Qt and Nokia’s new strategy
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Ok,
Finally we even have some official position form Qt itself. But in reality nothing changed, nothing cleared... It's interesting they believe in what they say or it's just an official company (Nokia) position.
You know, what is very important in business is reliance. Lot of important decisions are made in the business world having guarantees based only on mutual trust between partners. And what is pity is that Nokia has broken this trust based connection between company and it's partners and developers. From now I don't trust in any word that is said by this company. It may say one thing and do another, and that was proven recently.
I think this announcement in London was quite brutal and unwise. It was good for Microsoft because they shouted very loudly - hey hey, we have strong partner and we will fight back in mobile market that we lost already. But that wasn't good for Nokia. Firstly it clearly showed that it has lot of problems and needs quick help. Second, Nokia is a big company with large community around it. Such emphatic single-day turns are quite childish act, that involves lot of panic and shows no respect to community. After this Nokia made some announcements about planned!! other millions of Symbian (zombie) devices and some MeeGo ghost device just trying to minimize developer dissatisfaction. Of course, first WP7 devices will come only after year or more, so the gap must be filled with something. But it was clearly stated that in long term these platforms will phased out and WP7 development will be done only using MS tools. Nokia, do you treat us developers as fools expecting that we will invest and develop for dying platforms?????
Maybe that was the only way to go ... as everybody say, time will show. If this rescue plan will succeed, Nokia will have to spend long time recovering trust ... if Nokia will not be part of MS till that time :)What is my final decision. I don't blame Qt for anything. Trolls are just hostages of situation. I like Qt and only because of this I write all this stuff spending lot of my free time. I believe Qt will live further ... at least in desktop. And I'll continue to use it in my daily work for creating desktop apps. But I have the last Nokia phone ... shame.
P.S. Some interesting facts that I found in media. Conclusions up to you:
- After cooperation announcement Nokia share price felt by 12%;
- Elop is former employee of Microsoft. And thats not ALL. Elop is the 7th biggest Microsoft shareholder.
- Nokia was spending about 5,9 billions EUR for research, about 4 times more than Apple.
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Picture what i found in internet:
!http://mynokiablog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/elop-600x480.jpg(Elop Trojan Horse)!
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Jut have read another article ... now Elop talks at Barselona, Mobile World Congress ...
"Full article":http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-20031686-78.htmlSome things I liked best:
bq. But some investors in the company believe that Nokia got the short end of this deal. While the benefits to Microsoft are apparent as it competes against Google and Apple in the mobile market, it's unclear to investors how the deal benefits Nokia. Shares in Nokia fell 14 percent in Helsinki after the deal was announced Friday.
bq. We are paying them for the software," he said. "But we won't have to develop the software. And there will be some very apparent operating savings from doing this
So it seems in long term Nokia will become pure hardware producer ...
bq. Elop also noted that the Qt development environment that is used for Symbian handsets to make development easier would not be usable on Windows Phone 7 applications. He said this strategy was adopted to ensure that divergent platforms don't confuse developers or consumers
So ... that was a question and here is an answer ... no Qt on mobile ... bye bye. From now the only thing Elop cares is WP7 and Microsoft. Present Nokia community and ideals does not exist for him. Very disgraceful.
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Nokia for the past one year have been promoting Qt saying "Qt Everywhere" and now I wonder when it came to apply the same why they say Windows Phone 7 wont have Qt.
Is it so difficult for Qt to be supported on Windows Phone 7?
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Thats the catch ... As I mentioned they say one thing and do another ... Nokia was promoting Qt to be the only way to go for developers and now this road leads nowhere. Playing such games in such large scale is very disgraceful.
It's not a question if it's technically difficult or not. It's a question of strategy. Microsoft wants to support only its tools and promote its brand ... whats the meaning to create other tools when ones already exist. Its neither economically nor strategically beneficial to Microsoft. And as Microsoft plays the role of father in this new family called ecosystem, thats the way Nokia will be forced to go.
What makes me VERY angry is that it's very apparent that Qt will not find it's place in this family but Nokia is still is swearing that Qt will play some major role and in such way misleads lot of people. Nokia needs present developers only for fluent transition to WP7 and then they will say ... sorry, you have to move to MS tools ... wakeup guys ... don't allow to be fooled. -
I was just reading the first comment at "this":http://conversations.nokia.com/2011/02/13/photos-from-nokia-press-conference/ link.
bq. Nokia promised maemo == Dropped
Nokia promised ovi music=== dropped
Nokia promised symbian ^4 === dropped
Nokia promised Qt ==== dropped
Nokia promised Meego === Dropped
Nokia promising windows === let's confirm the date of dropping it too..!!!
that would be more generous
--Shymonsam -
Sometimes I just wander how far a CEO can go with transforming the company he manages. Can Elop go away with effectively destroying Nokia as an independent entity? Has anyone calculated the losses for investors such a brutal "shift in directions" would mean before the announcement? I doubt it - no, it's even worse, I fear they are so limited in foresight that they actually expected a rise in stock price.
Plus, being a European I'm sorry to see that the EU has lost about the last tech company that matters in mobile technologies. Now all is left for us is to form an EU committee to pretend that we are doing something about it. Ah, maybe we will declare a new "agenda for the digital age" or some other bullshit, by about the end of 2013 :-(
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I haven't written for my opinions since Friday.
I am sad only for one thing: Symbian.
That's because people have invested so much time on making it and I understand the feeling when you work on a product for several years and someone just come and say: forget it...
I know that Qt will continue and will be stronger, but what I really worry as a mobile application developer is Symbian, because I loved it and enjoying software that I am writing for it, and it will fade away gradually.
I will be Qt developer and I will never give up so are the Trolls, but as far as I am witnessing there will be no Qt for mobile platforms after Symbian (unless MeeGo will still support it - which I would be more than happy).
The best thing I did professionally the last two years is by investing my time on two mobile platforms, Android and Symbian with Qt (and of course, who can get rid of Symbian C++). And I think it is a good idea for all of us - the developers to do the same because in the end it's all business and we do this for living :)
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Difficult times ahead, but... potentially very fruitful times as well. Nokia may well be going with WP7 or whatnot, but Qt is more than that. And, well, history has shown that all the various smartphone platforms start out limiting the developers, and eventually have to open up. So, who knows what might happen in the future with this, eh? Keep on it, people (both the Trolls and everybody else), and the future will still be green for us (you see what i did there? ;) ).
[quote author="Alexandra" date="1297437240"]You may have bet your business on Qt. But so have we.[/quote]
As understatements go, that one's pretty hard core ;)
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Question that is just coming up in my mind:
Does this change in direction mean that bugreports & wishes in Jira that have been closed because focus has shifted to the mobile development will be re-evaluated? It seems mobile is not that important anymore after all... -
Qt has created awesome stuff within few years and this can not vanish like this.....I am sure there must be some bullet that makes us the developers happy:)
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[quote author="Andre" date="1297699907"]Question that is just coming up in my mind:
Does this change in direction mean that bugreports & wishes in Jira that have been closed because focus has shifted to the mobile development will be re-evaluated? It seems mobile is not that important anymore after all...[/quote]It will be important, there are people still writing Symbian apps because there are lots of Symbian users out there, to the 75 million Symbian devices there will be shipping 150M more devices and these needs new and updating older apps, and of course I think all the bugreports and wishes will be added where appropriate.
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This "150 million more Symbian devices" is a rather cynic joke: Symbian is being killed exactly because there are cheaper (better?) local alternatives in emerging markets, where would potentially still be a future for Symbian phones. So, where could Nokia sell all those phones? Not is Asia, because of those annoying "little" local alternatives all around there. Surely not in Americas and, from now on, not even in Europe: entry - level (=cheap as dirt) Android phones are busy killing the Symbian market here right now. So, that leaves us what? Australia and the Pacific region - too few potential customers, even theoretically. Africa? Last time I checked most Africans have slightly bigger issues than purchasing Qt-based applications for their Symbian phones. Come on, we are (almost) all developers here, so we might as well face the truth: Qt's future at Nokia has already been redirected to /dev/null. Qt can and most definitely should survive, but somewhere else. Will there be potential buyers for what remains of Trolltech? I guess there will. Will Nokia sell the Trolls? Well, I have a bad feeling about that: I guess Qt's corporate future will be (or has already been) decided in Redmond. And I wouldn't bet a jar of beer on that decision... Thanks God for LGPL, at least that's an insurance. After all, if Python can survive (and it is doing ever better, it seems) "out in the wild", why Qt couldn't do the same? Now paid Qt developers are another issue, sadly. Having been on this market for 20 years, my only advice to them would be to wait for a month to see whether Qt is sold in some form or another to a reasonable entity (Intel, Canonical, whoever) and if not, escape while you can. Unless, of course, you discover a sudden interest in yourselves for .Net and C# :-)
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Would be a nice initiative...
[quote author="dguimard" date="1297725547"]http://nokiaplanb.com/[/quote] -
I particularly liked the fact that Plan B doesn't wholly discard the WinPho option. From the start I had the feeling that Nokia might actually be needing the WinPho to get some market share in North America. What I don't understand though is that once again they're betting the entire company on one horse. If I were to bet on one horse, it would not have been a product/supplier with a bad reputation and track record in mobile environments. From that point of view Plan B makes much more sense to me.
But hey, I'm just a developer. I make complex systems for a living. What do I know? :P
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Personally, I don't give Plan B a big chance, but you never know. Sure, they will probably have to ship some WP devices, but that is also in the Plan B plans. There is always fine print to these contracts, so there may be a way out. Other phone suppliers have in the past.