Qt and Nokia’s new strategy
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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.
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Personally, I don’t think that now shipping or not shipping Windows phones would really matter to Qt at all.
I would welcome them to ship them at Europe too, given they can promise they’ll port Qt later to it. Otherwise I’d rather leave it to market areas that aren’t Nokia’s strong area.
Dropping Meego was something not wise from Nokia though, Qt-wise and strategically, now Nokia is again competing only with one edge.
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This "plan B" doesn't seem to be related with Nokia.
What i can't understand is why Nokia is replacing their platform (Symbian) for which they have infrastructure: store, SDK's, full control over the decisions regarding the platform and a pretty big community (which has been moved once, or moving in progress, from Symbian C++ to Qt C++...) and then buy a platform from Microsoft.
Anyway Nokia said Symbian is "burning", but how this "burning" platform is still the leader in a market with other younger and greater platforms?
So leaving/retire the platform with 30% of the market and getting (please read buying) the one that has 3% is a brilliant idea... sarcasm off
