faster, and now leaves Java in the dust. C# generics are done right, Java - wrong. Java auto boxing is basically a bug, not a feature. Java has nothing like the dynamic aspects of C#, functional programming is (basically) totally absent from Java. Java has nothing like the async support of C#. Hell, I can only say LINQ, and Java is instantly old, decrepit and from the 1990s.
If by more developed you mean more complicated and with a rapidly increasing number of constructs then C# is indeed ahead
I guess that is what adding modern programming constructs looks like to someone who is unable to learn.
Will third parties access your back end
I build enterprise apps. The answer to that is "always".
there is nothing to fear with a JSON interface so it is strange you do
Sigh. Why do you think I do? I specifically mention REST above. REST returns XML or JSON (or ATOM or...) based on what the client asks for. Assume you hava a method that returns a list of customers from either from an Oracle database (using EF, Hibernate or similar here). You need a REST API that returns that filtered by the start of the customer name (overly simplified here). The code (all that is needed) would look like this: ... connect to the DB;
public void CustomersController() {
theDB =
}
public List<Customer> Get( string nameStartsWith) {
return theDB.Customers.Where( cust => cust.Name.StartsWith( nameStartsWith )).ToList();
}
This code will respond to a request to http://host/api/Customers?nameStartsWith=John
As I said, this code will return JSON if the client asks for JSON, XML if the client asks for XML etc. It also shows some LINQ above. LINQ is excellent and a huge time saver. You can use an SQL-like syntax to querey anything. Whether the object "theDB" above was a Hibernate construct connecting you to an Oracle DB, or it was an in-memory XML stream read from a config file (for example for testing) or a List<Customer> or anything else that is queryable, the code is identical. I'd like to see you do this in Java. Seriously, I thought everybody knew that REST typically was JSON. Luckily I won't have to force my clients to chose, if they want ATOM it returns ATOM, if they want XML, it returns XML, if they want JSON it returns JSON.
make a Java webservice client
I don't have to chose. Once I build it on web api (also known as WCF), and I build it ONCE, the client decides what he wants to use for accessing the data. SOAP, XML serialization, JSON, ATOM, you name it.
Betting the farm on Microsoft and Microsoft tech is a strategy that people used to do a decade ago
You have never worked in an enterprise have you? AD everywhere. Exchange integration mandatory. That's the enterprise world of today.
Sigh. If you don't understand the difference between "old" and "mature" then you need to stop conversing with adults.
How does changing rapidly (also known as the "bleeding edge") make C# mature? answer, it doesn't (since it appears you don't understand what "mature" means, in several senses of the word, eg "then you need to stop conversing with adults"). The Java language changes slowly because it doesn't need to - its nine million users still get things done - and because the emphasis (just like C) is on on having policy in the libraries rather than the language. What you mistake (often made those that are focussed on "teh new shiney") as a lack on innovation is instead a conservative approach to change. Having more language keywords doesn't matter to me, having lots of libraries (and my own code) that will run everywhere does (since I don't get to choose what platforms my customers run on - which has been anything and everything).
You have never worked in an enterprise have you? AD everywhere. Exchange integration mandatory. That's the enterprise world of today.
Actually I suggest you get to more enterprises. They are all migrating to LDAP of one kind or another, but not all of them are there yet. But let us suppose that your statement is true and 100% of enterprises use Microsoft Active Directory. Are you then trying to assert that Java cannot integrate with Active Directory (futhermore, not only not integrate but it is not a part of the standard JEE library?). If so, then you are wrong and your argument is invalid (and it was a pretty lame argument to make).
Win8 will be on the fastest selling tablets for the enterprise by this time next year. It's a guarantee.
This goes without saying. Tablets will be forced to come with Win8. That has always been Microsoft's way of getting people to "upgrade". What will happen is that nearly every tablet received in enterprises next year will be wiped and replaced with their standard image (whatever that is, probably Vista Enterprise, maybe even 7). No matter what happens (if we get back on topic for a moment) the Windows phones will still have no traction - nobody wants them. Everybody seems to lust either for iPhones (which I have, but I hate the restrictiveness of) or the Samsung Galaxy. My wife had a corporate-supplied Windows phone and chose it because she didn't think she could operate an iPhone. Similarly she was initially afraid of my MacBook Pro. Now she has an iPhone and prefers the Mac to Windows (this is not me forcing her [I don't want her commandeering my gear], basically she, like most other users, have discovered that Microsoft interfaces are relatively poor). MY all means wish for Microsoft's success if you want, but it simply is not going to come true (not with what I have seen with all the *ordinary* users I encounter).
I guess that is what adding modern programming constructs looks like to someone who is unable to learn.
Actually I have a PhD in Astrophysics, much of it was doing software development and computational work for some very hard scalability and data processing problems (to support an international gravitational microlensing survey, which has detected a few planets these days). I believe and have learned many programming languages, tools and techniques. I have used Microsoft stuff for two decades but learned some time back that they are the 90% solution - they will solve 90% of your problems very easily but the last 10% of customized stuff you need is a pain or sufficiently difficult no customer wants to pay for the effort (eg. full internationalization solutions with Sql Server [which lacks the correct Unicode support to meet Chinese software requlations], FastInfoSet, the ability to Stream webservice responses that are larger than physical memory while still using full WS-Security). Therefore I choose solutions that may be slightly more difficult for the 90% but allow me to get to the 100% solution. I also choose a single language solution where I can (because my ego is
How does changing rapidly (also known as the "bleeding edge") make C# mature?
Sigh. C# hasn't changed rapidly. It has changed though. It has incorporated some well-tested and well-founded new language constructs. There is nothing "bleeding-edge" as such about C#. It has incorporated an SQL-like structure into the language, something others did decades ago, it has incorporated functional programming constructs, functional programming is hardly bleeding edge, it has also incorporated aspects of dynamic programming languages, which is also nothing new. You are again talking out of your ass with absolutely no knowledge about the topic of conversation. C# has changed where it makes sense. Java has hardly changed at all. The JCP is to blame.
The Java language changes slowly because it doesn't need to
Balderdash. Java changes slowly because of the in-fighting in the JCP and the insane focus on forward and backwards compatibility of (once) Sun. Java needs a new implementation of generics. The current one sucks big time. Java needs new basic types or a new implementation of autoboxing, the current one is a bug. Java should incorporate aspects of functional programming since it makes parallel easier, safer and more testable. Future hardware developments is going to center around adding cores to CPUs, so parallel programming is of paramount importance. Java sucks at it compared to C#, F# and a whole host of functional programming languages. Java has barely changed at all since 2001. Not because it is perfect but because it takes a decade for the JCP to agree on anything.
instead a conservative approach to change
Seriously? Have you been following the Java development at all? The JCP is broken. That's the reason for the slow development. Here are some blog postings on how utterly broken the JCP is. This was in 2007. It's not better today. By any stretch of the imagination. Java isn't moving slowly because of a conservative attitude, Java is moving slowly because it is "stuck in committee". I am surprised that a Java programmer is ignorant of the serious problems plaguing the JCP. Have you been living in a cave for all this time?
Are you then trying to assert that Java cannot integrate with Active Directory
Have you ever tried? It is a pain. Huge pain. We had to drop it from our JBoss project since it could not co-exist with the Apache SOAP libraries and Smooks. You could have two of them, but all three and AD would stop working. At random intervals. So. yes, I have done it. No, it wasn't pain-free by any stretch of the imagination. We had to move the solution to IIS since integration with AD was mandatory. BTW, this was JBoss 4.2.3, might have changed since then.
Actually I have a PhD in Astrophysics
Well, rocket science isn't exactly rocket science...
much of it was doing software development and computational work for some very hard scalability and data processing problems
Cool. Can you optimize an Oracle query? Seriously. Maths is important in software development (I took maths) but it isn't important in the day-to-day work of the enterprise developer. It is a good way to develop an analytic mind though.
the Windows phones will still have no traction
I do development on phones, so I have a few. Two iPhones, only one Windows Phone and a couple of Samsungs with Android. I much prefer the Windows paradigm, it is a significant change in the right direction for a phone. iOS is just a desktop OS metaphor on a phone. It sucks compared to Metro, but so be it. Strangely Win Phone has a signif