The question you should be asking yourself, is there such a thing as "laissez faire" market. In US you too have regulation starting from laws regarding consumer protection to competition laws, so where you draw a line on when a market is regulated and when it's not? If we look a "laissez faire" market it's actually a market where there is no competition as eventually market will turn into a monopoly, duopoly or cartels. Now, competition is good, market economy is good, free markets are good, but free markets aren't natural born, they are born out regulation. That's why we have anti-trust legislation, that's why we have competition regulators, to make sure that the market and economy works. So why not to regulate?
Why not regulate when in example communication networks you are market where competition is restricted naturally, as there is only so much opportunities to build wire to homes and only so much air frequencies to use. Why not use regulations? It makes the market work, it allows everyone have a connection, it allows everyone to have a connection at a fair price, it allows investment to new telecommunication networks, etc.. Why not regulate? The thing in here is that the one thing that matters are the end results. In US the "laissez faire" attitude has gone way overboard and you are now paying it in form of antiquate and over priced telecommunications or collapsing high way bridges. The end results matter only.
PS. In US 79% of population lives in urban areas where as in Finland only 61% live in urban areas.
Eh, excuse me, but take a look on the list and you will find that Finland is third. Finland is geographically large country with a small population having population density of 15.6 per km where as US has 31 per km. The telecommunication sector is one of the freest in Europe with fierce competition between communication providers. You can get broadband, be it based on DSL or 3G wireless networks, in whole country. The government doesn't subsides the industry nor usage of telecommunication. So you have country with low population density and free markets, and things are still working.
Now, you might wonder why. Well, it's the competition. Providing telecommunication is lucrative business with healthy profit margins, so healthy actually that goverment can regulate and allow competition to emerge. In Finland all network providers have obligation to rent their network to other communication providers, and the price that they take from it must be the internal price based on the price of their infrastructure value and up keeping. To make sure that companies follow this obligation goverment monitors the companies and makes sure that the game is fare and played by the rules. Still even with these regulations and obligations in place, telecommunication companies do business, get healthy profits and invest to new infrastructure. DSL is nowadays ubiquitous. GRPS and EDGE work country wide. 3G networks that are soon whole nation wide. Actually when the 3G networks cover whole country, there has been talk about shutting down 2G networks and deploying them as 3G. There is also EV-DO based @450 wireless network, especially targeted to remote areas. In bigger cities network providers have started projects to connect new fiber optic networks directly to houses, mainly to housing cooperatives.
Actually providing Internet connections have become so cheap that in my town, Turku (pop 178 000, metro 235 000), the local cable operator, a private company, has started to provide free Internet connections to every household on one of the town's low income neighborhoods, Varissuo, where all inhabitants can get 256kb connection free. Basically it's bait and switch, were they think as people get the free connection they will eventually take a more faster service from them. I would say that having good broadband service is more about having healthy competition than anything else.
I couldn't help myself on answering your post. As a European and a Finnish I have an outsiders look on your discussion. The reason the US economy is in the bad shape has more to do with decline of US oil and raw materials production, decline in immigration and other countries and regions becoming more efficient and powerful.
US now produces 5.4 million barrels of oil, which is half what Saudi Arabia produces. You import 12.2 million barrels of oil to US. If we look at history, US has previously produced most of the oil it used. In the 70s US oil production peaked, and has since been in decline: right now US produces the same amount of oil that it did in 40s. If we look at oil imports, oil imports were relatively small before 70s, and only afterwards oil imports have jumped up. In the beginning of 90s, US imported as much oil as it itself produced. Now US produces 31% of the oil it consumes. Well what does that mean? In essence US economy has lost one major competitive advantage it had: cheap domestic energy. When previously you used oil, the money stayed in US, now the money is flowing to oil producing countries. It should also be noted that as the whole US economy was and still is based on cheap oil, as the oil comes more costly, you will have to change your whole infrastructure that's based on cheap oil: less suburbans, less personal transit, more integrated cities, more mass transportation.
The other thing that previously fueled US economy was mass migration of people to US, which meant that you got massive amounts of cheap labor and resources. As more and more people were coming to US it made the country very competitive as there was always somebody that would do the work half the price and better than you. Now, of course the immigration to US has been in decline for long, but it always takes much time for effects to appear. Also it should be added that recent immigration hasn't benefited US as much as previously. Yes, US economy has experienced growth, but when you account increase in population, the growth rate isn't that big. Just in example, US economy grew 24% from 1998 to 2003, which is the same amount as Finnish economy grew, but the big difference is that our work force didn't grow, meaning that the growth came from economy actually becoming more efficient, and providing more GDP per capita: currently by IMF Finland has GDP per capita (nominal) $46,602 and US $45,845, which is really big thing as Finland was more or less agrarian based 3rd world country only 50 years ago.
Now the other thing that you have to count is that the rest of the world is getting its act together. European countries have finally buried their war axes and in the shelter of European Union they integrating more and more of their efforts. A good example of this effort is Euro that has for the first time since ages has become an credible competitor for US dollar as an reserve currency: in 2007 63,3% of currency reserves were in US dollars, and 26,5% were in Euros. As Euro becomes more and more credible, and as more and more trade is done with Euro, the more and more US dollar will lose of its value. If and when Euro gets to being as used currency as US dollars, that will mean that US can't press new dollars without consequences: now when US has printed more dollars, they have more of less went to other countries, and the inflation that would have normally been the result of pressing more money has been more or less outsourced to other countries.
Now these are just the facts that are taking place right now. The US economy has many problems that it has to face. The interesting about all this is the question what will US do? Will US follow the model of European countries? In Europe there isn't much raw materials or oil, and that has forced the European countries to get the economic growth from somewhere else. I would say that the reason Europe has handled global competition as well as it has, has much todo that in here more money and effort has been put on human resources: we have public schools that work, free
I would say that it's quite unfriendly and uncivilized to start calling names. I can be enthusiastic about Nokias products without being an marketing droid for Nokia, in the very same way that Apple enthusiasts can be about iPhone and other Apple related products. Or do you call any one who speaks and praises iPhone an Apple marketing droid? I did understand what you were trying to point, but I didn't concur with you. Non of the less, I like talking and discussing to others in Slashdot and other venues, to express my ideas and feelings, and getting the others perspective as well. If you don't want to discuss about some topic, or think that the discussion is pointless, just don't answer, but calling names is stupid and diminishing.
320x480 is not a high resolution screen. The screen can sport a high DPI, but that doesn't make it a high resolution screen. Now, yes it has more pixels than other smart phones, except E90 and some offers from HTC. However the reason I take normal laptops and desktop screens as an example of what is high resolution screen is that mobile phones simply in function are more and more closer to laptops and desktops. When you are surfing the net, the content you get is tailored to screens having a resolution of 1024x768, and that is the same content you are viewing from your mobile device. My point is that you can't say that 320x480 is a high resolution when the functions you are using need a bigger screen, and because there are devices that have bigger resolutions, just take E90 on N8XX series. You may say that the screen is bigger, brighter and more enjoyable, but claiming that it's high resolution is just not true. Okey, yes, this may be semantics, but I feel it's important still.
And yes, I know that my view on Nokia phones and on S60 might sound like an ad, a non believable statement, but that really is what I feel about their products. They make good phones with good software. They were bad, they have gotten better, and will come even better in time. Now you don't have to believe that, but I challenge you to find out more. Go to Nokia flagship store, look info about their products and see what you like them. I like Nokias products, simple as that.
PS. It's about functionality. An IMAX movie is still functional even on small screen resolution, as you can watch the movie, see and hear it. An web page designed that works in 1024x768 crammed to 320x480 or 320x240 screen is severely limited in functionality: you have to zoom, you have modify it cram it in a small screen, the functionality just isn't the same. In this background, it's the same if the screen is 320x240 or 320x480 as the functionality of viewing and using the page in those both resolutions are severely handicapped when compared to original.
Well, when the normal resolution of an laptop or an desktop computer is 1024x768, a 320x480 compared to that is minimal. The point here is that the normal content is too large. The iPhones displays web content by scaling it down, so it looks like you are viewing the screen normally, when in the matter of fact you are not. As I said earlier, the design decisions that Apple has done are great and they have had much initial success because of this. Still, a 320x480 screen is small, and hasn't got a high resolution.
And to add in the end. Every post I have read about iPhone has too felt like reading an ad. I can understand that to some people iPhone has been an experience to them, but so can other phones be too. To me it has been experience to see Nokia getting their software work, including S60 and PC Suite. Just a few years ago PC Suite was more or less rubbish and unusable piece of engineering. Now PC Suite works and enables updates, backups, restores, synchronizing, application install and so on very easily. Also software like Nokia maps combined with an internal GPS unit is just brilliant, especially the 2.0 version that is also optimized to be used in walking. Yes, I know there are other software like Google Maps that can be used and are being delivered with Sony-Ericsson navigation phones, but with Nokia I can download maps directly into phone without charge. So if I'm going to strange town or another country, I can just by using map manager download all to the phone. It really is incredible, you should try new Nokia phones and see yourself how long way they have come just in few years.
iPhones screen is 320x480, that's not high resolution, and not so much difference to normal smart phones which sport 320x240 screen. The reason why people treat Apples screen as it would be high resolution screen has more to do with their software and design decisions they have made on displaying their user interface and web content. In here Nokia and others are behind, they usually have crammed too much to screen making it confusing.
However.. Nokia and other phone manufacturers have better hardware and lately Nokia has made an tremendous effort on software front. If I could choose any phone today, I would choose S60 based phone, probably Nokia N82 or . The reason is that Nokia has both improved S60 a lot, a N95 with new firmware just works, and they have an incredible selection of software from themselves and from lots of third party providers. For myself Maps, LifeBlog, Share Online and PC Suite are software that I want and need. It should also be noted I really appreciate having a large collection of third party software available, both S60 specific and J2ME software.
PS. If you appreciate big high resolution screen, why not get E90?
Promoting n+2 version in a commercial product is not a suicide. When a customer buys an product he or she buys it because of current features and benefits, but also because of secured future. Why buy it because of secure future? Well, because usually all things, devices and software require more of less considerable time and learning investment. When an customer switched products he or she has to make an effort to learn again to use the product, but if the customer upgrades the product, he or she will usually spend less time in learning to use the upgraded product than when switching to totally different product. In this background, at least in my mind, it's a good idea to promoted future versions including n+2 and so on to give customers an image that their choice has a continuum and secured future.
Nokia having more sales than the other handset manufacturers can be attributed to many things including economies of scale in component buying, manufacturing, sales, research and development etc.. However it should be remembered that Nokia hasn't always been the biggest mobile phone manufacturer. When we start to examine on how they achieved their position as the number one and how they have retained it, I would strongly look on how Nokia plays with phone variations.
I myself think that having large number of phone variations is the reason for Nokia's success. It isn't even an secret, but more as publicly known fact. They have been doing variation game for long. In the end of 90s I can remember in example the case with Nokia 5110 (98) and 6110 (97): they were the same phone, 6110 just had extra memory, business look, calendaring and some other software functions configured on, you actually could switch those software options on from 5110. After those days Nokia has just gone bigger and better at making variations. As I said earlier N95, N95 8GB, N96 are N82 the same phone, same too with E50, E60 and E61. They make a one phone and then implement various number of variations with different components and forms, it's just the same as in the PC industry.
The key point in making lots of different variations is that anticipating what consumers really want is very hard, and even if can understand what customers want and need, it still doesn't mean that they will buy it, as there are so many variables and in the end consumers behave many times irrationally. To me it seems as a better tactic to design many variations from a particular handset platform and throw a number of phones to consumer and hope that he or she will pick one. By having large number of variations in function, in components, in form and etc.. a company can make sure that it has always some model covering a specific feature/form/price point thus serving the needs of consumers better. It even doesn't cost that much for company to differentiate, like I said Nokia basically has S30, S40 and S60 software lines, the same software shares usually shares more or less the same components with other phones in the line, so in reality there are few phone platforms onto witch different mobile phone variations are build. So having a large collection of seemingly different phones doesn't necessarily mean that they waste lot of time with them or that they really are different.
And yes, I enjoy going to a phone shop and testing phones personally. My phone is my personal companion that I use daily for my life and work, it also represents who I'm and what message I want to give people, so testing the phone personally gives me the feeling do I really want it or not. I don't know how it is in the US, if you are from there, but in here the phone models that are on the shop and that can be tested are also usually available, if not they come in few days, and you reserve or buy one from the next shipment in that case. Everybody does the same, even if they order it from the net, they still usually feel it themselves in a shop.
Nokia shipped 436.38 million mobile phones in 2007, taking 38.98% of the market. In the same time Motorola shipped 159 million mobile phones, taking 14.2% of the market. Globally in 2007 over 1119,48 million mobile phones were shipped. I would say that in this background, there are fairly big number of different mobile phone users. I would say that when a company is trying to reach hundreds of millions of mobile phone users, they have to have a large number of different phone variations even to have offerings that touch some basic needs of every customer.
It should be noted that when you have large portfolio of mobile phones with a fairly short product life cycle, you can use different pricing and product strategies to target and cover different customers and markets. In example N95 when it came to market few years ago cost about 995 euros, after about three to four months the price had fallen to about 690 euros, and now can be bought with 449 euros. Also Nokia has made N82 (candybar), N96 (slider) and N95 8GB in the mean while, which all have same features but some variation in features, design and price so they cover and match different valuations. It's the same situation with other phone models and lines. I also don't think that it's hard for consumers to differentiate and select a phone model they want: either they go to a shop and try themselves different phones or look at the marketing material and specs to order one.
Also when we start discussing about testing different options, it should be remembered that when an organization goes into one way, it has to do the work only one time, and when going into one direction it gathers more experience about the particular fields than doing a number of different things. When Motorola in almost the same time produced Symbian, Linux and Windows Mobile handsets they had to do three times the work in software development, user interface design and testing the three different platforms, and providing support for the all three. Now if Motorola would have selected only one, either Symbian, Linux or Windows Mobile, they could have experts on the subject and use their gathered experience to more effectively produce more and better handsets. We should also not forget that by Motorola offering three smartphone platforms, they couldn't create a coherent and enough big base for application developers to start developing them. Now compare this to Nokia that only has one smartphone platform S60. By using S60 only, they have produced a large number of devices that form a lucrative market that can be targeted by developers.
I think there were few major problems with Motorola: 1) going everywhere, but ending nowhere, and 2) lately trying to find a hit product instead of churning out good products.
Now you might be asking what I mean by saying going everywhere, but ending nowhere. Well simple, Motorola always had more than one technology always in production and in planning. In operating systems front they first went to Symbian, then started their Linux project and in the same embraced Windows Mobile. Now compare this to Nokia that just concentrated to Symbian, no Linux, no Windows Mobile. Only lately Nokia has introduced Linux based Internet Tablets just to gather some experience, but they still are 100% committed to Symbian. In my opinion Motorola should have committed to Symbian as strongly as Nokia and Sony-Ericsson did, maybe allied with Sony-Ericsson in using UIQ.
The second problem with Motorola relates to first problem. As I said Motorola jumped everywhere in their search of finding a hit, as can be seen in operating systems front. The front where Motorola really failed was in introducing new phones. They had a hit with RAZR, which created an illusion that they were onto something. In reality they just had luck, and what they should have done, would have been to introduce tens of different variations of the phone. Now compare to Nokia witch doesn't really have hit products, but instead it has a large collection of small hits and fairly trading phones. When I just looked at Nokia's European web site I counted that they have 92 phones/devices available. Motorola really should have copied Nokia's formula on doing few platforms and customizing them rapidly and introducing countless of different phones with short life cycles.
Now, it might seem to some sad that Motorola is spinning their cellphone division out, but then again that might be the best option to take. When the cellphone division are their own company, they will concentrate into a one thing and a one thing only and either succeed of fail. I think a good example of this would be Sony-Ericsson where both Ericsson and Sony spinned their mobile phone divisions, and after the spin out the company has succeeded fairly well.
Quate from Wikipedia: "In Europe, the license process occurred at the end of the technology bubble, and the auction mechanisms for allocation set up in some countries resulted in some extremely high prices being paid, notable in the UK and Germany. In Germany, bidders paid a total 50.8 billion euros for six licenses, two of which were subsequently abandoned and written off by their purchasers (Mobilcom and the Sonera/Telefonica consortium)."
When compared to Europe and the auctions held in Germany and UK, it seems quit strange that an auction of 700 MHz band in US only netted 20 billion dollars.
Well, if your phone and networks support it, the transition goes from 3G to EDGE to GPRS, and of course other ways round, from GPRS to EDGE to 3G. In Finland we have 3G networks in all towns and urban areas, and when leaving to more rural areas you get EDGE and when being in the middle of nowhere you get GPRS. To a user the switch from network to network is seamless. Of course in some countries, as it seems in USA and UK, it's either 3G or EDGE and there are no previous generation techniques like GPRS available. So it's more about have the operators invested to networks and thus can provide ubiquitous cover.
I don't agree, I would argue that 3G auctions have either a very low connection or non at all to current pricing of mobile data. To make case: UK had 3G auctions and there you can get an "unlimited" mobile data from T-Mobile with 10 euros per month, where as in Finland, where there were no auctions and no fees to operators, you can get an "unlimited" mobile data from Saunalahti from 9,80 euros per month. Clearly if there would be connection with having or not having 3G auctions, the price difference between Finland and UK should be much bigger.
I would say that the need and willingness to use mobile data and general competition are bigger factors on determining the pricing of mobile data than on what price the operators got access to frequencies. In some countries there are not enough operators or they have more or less colluded and in some countries like UK competition is hampered because false advertising, like the loose use of the word unlimited is allowed.
On a note about "unlimited". In UK unlimited means plan with "fair" use policy meaning monthly limit of 1GB of send and received data. In Finland with Saunalahti unlimited means unlimited except you are not allowed to use the P2P networks.
1. I partially agree, the user interface of in example S60 has been buggy sometimes and it has a lot to do in the area of user friendliness, but it's not that hard to use and the newest versions like S60 v3 work much better. It should be noted however that S60 is perhaps the best smartphone platform there is now, it's quite reliable and it's quite user friendly when compared to competitors, so it's quite hard to believe that something that is still in the development could excel it or be even in level with it.
2. Development community around Symbian is huge. It includes big publicly traded companies to amateur developers. So it's not some people, it's a huge number of peoples. And hey, it's not Java, it's Dalvik, they use Java as a language, but what good is it if you don't have all the libraries. To me Dalvik is just a bastardization of Java. They could have opted for normal J2ME with extensions, but now they are in a state of limbo with it. So what does that mean? Well, you can't just pick and use J2ME if you don't first compile to Dalvik, huge set back! Huge!
3. Branding branding branding... You think that Google lets all those small mobile phone makers to use their brand? No change. When the consumer goes for shopping he/she knows few makers namely: Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola. Any device maker that wants to become recognised has to spend fortunes to marketing. And even if they had a brand name, people want phones that work and are good, just look at Windows Mobile, utter failure even they have the magic power of Windows.
4. No. If you buy your phone from the telecom operator as a part of a packet, it will be locked and probably crippled to a halt. It doesn't matter if it has Linux, all that the telecom operators have to say to manufacturers is: "Make it live Tivo so that nobody than we can change it.". You will get openness only when you buy your phone SIM -free.
5. What unnecessary tie ups?
6. No. In telecom business it's normal to be a member in almost every industry initiative, the things is that not all players join with full steam on, and from those who do, only few remain that way. When we start seeing Android devices and see what their impact in the market is we can start to look on is the alliance working or not, before that, it's just a one industry alliance sprouting paper and promises.
These people are just blind. Just blind. They are enlisting features that have been in phones for many years and nowdays virtually all smartphones from Nokia to Sony-Ericsson carry most of them. My god just look at N95, N82, 6500, N81, E51, E90, E61 and so on.. The market is full of smart phones with features that are just being dreamed to be included in gPhone, and this is just a list of one manufacturer, and a list that will in few weeks time be updated with new phone models again.
I just really can't see the point of this hype. There are only sketches on what should be coming, but no production ready system nor delivered devices. The worst part is that I really even can't see what's the advantage of gPhone? Major firms like Nokia and Sony-Ericsson won't be using them. Samsung just flip flops from system to system, and Motorolas whole future is in question. There isn't going to be huge uptake, and no, having small firms like HTC take it doesn't mean a scracth as their ability to compete with total costs are weak as they don't have the needed economies of scale that the likes of Nokia enjoy. I also don't see that they can leap with features as all the features they are planning to include in gPhone are already in S60, and as S60 is rapidly developing, now including QT in some time, I can't see that they could pull a head in software.
So.. sick and tired of hearing and reading hype about a system and devices that haven't been delived yet and in the end can end up just as vaporware. Why can't we go back in days when we reported about real things, not speculation and hype about something that is maybe going to one day come out and somehow revolutionize the world, but nobody really understand the reason why.
I do understand what you are saying, but consider this...
as long as I was in control of all my own information - You are in control of your information when you live in democracy where your elected representatives control and govern the actions and the scope of government. If you think that government has too much or too little information, you call your representative or try get yourself elected.
It could be certified for accuracy by a trusted outside party - That would be the government.
I'd have to authorize every query and could control the scope of information allowed to be seen - That's what laws are for. They authorize what information is stored and how it can be used.
Any unauthorized query would be a punishable offense, any duplicate uncertified. - That's what police and prosecutors are for, to protect and serve, and members of parliament in the last case.
Here in Finland we have national IDs, we are essentially more or less a database nation, even the national population figures are calculated directly from the database. It works here, there hasn't been any problems, at least I haven't heard of any.
I think that the problem both in UK and in US is that people don't truest their government. I don't know if this is because of history of wrong doing in part of the government, or because of television and movies people automatically assume that anything new or something that makes governing efficient is an grand scale conspiracy to enslave the nation.
Well, ask yourself, could they have done this any better?
In Finland a few years ago, I think it was Perlos or Elqotech that told right before Christmas that they were going to close all their plants in Finland. Now alongside of disappointment to the loss of jobs was that as the announcement came right before holidays and thus made them miserable to the workers and their families. To me it seems more human, to let people enjoy their rightly earned holidays and tell the bad news after the holidays are over. So, do you really suggest that it would have been better to tell them before Christmas?
Also have you considered that maybe Nokia didn't lie to their employees? Have you thought that maybe Nokia actually thought that the workers were doing a good job? You have to understand that the employees of a plant can make a good work and in the same time the whole plant can be a disappointment? Nokia could have chosen another way and started to point that the workers were not doing a good job in preparation of closing the plant, which is the unfortunate route that many companies take. Now to me Nokia did the right choice, they let the workers keep their pride to their work, their basic message is that you are good workers but you cost to much. Also, can you blame Nokia on not telling about the plant closure more earlier, or at the start of building a new plant to Romania, as we have now seen that the announcement has only led to decrease in work moral and strikes.
It should also be noted that in many industries, especially those in high-technology, the plants themselves don't make the profits, profits come from the work of sales, advertising, designers and engineers as they make the phone models and sell them. In todays world, manufacturing plants only make costs and plants are compared to each other on how much costs they make.
In Bochum the situation is that the costs of operating the plant are too high when compared to other sites and there is strategic justification on keeping the plant, like in case of Salo unit, which too will be closed when either Nokia has build bigger plants to India or China stops direct industrial espionage at Nokia factories in China. It should also be noted that when you make investment to assembly plant, which mobile phone manufacturing plants are for largely, you don't just buy few machines, you upgrade the whole plant at the same time, basically rebuilding the plant. And the cost issue, lets just look this way: In Germany GDP per capita is 39,650$ and in Romania it is 7,352$ and in China 2,460$ and in India only 965$. That is a huge cost difference, and we are lucky that the management of Nokia thinks a little further and looks also what risks are associated with other choices as they could have just moved all manufacturing to India or China, at least now it stays in Europe.
I also can understand that the closure of the plant does hurt and it does have an effect of the whole area, but lets keep things in perspective. In the town of 400 000 a closure of plant of 2000 isn't the end of the world. I still remember the beginning of 90s when Finland, after the fall of trade with Soviets, saw it's economy go in depression with GDP dropping 13% and unemployment going from 3,5% to 18% in very short time. I remember when in my area a town of 35 000 in the same time pulp mill and shipyard was closed plummeting the unemployment over 20%, and guess what, it wasn't the end of the world, the town, the area and the whole country revived. So it's not the end of the world.
People in Bochum who lost their jobs will just have to start to look for a new job, relocate to other town or area or start their own business. If a town, area or a country has a high unemployment it's not the fault of companies that have decreased their workforce, it's the fault of society on not creating opportunities and circumstances that would have allowed creation of new jobs. In the case of Germany, the reason that the German economy has almost stagnated is that the country has too inflexible a
I have to say that you have a very one sided view both about both the situation in Bochum and Nokia as corporation.
Here in Finland we have been little staggered about recent events in there, or to say it straight, about the reaction the closure of Bochum plant has made in general population and also in politicians. It seems so strange that a closure of a small plant, with only 2000 employees, has generated so big reaction, after all there are justifiable reasons for the plant closure: employees cost very much compared to developing countries and in Bochum Nokia couldn't get all their supplier near them like they will have in Nokia Village in Romania.
The reaction seems just so strange when you remember that German companies have too moved lots of manufacturing jobs from Germany, and Siemens was driven from the mobile phone markets all together because they weren't cost effective. It's also strange that people forget that by closing the plant in Bochum, opening one in Romania, they employ themselves 4000 romanians. It should also be noted that atleast they are keeping the jobs in Europe and not shipping them to China. Also in larger context by keeping themselves cost effective they make sure that in future there will be European mobile phone companies, and that they won't die because of ultra low cost Chinese firms.
Yes, it's sad that people will lost their jobs, but then again, it's business as usual, nobody has a job for life. It should also be noted that it was just a matter of time when Bochum plant was to be closed, as according to notable Finnish banker Björn Wahlroos, that Nokia management would have closed the plant in 1992 if they could have afforded it: they couldn't as in Germany closing plant of decreasing work force is very expensive.
Also about Nokia and Trolltech. Nokia has its main R&D functions and personnel in Europe, they haven't outsourced or shipped their jobs away, as those jobs are best done in here not in India or China. Of course they have R&D in India and China, but that's not away from Europe as they have extended their activities. Same too will happen with Trolltech, Nokia bought them to increase value, and in case of Trolltech that means more R&D, more activities and extensions. I believe that only good will happen because of this acquisition. If the future is what the presentation held by Nokia is correct, then the community and people using Qt will benefit enormously as with same toolkit they can make applications not just to Linux, Windows and Mac OSX, but to S60, S40 and other platforms that are being developed.
Thinking most people are stupid, is not contempt. Look, there are differences between people. Being smart is a natural talent, being highly intelligent is a natural talent, it's build in qualitative. It's the same with athletics, some people are more suited to it than others, thus making them stronger, agile or faster. Same too with beauty, some people have more symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing faces and figures. There are differences between people and when we start to look for people who are smart or fast or strong or beautiful we tend to see that there are only of handful of people in the end of the spectrum. That's the same with everything that stems from us, from our DNA, it's just normal distribution.
Now we are discussing about smartness, or the lack of it, and the hard part in all these conversations is defining what being smart is. Smart is being highly intelligent, in my books it's that and that alone. It's nothing to do with expertise, but it's everything to do with how your brains are structured, how they work and process information. And no, ability to memorize numbers or statistics is not a sign of intelligence it's just shows that you have extra storage. Now, there are some people who are smart because they can use their ability to store everything in their brains, my friends cousin is an example of this: he doesn't think through abstractions, but his more like a computer, he retrieves one thing, scans for all the other information, links it and goes back on it again, he has M.Sc.Engineering in chemistry and is now studying to become MD, smart guy. So once again, it's all about your brains and their processing power.
As I said earlier, the hard part in any conversation about smartness or high intelligence is that there is huge amount of feeling and valuation attached to those terms which actually is quite wrong. Being smart or stupid, slow or fast, week or strong, ugly or beautiful, they are all build in qualitative, they are all part of being human, nothing more. One isn't less of a human is he or she is stupid, nor if one is smart he or she isn't more human than the others. So the valuation it the same. In this context, saying that most people are stupid or week or slow is just that, acknowledging a fact.
PS. It should be noted that I feel hardly about this is because, I myself think that the continuous pandering of people by saying 'everybody is smart/handsome/beautiful/strong/agile/fast' is doing harm as it's just a continuation of giving valuation to people by their natural abilities. We shouldn't be given valuation by our natural abilities, but on what we do on life, how hard we work, how kind we are, how considerate we are etc.. If we give up and go on the fluffy road, we just pander ourselves to sickness.
Thinking that most people are stupid isn't contempt at them. Like I said, it's a fact of life. There are massive amounts of stupid people, and getting somewhere in life requires understanding and accepting of this. As you understand and accept this, you can make a difference to yourself and other people by adjusting yourself and your own doing according to the company you are with: if the person next to me isn't understand what I'm saying, I adjust my message and rethink what I'm trying to archive so long that the person next to me understands. So it's not contempt, it's being considerate.
No, most people are stupid, that's a fact of life. When you get old, you get used to the fact, nothing more.
Also, ability to memorize 30 years of numbers and statistics doesn't mean that the person is smart, it just means that the particular person had nothing else to fill up his or her brains. That's also the reason why you don't see Nobel price winners at Jeopardy and kings of trivia getting their Nobel price.
Incorrect, the guide data is downloaded separately through a phone line or Ethernet (broadband internet). The only "permission" that is needed from the broadcasters is to allow them to send the guide data. The guide data is already provided in a standard format for the satellite providers.
Well that explains quite much. If we look at 1999 and 2000, Internet connection penetration wasn't that high in UK, France or Germany. Only later times with introduction of DSL, the Internet penetration in those countries have gone up. So in that time the consumer would have had to pay to connect the device to the Internet to get the data, and also to get the data he/she would have had to subscribe to the service? Right?... I would have not bought that. Also as I pointed out there was DVB coming strongly. As DVB offers everything in a one packet, guide info included, time to live in the market would have been very short for Tivo/ReplayTV as they too would have had to go digital with DVB.
The EU has no duty on goods from EU companies doing manufacturing in China. So that Dutch Philips DVD Recorder has no duty, while the American Tivo has a 14% duty even though both are actually made in China. The US has standing WTO complaints about this.
That I didn't know, but still, I don't think that Tivo had chance as the continent had made the decision to go to DVB. In example here in Finland there are no analogue terrestial TV channels and at the end of february no analogue channels at cabel, after that everything will be DVB. So if we make a leap and say that Tivo would have had uptake in 1999 and 2000 in Europe, they still would have lost the game as standardization to DVB would have ment that they would have had to comply with the standard and as DVB brings everything, they would have not had anything more to offer than their competitors.
Lifted from Wikipedia: "In early 2000, TiVo partnered with electronics manufacturer Thomson Multimedia and broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting to deliver the TiVo service in the UK market.[5] This partnership resulted in the Thomson PVR10UK, a stand-alone receiver released in October 2000 that was based on the original reference design used in the United States by both Philips and Sony. TiVo ended UK sales in January 2003, though they continue to supply guide data to existing subscribed units.[6]"
So they had a chance, but there was no uptake, more or less because of previously mentioned reasons.
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The question you should be asking yourself, is there such a thing as "laissez faire" market. In US you too have regulation starting from laws regarding consumer protection to competition laws, so where you draw a line on when a market is regulated and when it's not? If we look a "laissez faire" market it's actually a market where there is no competition as eventually market will turn into a monopoly, duopoly or cartels. Now, competition is good, market economy is good, free markets are good, but free markets aren't natural born, they are born out regulation. That's why we have anti-trust legislation, that's why we have competition regulators, to make sure that the market and economy works. So why not to regulate?
Why not regulate when in example communication networks you are market where competition is restricted naturally, as there is only so much opportunities to build wire to homes and only so much air frequencies to use. Why not use regulations? It makes the market work, it allows everyone have a connection, it allows everyone to have a connection at a fair price, it allows investment to new telecommunication networks, etc.. Why not regulate? The thing in here is that the one thing that matters are the end results. In US the "laissez faire" attitude has gone way overboard and you are now paying it in form of antiquate and over priced telecommunications or collapsing high way bridges. The end results matter only.
PS. In US 79% of population lives in urban areas where as in Finland only 61% live in urban areas.
Eh, excuse me, but take a look on the list and you will find that Finland is third. Finland is geographically large country with a small population having population density of 15.6 per km where as US has 31 per km. The telecommunication sector is one of the freest in Europe with fierce competition between communication providers. You can get broadband, be it based on DSL or 3G wireless networks, in whole country. The government doesn't subsides the industry nor usage of telecommunication. So you have country with low population density and free markets, and things are still working.
Now, you might wonder why. Well, it's the competition. Providing telecommunication is lucrative business with healthy profit margins, so healthy actually that goverment can regulate and allow competition to emerge. In Finland all network providers have obligation to rent their network to other communication providers, and the price that they take from it must be the internal price based on the price of their infrastructure value and up keeping. To make sure that companies follow this obligation goverment monitors the companies and makes sure that the game is fare and played by the rules. Still even with these regulations and obligations in place, telecommunication companies do business, get healthy profits and invest to new infrastructure. DSL is nowadays ubiquitous. GRPS and EDGE work country wide. 3G networks that are soon whole nation wide. Actually when the 3G networks cover whole country, there has been talk about shutting down 2G networks and deploying them as 3G. There is also EV-DO based @450 wireless network, especially targeted to remote areas. In bigger cities network providers have started projects to connect new fiber optic networks directly to houses, mainly to housing cooperatives.
Actually providing Internet connections have become so cheap that in my town, Turku (pop 178 000, metro 235 000), the local cable operator, a private company, has started to provide free Internet connections to every household on one of the town's low income neighborhoods, Varissuo, where all inhabitants can get 256kb connection free. Basically it's bait and switch, were they think as people get the free connection they will eventually take a more faster service from them. I would say that having good broadband service is more about having healthy competition than anything else.
I couldn't help myself on answering your post. As a European and a Finnish I have an outsiders look on your discussion. The reason the US economy is in the bad shape has more to do with decline of US oil and raw materials production, decline in immigration and other countries and regions becoming more efficient and powerful.
US now produces 5.4 million barrels of oil, which is half what Saudi Arabia produces. You import 12.2 million barrels of oil to US. If we look at history, US has previously produced most of the oil it used. In the 70s US oil production peaked, and has since been in decline: right now US produces the same amount of oil that it did in 40s. If we look at oil imports, oil imports were relatively small before 70s, and only afterwards oil imports have jumped up. In the beginning of 90s, US imported as much oil as it itself produced. Now US produces 31% of the oil it consumes. Well what does that mean? In essence US economy has lost one major competitive advantage it had: cheap domestic energy. When previously you used oil, the money stayed in US, now the money is flowing to oil producing countries. It should also be noted that as the whole US economy was and still is based on cheap oil, as the oil comes more costly, you will have to change your whole infrastructure that's based on cheap oil: less suburbans, less personal transit, more integrated cities, more mass transportation.
The other thing that previously fueled US economy was mass migration of people to US, which meant that you got massive amounts of cheap labor and resources. As more and more people were coming to US it made the country very competitive as there was always somebody that would do the work half the price and better than you. Now, of course the immigration to US has been in decline for long, but it always takes much time for effects to appear. Also it should be added that recent immigration hasn't benefited US as much as previously. Yes, US economy has experienced growth, but when you account increase in population, the growth rate isn't that big. Just in example, US economy grew 24% from 1998 to 2003, which is the same amount as Finnish economy grew, but the big difference is that our work force didn't grow, meaning that the growth came from economy actually becoming more efficient, and providing more GDP per capita: currently by IMF Finland has GDP per capita (nominal) $46,602 and US $45,845, which is really big thing as Finland was more or less agrarian based 3rd world country only 50 years ago.
Now the other thing that you have to count is that the rest of the world is getting its act together. European countries have finally buried their war axes and in the shelter of European Union they integrating more and more of their efforts. A good example of this effort is Euro that has for the first time since ages has become an credible competitor for US dollar as an reserve currency: in 2007 63,3% of currency reserves were in US dollars, and 26,5% were in Euros. As Euro becomes more and more credible, and as more and more trade is done with Euro, the more and more US dollar will lose of its value. If and when Euro gets to being as used currency as US dollars, that will mean that US can't press new dollars without consequences: now when US has printed more dollars, they have more of less went to other countries, and the inflation that would have normally been the result of pressing more money has been more or less outsourced to other countries.
Now these are just the facts that are taking place right now. The US economy has many problems that it has to face. The interesting about all this is the question what will US do? Will US follow the model of European countries? In Europe there isn't much raw materials or oil, and that has forced the European countries to get the economic growth from somewhere else. I would say that the reason Europe has handled global competition as well as it has, has much todo that in here more money and effort has been put on human resources: we have public schools that work, free
I would say that it's quite unfriendly and uncivilized to start calling names. I can be enthusiastic about Nokias products without being an marketing droid for Nokia, in the very same way that Apple enthusiasts can be about iPhone and other Apple related products. Or do you call any one who speaks and praises iPhone an Apple marketing droid? I did understand what you were trying to point, but I didn't concur with you. Non of the less, I like talking and discussing to others in Slashdot and other venues, to express my ideas and feelings, and getting the others perspective as well. If you don't want to discuss about some topic, or think that the discussion is pointless, just don't answer, but calling names is stupid and diminishing.
320x480 is not a high resolution screen. The screen can sport a high DPI, but that doesn't make it a high resolution screen. Now, yes it has more pixels than other smart phones, except E90 and some offers from HTC. However the reason I take normal laptops and desktop screens as an example of what is high resolution screen is that mobile phones simply in function are more and more closer to laptops and desktops. When you are surfing the net, the content you get is tailored to screens having a resolution of 1024x768, and that is the same content you are viewing from your mobile device. My point is that you can't say that 320x480 is a high resolution when the functions you are using need a bigger screen, and because there are devices that have bigger resolutions, just take E90 on N8XX series. You may say that the screen is bigger, brighter and more enjoyable, but claiming that it's high resolution is just not true. Okey, yes, this may be semantics, but I feel it's important still.
And yes, I know that my view on Nokia phones and on S60 might sound like an ad, a non believable statement, but that really is what I feel about their products. They make good phones with good software. They were bad, they have gotten better, and will come even better in time. Now you don't have to believe that, but I challenge you to find out more. Go to Nokia flagship store, look info about their products and see what you like them. I like Nokias products, simple as that.
PS. It's about functionality. An IMAX movie is still functional even on small screen resolution, as you can watch the movie, see and hear it. An web page designed that works in 1024x768 crammed to 320x480 or 320x240 screen is severely limited in functionality: you have to zoom, you have modify it cram it in a small screen, the functionality just isn't the same. In this background, it's the same if the screen is 320x240 or 320x480 as the functionality of viewing and using the page in those both resolutions are severely handicapped when compared to original.
Well, when the normal resolution of an laptop or an desktop computer is 1024x768, a 320x480 compared to that is minimal. The point here is that the normal content is too large. The iPhones displays web content by scaling it down, so it looks like you are viewing the screen normally, when in the matter of fact you are not. As I said earlier, the design decisions that Apple has done are great and they have had much initial success because of this. Still, a 320x480 screen is small, and hasn't got a high resolution.
And to add in the end. Every post I have read about iPhone has too felt like reading an ad. I can understand that to some people iPhone has been an experience to them, but so can other phones be too. To me it has been experience to see Nokia getting their software work, including S60 and PC Suite. Just a few years ago PC Suite was more or less rubbish and unusable piece of engineering. Now PC Suite works and enables updates, backups, restores, synchronizing, application install and so on very easily. Also software like Nokia maps combined with an internal GPS unit is just brilliant, especially the 2.0 version that is also optimized to be used in walking. Yes, I know there are other software like Google Maps that can be used and are being delivered with Sony-Ericsson navigation phones, but with Nokia I can download maps directly into phone without charge. So if I'm going to strange town or another country, I can just by using map manager download all to the phone. It really is incredible, you should try new Nokia phones and see yourself how long way they have come just in few years.
iPhones screen is 320x480, that's not high resolution, and not so much difference to normal smart phones which sport 320x240 screen. The reason why people treat Apples screen as it would be high resolution screen has more to do with their software and design decisions they have made on displaying their user interface and web content. In here Nokia and others are behind, they usually have crammed too much to screen making it confusing.
However.. Nokia and other phone manufacturers have better hardware and lately Nokia has made an tremendous effort on software front. If I could choose any phone today, I would choose S60 based phone, probably Nokia N82 or . The reason is that Nokia has both improved S60 a lot, a N95 with new firmware just works, and they have an incredible selection of software from themselves and from lots of third party providers. For myself Maps, LifeBlog, Share Online and PC Suite are software that I want and need. It should also be noted I really appreciate having a large collection of third party software available, both S60 specific and J2ME software.
PS. If you appreciate big high resolution screen, why not get E90?
Promoting n+2 version in a commercial product is not a suicide. When a customer buys an product he or she buys it because of current features and benefits, but also because of secured future. Why buy it because of secure future? Well, because usually all things, devices and software require more of less considerable time and learning investment. When an customer switched products he or she has to make an effort to learn again to use the product, but if the customer upgrades the product, he or she will usually spend less time in learning to use the upgraded product than when switching to totally different product. In this background, at least in my mind, it's a good idea to promoted future versions including n+2 and so on to give customers an image that their choice has a continuum and secured future.
Nokia having more sales than the other handset manufacturers can be attributed to many things including economies of scale in component buying, manufacturing, sales, research and development etc.. However it should be remembered that Nokia hasn't always been the biggest mobile phone manufacturer. When we start to examine on how they achieved their position as the number one and how they have retained it, I would strongly look on how Nokia plays with phone variations.
I myself think that having large number of phone variations is the reason for Nokia's success. It isn't even an secret, but more as publicly known fact. They have been doing variation game for long. In the end of 90s I can remember in example the case with Nokia 5110 (98) and 6110 (97): they were the same phone, 6110 just had extra memory, business look, calendaring and some other software functions configured on, you actually could switch those software options on from 5110. After those days Nokia has just gone bigger and better at making variations. As I said earlier N95, N95 8GB, N96 are N82 the same phone, same too with E50, E60 and E61. They make a one phone and then implement various number of variations with different components and forms, it's just the same as in the PC industry.
The key point in making lots of different variations is that anticipating what consumers really want is very hard, and even if can understand what customers want and need, it still doesn't mean that they will buy it, as there are so many variables and in the end consumers behave many times irrationally. To me it seems as a better tactic to design many variations from a particular handset platform and throw a number of phones to consumer and hope that he or she will pick one. By having large number of variations in function, in components, in form and etc.. a company can make sure that it has always some model covering a specific feature/form/price point thus serving the needs of consumers better. It even doesn't cost that much for company to differentiate, like I said Nokia basically has S30, S40 and S60 software lines, the same software shares usually shares more or less the same components with other phones in the line, so in reality there are few phone platforms onto witch different mobile phone variations are build. So having a large collection of seemingly different phones doesn't necessarily mean that they waste lot of time with them or that they really are different.
And yes, I enjoy going to a phone shop and testing phones personally. My phone is my personal companion that I use daily for my life and work, it also represents who I'm and what message I want to give people, so testing the phone personally gives me the feeling do I really want it or not. I don't know how it is in the US, if you are from there, but in here the phone models that are on the shop and that can be tested are also usually available, if not they come in few days, and you reserve or buy one from the next shipment in that case. Everybody does the same, even if they order it from the net, they still usually feel it themselves in a shop.
Well...
Nokia shipped 436.38 million mobile phones in 2007, taking 38.98% of the market. In the same time Motorola shipped 159 million mobile phones, taking 14.2% of the market. Globally in 2007 over 1119,48 million mobile phones were shipped. I would say that in this background, there are fairly big number of different mobile phone users. I would say that when a company is trying to reach hundreds of millions of mobile phone users, they have to have a large number of different phone variations even to have offerings that touch some basic needs of every customer.
It should be noted that when you have large portfolio of mobile phones with a fairly short product life cycle, you can use different pricing and product strategies to target and cover different customers and markets. In example N95 when it came to market few years ago cost about 995 euros, after about three to four months the price had fallen to about 690 euros, and now can be bought with 449 euros. Also Nokia has made N82 (candybar), N96 (slider) and N95 8GB in the mean while, which all have same features but some variation in features, design and price so they cover and match different valuations. It's the same situation with other phone models and lines. I also don't think that it's hard for consumers to differentiate and select a phone model they want: either they go to a shop and try themselves different phones or look at the marketing material and specs to order one.
Also when we start discussing about testing different options, it should be remembered that when an organization goes into one way, it has to do the work only one time, and when going into one direction it gathers more experience about the particular fields than doing a number of different things. When Motorola in almost the same time produced Symbian, Linux and Windows Mobile handsets they had to do three times the work in software development, user interface design and testing the three different platforms, and providing support for the all three. Now if Motorola would have selected only one, either Symbian, Linux or Windows Mobile, they could have experts on the subject and use their gathered experience to more effectively produce more and better handsets. We should also not forget that by Motorola offering three smartphone platforms, they couldn't create a coherent and enough big base for application developers to start developing them. Now compare this to Nokia that only has one smartphone platform S60. By using S60 only, they have produced a large number of devices that form a lucrative market that can be targeted by developers.
I think there were few major problems with Motorola: 1) going everywhere, but ending nowhere, and 2) lately trying to find a hit product instead of churning out good products.
Now you might be asking what I mean by saying going everywhere, but ending nowhere. Well simple, Motorola always had more than one technology always in production and in planning. In operating systems front they first went to Symbian, then started their Linux project and in the same embraced Windows Mobile. Now compare this to Nokia that just concentrated to Symbian, no Linux, no Windows Mobile. Only lately Nokia has introduced Linux based Internet Tablets just to gather some experience, but they still are 100% committed to Symbian. In my opinion Motorola should have committed to Symbian as strongly as Nokia and Sony-Ericsson did, maybe allied with Sony-Ericsson in using UIQ.
The second problem with Motorola relates to first problem. As I said Motorola jumped everywhere in their search of finding a hit, as can be seen in operating systems front. The front where Motorola really failed was in introducing new phones. They had a hit with RAZR, which created an illusion that they were onto something. In reality they just had luck, and what they should have done, would have been to introduce tens of different variations of the phone. Now compare to Nokia witch doesn't really have hit products, but instead it has a large collection of small hits and fairly trading phones. When I just looked at Nokia's European web site I counted that they have 92 phones/devices available. Motorola really should have copied Nokia's formula on doing few platforms and customizing them rapidly and introducing countless of different phones with short life cycles.
Now, it might seem to some sad that Motorola is spinning their cellphone division out, but then again that might be the best option to take. When the cellphone division are their own company, they will concentrate into a one thing and a one thing only and either succeed of fail. I think a good example of this would be Sony-Ericsson where both Ericsson and Sony spinned their mobile phone divisions, and after the spin out the company has succeeded fairly well.
Quate from Wikipedia: "In Europe, the license process occurred at the end of the technology bubble, and the auction mechanisms for allocation set up in some countries resulted in some extremely high prices being paid, notable in the UK and Germany. In Germany, bidders paid a total 50.8 billion euros for six licenses, two of which were subsequently abandoned and written off by their purchasers (Mobilcom and the Sonera/Telefonica consortium)."
When compared to Europe and the auctions held in Germany and UK, it seems quit strange that an auction of 700 MHz band in US only netted 20 billion dollars.
Well, if your phone and networks support it, the transition goes from 3G to EDGE to GPRS, and of course other ways round, from GPRS to EDGE to 3G. In Finland we have 3G networks in all towns and urban areas, and when leaving to more rural areas you get EDGE and when being in the middle of nowhere you get GPRS. To a user the switch from network to network is seamless. Of course in some countries, as it seems in USA and UK, it's either 3G or EDGE and there are no previous generation techniques like GPRS available. So it's more about have the operators invested to networks and thus can provide ubiquitous cover.
I don't agree, I would argue that 3G auctions have either a very low connection or non at all to current pricing of mobile data. To make case: UK had 3G auctions and there you can get an "unlimited" mobile data from T-Mobile with 10 euros per month, where as in Finland, where there were no auctions and no fees to operators, you can get an "unlimited" mobile data from Saunalahti from 9,80 euros per month. Clearly if there would be connection with having or not having 3G auctions, the price difference between Finland and UK should be much bigger.
I would say that the need and willingness to use mobile data and general competition are bigger factors on determining the pricing of mobile data than on what price the operators got access to frequencies. In some countries there are not enough operators or they have more or less colluded and in some countries like UK competition is hampered because false advertising, like the loose use of the word unlimited is allowed.
On a note about "unlimited". In UK unlimited means plan with "fair" use policy meaning monthly limit of 1GB of send and received data. In Finland with Saunalahti unlimited means unlimited except you are not allowed to use the P2P networks.
I first red archaeologist, and wondered why would you need archaeologist in moon or mars? Then it came...
"Dr. Jones, we meet again." ..a hidden Nazi base in the dark side of moon, inside an ancient Atlantis outpost?
I for one propose that all future space missions will include an archaeologist with a passion to fight Nazis. You just can't be never too sure.
Nokia is the worlds't largest mobile phone maker, and the largest smartphone maker. Quotes: Nokia has maintained its leadership position with a 56.4% share of the 70.9 million units shipped in 2006. , Nokia itself enjoys 44.5% of the smartphone market and Nokia market share breaks 40 per cent threshold . HTC is very small, they are so small that they are not even cited in global market share reports.
1. I partially agree, the user interface of in example S60 has been buggy sometimes and it has a lot to do in the area of user friendliness, but it's not that hard to use and the newest versions like S60 v3 work much better. It should be noted however that S60 is perhaps the best smartphone platform there is now, it's quite reliable and it's quite user friendly when compared to competitors, so it's quite hard to believe that something that is still in the development could excel it or be even in level with it.
2. Development community around Symbian is huge. It includes big publicly traded companies to amateur developers. So it's not some people, it's a huge number of peoples. And hey, it's not Java, it's Dalvik, they use Java as a language, but what good is it if you don't have all the libraries. To me Dalvik is just a bastardization of Java. They could have opted for normal J2ME with extensions, but now they are in a state of limbo with it. So what does that mean? Well, you can't just pick and use J2ME if you don't first compile to Dalvik, huge set back! Huge!
3. Branding branding branding... You think that Google lets all those small mobile phone makers to use their brand? No change. When the consumer goes for shopping he/she knows few makers namely: Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola. Any device maker that wants to become recognised has to spend fortunes to marketing. And even if they had a brand name, people want phones that work and are good, just look at Windows Mobile, utter failure even they have the magic power of Windows.
4. No. If you buy your phone from the telecom operator as a part of a packet, it will be locked and probably crippled to a halt. It doesn't matter if it has Linux, all that the telecom operators have to say to manufacturers is: "Make it live Tivo so that nobody than we can change it.". You will get openness only when you buy your phone SIM -free.
5. What unnecessary tie ups?
6. No. In telecom business it's normal to be a member in almost every industry initiative, the things is that not all players join with full steam on, and from those who do, only few remain that way. When we start seeing Android devices and see what their impact in the market is we can start to look on is the alliance working or not, before that, it's just a one industry alliance sprouting paper and promises.
These people are just blind. Just blind. They are enlisting features that have been in phones for many years and nowdays virtually all smartphones from Nokia to Sony-Ericsson carry most of them. My god just look at N95, N82, 6500, N81, E51, E90, E61 and so on.. The market is full of smart phones with features that are just being dreamed to be included in gPhone, and this is just a list of one manufacturer, and a list that will in few weeks time be updated with new phone models again.
I just really can't see the point of this hype. There are only sketches on what should be coming, but no production ready system nor delivered devices. The worst part is that I really even can't see what's the advantage of gPhone? Major firms like Nokia and Sony-Ericsson won't be using them. Samsung just flip flops from system to system, and Motorolas whole future is in question. There isn't going to be huge uptake, and no, having small firms like HTC take it doesn't mean a scracth as their ability to compete with total costs are weak as they don't have the needed economies of scale that the likes of Nokia enjoy. I also don't see that they can leap with features as all the features they are planning to include in gPhone are already in S60, and as S60 is rapidly developing, now including QT in some time, I can't see that they could pull a head in software.
So.. sick and tired of hearing and reading hype about a system and devices that haven't been delived yet and in the end can end up just as vaporware. Why can't we go back in days when we reported about real things, not speculation and hype about something that is maybe going to one day come out and somehow revolutionize the world, but nobody really understand the reason why.
I do understand what you are saying, but consider this...
as long as I was in control of all my own information - You are in control of your information when you live in democracy where your elected representatives control and govern the actions and the scope of government. If you think that government has too much or too little information, you call your representative or try get yourself elected.
It could be certified for accuracy by a trusted outside party - That would be the government.
I'd have to authorize every query and could control the scope of information allowed to be seen - That's what laws are for. They authorize what information is stored and how it can be used.
Any unauthorized query would be a punishable offense, any duplicate uncertified. - That's what police and prosecutors are for, to protect and serve, and members of parliament in the last case.
Here in Finland we have national IDs, we are essentially more or less a database nation, even the national population figures are calculated directly from the database. It works here, there hasn't been any problems, at least I haven't heard of any.
I think that the problem both in UK and in US is that people don't truest their government. I don't know if this is because of history of wrong doing in part of the government, or because of television and movies people automatically assume that anything new or something that makes governing efficient is an grand scale conspiracy to enslave the nation.
Well, ask yourself, could they have done this any better?
In Finland a few years ago, I think it was Perlos or Elqotech that told right before Christmas that they were going to close all their plants in Finland. Now alongside of disappointment to the loss of jobs was that as the announcement came right before holidays and thus made them miserable to the workers and their families. To me it seems more human, to let people enjoy their rightly earned holidays and tell the bad news after the holidays are over. So, do you really suggest that it would have been better to tell them before Christmas?
Also have you considered that maybe Nokia didn't lie to their employees? Have you thought that maybe Nokia actually thought that the workers were doing a good job? You have to understand that the employees of a plant can make a good work and in the same time the whole plant can be a disappointment? Nokia could have chosen another way and started to point that the workers were not doing a good job in preparation of closing the plant, which is the unfortunate route that many companies take. Now to me Nokia did the right choice, they let the workers keep their pride to their work, their basic message is that you are good workers but you cost to much. Also, can you blame Nokia on not telling about the plant closure more earlier, or at the start of building a new plant to Romania, as we have now seen that the announcement has only led to decrease in work moral and strikes.
It should also be noted that in many industries, especially those in high-technology, the plants themselves don't make the profits, profits come from the work of sales, advertising, designers and engineers as they make the phone models and sell them. In todays world, manufacturing plants only make costs and plants are compared to each other on how much costs they make.
In Bochum the situation is that the costs of operating the plant are too high when compared to other sites and there is strategic justification on keeping the plant, like in case of Salo unit, which too will be closed when either Nokia has build bigger plants to India or China stops direct industrial espionage at Nokia factories in China. It should also be noted that when you make investment to assembly plant, which mobile phone manufacturing plants are for largely, you don't just buy few machines, you upgrade the whole plant at the same time, basically rebuilding the plant. And the cost issue, lets just look this way: In Germany GDP per capita is 39,650$ and in Romania it is 7,352$ and in China 2,460$ and in India only 965$. That is a huge cost difference, and we are lucky that the management of Nokia thinks a little further and looks also what risks are associated with other choices as they could have just moved all manufacturing to India or China, at least now it stays in Europe.
I also can understand that the closure of the plant does hurt and it does have an effect of the whole area, but lets keep things in perspective. In the town of 400 000 a closure of plant of 2000 isn't the end of the world. I still remember the beginning of 90s when Finland, after the fall of trade with Soviets, saw it's economy go in depression with GDP dropping 13% and unemployment going from 3,5% to 18% in very short time. I remember when in my area a town of 35 000 in the same time pulp mill and shipyard was closed plummeting the unemployment over 20%, and guess what, it wasn't the end of the world, the town, the area and the whole country revived. So it's not the end of the world.
People in Bochum who lost their jobs will just have to start to look for a new job, relocate to other town or area or start their own business. If a town, area or a country has a high unemployment it's not the fault of companies that have decreased their workforce, it's the fault of society on not creating opportunities and circumstances that would have allowed creation of new jobs. In the case of Germany, the reason that the German economy has almost stagnated is that the country has too inflexible a
I have to say that you have a very one sided view both about both the situation in Bochum and Nokia as corporation.
Here in Finland we have been little staggered about recent events in there, or to say it straight, about the reaction the closure of Bochum plant has made in general population and also in politicians. It seems so strange that a closure of a small plant, with only 2000 employees, has generated so big reaction, after all there are justifiable reasons for the plant closure: employees cost very much compared to developing countries and in Bochum Nokia couldn't get all their supplier near them like they will have in Nokia Village in Romania.
The reaction seems just so strange when you remember that German companies have too moved lots of manufacturing jobs from Germany, and Siemens was driven from the mobile phone markets all together because they weren't cost effective. It's also strange that people forget that by closing the plant in Bochum, opening one in Romania, they employ themselves 4000 romanians. It should also be noted that atleast they are keeping the jobs in Europe and not shipping them to China. Also in larger context by keeping themselves cost effective they make sure that in future there will be European mobile phone companies, and that they won't die because of ultra low cost Chinese firms.
Yes, it's sad that people will lost their jobs, but then again, it's business as usual, nobody has a job for life. It should also be noted that it was just a matter of time when Bochum plant was to be closed, as according to notable Finnish banker Björn Wahlroos, that Nokia management would have closed the plant in 1992 if they could have afforded it: they couldn't as in Germany closing plant of decreasing work force is very expensive.
Also about Nokia and Trolltech. Nokia has its main R&D functions and personnel in Europe, they haven't outsourced or shipped their jobs away, as those jobs are best done in here not in India or China. Of course they have R&D in India and China, but that's not away from Europe as they have extended their activities. Same too will happen with Trolltech, Nokia bought them to increase value, and in case of Trolltech that means more R&D, more activities and extensions. I believe that only good will happen because of this acquisition. If the future is what the presentation held by Nokia is correct, then the community and people using Qt will benefit enormously as with same toolkit they can make applications not just to Linux, Windows and Mac OSX, but to S60, S40 and other platforms that are being developed.
EMI! Those wankers got what they deserved.
Thinking most people are stupid, is not contempt. Look, there are differences between people. Being smart is a natural talent, being highly intelligent is a natural talent, it's build in qualitative. It's the same with athletics, some people are more suited to it than others, thus making them stronger, agile or faster. Same too with beauty, some people have more symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing faces and figures. There are differences between people and when we start to look for people who are smart or fast or strong or beautiful we tend to see that there are only of handful of people in the end of the spectrum. That's the same with everything that stems from us, from our DNA, it's just normal distribution.
Now we are discussing about smartness, or the lack of it, and the hard part in all these conversations is defining what being smart is. Smart is being highly intelligent, in my books it's that and that alone. It's nothing to do with expertise, but it's everything to do with how your brains are structured, how they work and process information. And no, ability to memorize numbers or statistics is not a sign of intelligence it's just shows that you have extra storage. Now, there are some people who are smart because they can use their ability to store everything in their brains, my friends cousin is an example of this: he doesn't think through abstractions, but his more like a computer, he retrieves one thing, scans for all the other information, links it and goes back on it again, he has M.Sc.Engineering in chemistry and is now studying to become MD, smart guy. So once again, it's all about your brains and their processing power.
As I said earlier, the hard part in any conversation about smartness or high intelligence is that there is huge amount of feeling and valuation attached to those terms which actually is quite wrong. Being smart or stupid, slow or fast, week or strong, ugly or beautiful, they are all build in qualitative, they are all part of being human, nothing more. One isn't less of a human is he or she is stupid, nor if one is smart he or she isn't more human than the others. So the valuation it the same. In this context, saying that most people are stupid or week or slow is just that, acknowledging a fact.
PS. It should be noted that I feel hardly about this is because, I myself think that the continuous pandering of people by saying 'everybody is smart/handsome/beautiful/strong/agile/fast' is doing harm as it's just a continuation of giving valuation to people by their natural abilities. We shouldn't be given valuation by our natural abilities, but on what we do on life, how hard we work, how kind we are, how considerate we are etc.. If we give up and go on the fluffy road, we just pander ourselves to sickness.
Thinking that most people are stupid isn't contempt at them. Like I said, it's a fact of life. There are massive amounts of stupid people, and getting somewhere in life requires understanding and accepting of this. As you understand and accept this, you can make a difference to yourself and other people by adjusting yourself and your own doing according to the company you are with: if the person next to me isn't understand what I'm saying, I adjust my message and rethink what I'm trying to archive so long that the person next to me understands. So it's not contempt, it's being considerate.
No, most people are stupid, that's a fact of life. When you get old, you get used to the fact, nothing more.
Also, ability to memorize 30 years of numbers and statistics doesn't mean that the person is smart, it just means that the particular person had nothing else to fill up his or her brains. That's also the reason why you don't see Nobel price winners at Jeopardy and kings of trivia getting their Nobel price.
Incorrect, the guide data is downloaded separately through a phone line or Ethernet (broadband internet). The only "permission" that is needed from the broadcasters is to allow them to send the guide data. The guide data is already provided in a standard format for the satellite providers.
Well that explains quite much. If we look at 1999 and 2000, Internet connection penetration wasn't that high in UK, France or Germany. Only later times with introduction of DSL, the Internet penetration in those countries have gone up. So in that time the consumer would have had to pay to connect the device to the Internet to get the data, and also to get the data he/she would have had to subscribe to the service? Right? ... I would have not bought that. Also as I pointed out there was DVB coming strongly. As DVB offers everything in a one packet, guide info included, time to live in the market would have been very short for Tivo/ReplayTV as they too would have had to go digital with DVB.
The EU has no duty on goods from EU companies doing manufacturing in China. So that Dutch Philips DVD Recorder has no duty, while the American Tivo has a 14% duty even though both are actually made in China. The US has standing WTO complaints about this.
That I didn't know, but still, I don't think that Tivo had chance as the continent had made the decision to go to DVB. In example here in Finland there are no analogue terrestial TV channels and at the end of february no analogue channels at cabel, after that everything will be DVB. So if we make a leap and say that Tivo would have had uptake in 1999 and 2000 in Europe, they still would have lost the game as standardization to DVB would have ment that they would have had to comply with the standard and as DVB brings everything, they would have not had anything more to offer than their competitors.
Lifted from Wikipedia: "In early 2000, TiVo partnered with electronics manufacturer Thomson Multimedia and broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting to deliver the TiVo service in the UK market.[5] This partnership resulted in the Thomson PVR10UK, a stand-alone receiver released in October 2000 that was based on the original reference design used in the United States by both Philips and Sony. TiVo ended UK sales in January 2003, though they continue to supply guide data to existing subscribed units.[6]"
So they had a chance, but there was no uptake, more or less because of previously mentioned reasons.