Rumor discussion: Nokia and Microsoft to team up on Windows Phone 7

vcsala

[quote author="Milot Shala" date="1292925026"]Nokia is pushing Qt and it has been said that in the future users will see one UI which will be built on top of Qt and they will not care about the underlying OS.[/quote]

Which is a sound strategy, I beleive. Moreover as it can be easily available in almost all other (non-Nokia used) OSs and provides a very sizeable market for developers.

milot.shala

[quote author="VCsala" date="1292925387"]
[quote author="Milot Shala" date="1292925026"]Nokia is pushing Qt and it has been said that in the future users will see one UI which will be built on top of Qt and they will not care about the underlying OS.[/quote]

Which is a sound strategy, I beleive. Moreover as it can be easily available in almost all other (non-Nokia used) OSs and provides a very sizeable market for developers.[/quote]

You are right, for this reason they are pushing Qt Quick, because WP7 has Silverlight as its main development tool.

But again, according to my last post, I don't see Nokia will abandon Symbian or MeeGo soon and I am hoping to do so :)

maciej

WP7 on Nokia would be shooting yourself in a foot for Nokia. Besides Android would be better choice (because of market share). There are always rumors like this one when quite big transfers are happening. So everybody should be skeptical about it.

P.S. I'm waiting for MeeGo :D

milot.shala

[quote author="maciek" date="1292927927"]WP7 on Nokia would be shooting yourself in a foot for Nokia. Besides Android would be better choice (because of market share). There are always rumors like this one when quite big transfers are happening. So everybody should be skeptical about it.

P.S. I'm waiting for MeeGo :D[/quote]

According to Nokia's open source strategy I think they will go further with Android, but in the other hand Nokia's competitors are doing it with Android too.

I am waiting for MeeGo too :)

andre

[quote author="Milot Shala" date="1292924683"]Another article have a completely different and more understandable thoughts on Nokia, Android and WP7:

"http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/12/some-symbian-sanity-why-nokia-will-not-join-google-android-or-microsoft-phone-7.html":http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/12/some-symbian-sanity-why-nokia-will-not-join-google-android-or-microsoft-phone-7.html[/quote]
That sure is an interesting read. Thanks for linking to it. It does bring some perspective, even if I'm not completely done reading it yet.

milot.shala

[quote author="Andre" date="1292932385"]
[quote author="Milot Shala" date="1292924683"]Another article have a completely different and more understandable thoughts on Nokia, Android and WP7:

"http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/12/some-symbian-sanity-why-nokia-will-not-join-google-android-or-microsoft-phone-7.html":http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/12/some-symbian-sanity-why-nokia-will-not-join-google-android-or-microsoft-phone-7.html[/quote]
That sure is an interesting read. Thanks for linking to it. It does bring some perspective, even if I'm not completely done reading it yet.

[/quote]

I have read it entirely and it is a good perspective. The question was "Who invented the smart phone?" and you can imagine the answer :)

vcsala

Yes, that was a very interesting article (more so for Nokia fans). On the Nokia World it was a clear message that Nokia "as the inventor of the smart phone" do not want to let others to steal their market. So if they think it seriously (and why not) great things should come.

milot.shala

[quote author="VCsala" date="1292934883"]Yes, that was a very interesting article (more so for Nokia fans). On the Nokia World it was a clear message that Nokia "as the inventor of the smart phone" do not want to let others to steal their market. So if they think it seriously (and why not) great things should come.[/quote]

And not making any WP7 devices :)

disperso

[quote author="Milot Shala" date="1292928508"]
According to Nokia's open source strategy I think they will go further with Android, but in the other hand Nokia's competitors are doing it with Android too.
[/quote]

Android is right now the less open project of the open source world. Until some weeks ago, we didn't even knew that Gingerbread was 2.3 and not 3.0. That's an anecdote, sure, but what about publishing the source code days before they are shipping the product? What about not knowing a thing about the features of the release?

No, Android is certainly released with an open licences, but it's not developed in the open, and it's very unclear to me how Nokia could release a product with Android with the way Google/OHA works.

If Nokia and Microsoft have had conversations, is more likely that they are collaborating in services (Nokia already collaborates with Yahoo, isn't it?).

lrazo

I think they will ship some devices together as Nokia's booklet 3G, but not collaborate as near as make any kind of deep R&D together.

Knacktus

I'm afraid I have to say that Nokia doesn't seem to be able to create a competitive smartphone OS and even more important an app ecosystem.
For how long are they working on Maemo / Meego? What's the pace they're getting Qt Quick out? That's all way to slow. At least, what has been shown in public. I mean, we're talking about a billion dollar market and I see development progress and release schedules in Meego and Qt that doesn't seem to be very different from open source sparetime projects. Qt Quick and Qt Creator 2.1 should have been finished for at least half a year. It's not that complex that money couldn't help.

Look at what RIM did with their playbook OS. Look at Googles Honeycomb for tablet. Look at what's going on at the app stores of Android and Apple.
Being competitive at creating hardware is a different story to being a great software development company.

After having that said I would be very happy if Nokia could surprise us all with the greatest Smartphone ever with Meego OS.

mario

Knacktus: You seem to forget that Android was bought by Google in 2005, yes that's almost 6 years ago and their first release was in 2008. In other words, it took them 3 years to actually publish the first release and I think that it wasn't usable until the donut release (September 2009).

MeeGo was announced in 2010 and since then they have been busy merging two projects and at the same time Qt:ify it (maemo and moblin was built on gtk). We haven't seen any devices yet (well, the WeTab exits...) but I'm quite sure we will see some this year, maybe Q2-Q3, hopefully already at MWC.

My personal opinion is that Android's success story is more because of people tend to listen to what Google has to say because they are large and have had a number of successful services (but also plenty that aren't that successful). You don't associate Nokia with geeks (yet) but with Google you do.

The same goes for Apple. I think that Apple can actually make people buy a pencil by marketing it as a new way of communicating, "just write your message on a piece of paper..."

I'm not saying that Nokia is the perfect company but with MeeGo they have at least the most open platform out there and they put a lot of effort in making it happen. I'm pretty sure that MeeGo has more developer from Nokia/Intel than Google have on Android.

Knacktus

OK, I agree: Android and iOS did not get there over night. They (and others) are rolling already when Nokia still has to get up to speed. That probably gives a distorted view at the progress.

bq.
The same goes for Apple. I think that Apple can actually make people buy a pencil by marketing it as a new way of communicating, “just write your message on a piece of paper…”

And then Apple announces: "By the way, from now on everything you've written belongs to us!" And the people are cheering in ecstasy ... ;-)

That's why we need the MeeGo! Damn, I need a phone (mine is 8 years old) and refuse to buy Android or Apple.

milot.shala

[quote author="Knacktus" date="1296879822"]OK, I agree: Android and iOS did not get there over night. They (and others) are rolling already when Nokia still has to get up to speed. That probably gives a distorted view at the progress.

bq.
The same goes for Apple. I think that Apple can actually make people buy a pencil by marketing it as a new way of communicating, “just write your message on a piece of paper…”

And then Apple announces: "By the way, from now on everything you've written belongs to us!" And the people are cheering in ecstasy ... ;-)

That's why we need the MeeGo! Damn, I need a phone (mine is 8 years old) and refuse to buy Android or Apple.[/quote]

Buy a Nokia N8. I have a Nexus One also but the N8 is my default phone :)

disperso

One thing that I don't get is, why is people in such a hurry? Nokia is a profitable company as of right now. It has lost market share in high end phones, but there is no need to rush it. I mean, US-centric tech sites (and their readers) are all the time saying that "Nokia is late in the game". WTF? You know who were late in the game too? Apple and Google. They came to the phone market years after Nokia.

They seem like if 2011 is the end of the world, and you know what? Nokia and everyone else will be still selling phones in 2012, 2013, 2014, and so on. You don't need to focus in doing something awesome but for this year only, at the expense on the future. You have to think in the things to come midterm too.

What really worries me, is that Nokia spent a lot of time in Orbit/DUI/MeeGo Touch, creating the Symbian Foundation, closing the Symbian Foundation, etc. Symbian needs a complete UI rewrite, IMHO, and it needs to be Qt based, but the announcement of "Nokia moving solely to Qt":http://conversations.nokia.com/2010/10/21/nokia-focuses-on-qt-to-extend-reach-for-developers-make-mobile-experience-richer-for-users/ came as late as October 2010. The rumor is that PR2.0 for Symbian^3 (well, now just Symbian) will be soon be released, and will do that overhaul of the UI. Let's see if the MWC and February bring some shiny stuff. In the meantime, I don't think that Symbian is total crap, as some try to make everybody think. My C7 kicks ass to my HTC Desire in many aspects.

milot.shala

There are couple of points, questions and answers that I would like to add:

Who invented the smart phone?
This is clearly Nokia's credit
Who invented the app store?
The first mobile application store was introduced by Nokia in the N-Gage product line for selling mobile games to mobile users.
You cannot compare Nokia with Google and Apple, why?
Because Nokia is one company which was leading both dumb phone and smart phone market for years, now Android devices are not "Google" devices but all manufacturers devices so you see Android on LG, HTC, you name it; You don't see Symbian^3 on any other device rather than Nokia. On the other hand iPhone is and will remain the luxury game console/phone and you can see its market share, in my hometown Nokia N8 (which is a brilliant device) consts 550 euros and the iPhone 4 (unlocked) costs 800 euros (or more), now see who can buy which phone, the N8 with all those features (+ camera) or the iPhone... as Nokia says: "It's not the technology, it's what you do with it"

On the other hand I see speculations like "this":http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/technology/04nokia.html?_r=1 saying that Nokia will make WP7 devices for gaining the US market, I highly doubt (but I am not denying the possibility) because WP7 IMO is a failure since its first day and its market share is only 2% if we add it to the 31% of Nokia's market share it will be 1% higher than Google with Android.

With the new product line, Symbian^3 and Qt Nokia is back, compare C7, N8 and E7 to the N97, XpressMusic and N97 mini.

sfabry

What would be nice is to develop mobile apps with Qt and deploy on Symbian, Meego, Android, WP7 and why not Iphone :)

"Code once, deploy everywhere", that's what they said

DenisKormalev

[quote author="ness522" date="1296906193"]What would be nice is to develop mobile apps with Qt and deploy on Symbian, Meego, Android, WP7 and why not Iphone :)

"Code once, deploy everywhere", that's what they said [/quote]

Symbian, MeeGo, Android are possible today :) IPhone is known as possible platform, but port is 3rdparty closed-source stuff. WP7 is the one where I doubt that we will see Qt (because of all this Silverlight stuff).

CreMindES

I mostly agree with mario. Symbian and MeeGo are great (or will be). It's just a thought that the media planted in the people that Symbian^3 isn't good enought now. I've read everywhere that Symbian^3 is just a bugfix and so on, but when I got my awesome Nokia C7, I was surprised of the improvements in Symbian^3 after using my 5800. And with the PR. 2.0 it will be even better.

I see many people using Android and Bada phones, but they aren't better. There are some things that they can and Symbian doesn't, and there are some things that it can and the others doesn't. iPhone is just ... an Apple product, where the hilosophy is: "It's not a bug, it's a feature!", oh come on...

Oh, and about Android, I know that Nokia have a new CEO, but I like what "Anssi Vanjoki have said":http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/21/ce-oh-no-he-didnt-anssi-vanjoki-says-using-android-is-like-pe/: "using Android is like peeing in your pants for warmth" . And there is in this metafora, because the big money is in the services and the hardware together, and HTC and the others give one of the two to Google.

So there will be a great Symbian OS with Qt on our awesome Nokia devices, there will be an even greater MeeGo platform!

Oh, and about the Microsoft, I rather like the idea of some other collaboration than smart phones, maybe a tablet or a new booklet or a new service.

milot.shala

[quote author="CreMindES" date="1296917553"]I mostly agree with mario. Symbian and MeeGo are great (or will be). It's just a thought that the media planted in the people that Symbian^3 isn't good enought now. I've read everywhere that Symbian^3 is just a bugfix and so on, but when I got my awesome Nokia C7, I was surprised of the improvements in Symbian^3 after using my 5800. And with the PR. 2.0 it will be even better.