Is Nokia shooting their own foot?
 

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE Nokia N900. I got it about two weeks ago and have been really impressed with this device so far. I'm impressed both with the hardware and the software. It does have some rough edges and few missing features (nothing critical to me), but still it's the best I ever had.

But I thing that for Nokia, the N900 is a missed opportunity, and their current policy could really be their undoing. I'm sure there are lot of good and talented people at Nokia, doing their best to create great devices, but it seems like they have a serious problem in their upper management. What I see is lack of leadership, and as a result - lack of focus and lack of long term planning.

You know the story: one day, people at Nokia say that Maemo is going to be the platform for all the future high-end phones, and then few days later someone else says they are still committed to Symbian for high-end devices, and sometime later it turns out that Maemo is going to be replaced with Meego, and Meego is not going to be officially supported on the N900 etc.

I saw some previous threads discussing how Nokia's missteps affects the community, but this is not just a problem for this community. It is also a problem for Nokia itself.

People are not going to have faith in their devices without having a clear long-term commitment. As long as Nokia tries to dance in two weddings, they're going to fail in both. Personally, I think staying with Symbian for high end devices is a big mistake for Nokia. I haven't seen Symbian^3 devices yet, but based on my experience with S60 as a developer, I do not believe in the future of Symbian. Maemo/Meego, on the other hand, have the foundations needed to become a strong competitor to iPhone/Android/WebOS. In the meanwhile, Nokia is wasting time and loosing market share.
They still have the biggest market share in the lower price range, but as smartphone become cheaper, they will gradually replace the cheaper phones, and those who control the high-end market would end up controlling the low-end market as well.

What Nokia needs is a clear vision and a clear path. They need to decide what is their platform of choice, focus on that one platform, and clearly communicate their plans for the future of this platform. Otherwise, the future is not very bright for Nokia.

Re: Is Nokia shooting their own foot?
 

Nokia is trying so hard to fail its unreal.

Re: Is Nokia shooting their own foot?
 

Sorry, but you're better off posting these gripes over at the Nokia forums. talk.maemo.org is sponsored by Nokia, but crewed by the community. There are less than a handful of Nokia employees who are regulars here (and even less who read these kinds of threads).

Re: Is Nokia shooting their own foot?
 

Good post, and I agree entirely with your sentiments

Personally I believe it is already too late for Nokia

What developers are going to commit to Nokia ??? or their ever changing platforms ?...

Re: Is Nokia shooting their own foot?
 

Nokia just get rid of Symbian for high end touch devices. It is hard to understand what is so hard?

Re: Is Nokia shooting their own foot?
 

Your information is woefully out of date.

• Symbian is not going to be in high-end Nokia devices.
  
• The most powerful Nokia devices will be MeeGo based.
  
• Qt is there to make development easier for Symbian and MeeGo (at the same time).
  
• Go ahead and research something about S^3, S^4 and Qt. Things are going to improve for developers. In fact, by developing in Qt, you are developing for both Symbian and MeeGo at the same time.
  
• Nokia grew marketshare last quarter, alongside with RIM and Android (Apple's remained flat).

Re: Is Nokia shooting their own foot?
 

The problem with Symbian is it's image more than anything else. As much as I think renaming Maemo 6 to MeeGo is a misnomer, I also think that Symbian^3 (and ^4) should have been called something completely different, to eliminate all the bad taste which actually originated from S60.

Forget S60 and AVKON. Seriously, just forget it, it's dead, let it rest in peace.

In the Symbian^3+ era, you will be coding serious stuff in Qt even for midrange devices, and that's a completely different affair than that that caused all the grey hair on seasoned S60 developers.

If you take a look at the breadth of the MeeGo platform, you will see that it is an utter overkill for anything but top-end devices. Symbian, OTOH, will do VERY WELL on the midrange devices of 2010H2, 2011+ and will be reinvigorated by cross-pollination via Qt. My biggest concern/hope is that Uiemo and MeeGo Touch get united/bridged at some point to minimize fragmentation.

(On a side note, a very-very long shot is that Intel Medfield next year turns everything upside down and Nokia's MeeGo division shifts to being X86 centric - in that case, the divison will look more like Symbian=ARM, MeeGo=X86, but I'm in 2012 by now, so I'll take it easy and return to the present to end my post :) )

Re: Is Nokia shooting their own foot?
 

Maybe you're right, but the point is: I've never seen any official announcement from Nokia stating this - which is the whole point. And in the meanwhile, the next high-end device is N8, which is a Symbian^3 device. There is no release date for the next Meego device (the rumored N9), and the way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not going to happen in 2010.

Re: Is Nokia shooting their own foot?
 

Nokia announced this. I'm too lazy to search for it on the forums but search for "Alberto Torres"

Re: Is Nokia shooting their own foot?
 

I present you (well, technically Nokia does :) ):

The Nokia Software Strategy White Paper

It hardly gets more official than that.

PS there is an announced tentative release date for the Harmattan device - 2010H2.