Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

The whole idea of paying royalties to MS was repugnant to the old Nokia, that's why they jumped onto Symbian when Psion offered it to them. Plus the fact that WinCE/WM/WP7 is not fit for purpose.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Take one more cup of coffee and you can fully wake up. :D

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Nokia Conversations interview with Steve and Stephen.

http://conversations.nokia.com/2011/...eaders/?mobile

I must say Ballmer does come across as somewhat annoying.

However, in my mind what has happened is pretty straight forward.

At some stage Nokia came to the realisation that it was unlikely that Symbian or MeeGo would become the so-called third ecosystem. Remember they would be competing fiercely against Apple, Google, Microsoft and HP.

Nokia's option was then to catalyse (i.e WP7) or join (i.e. Android) an ecosystem. And Nokia clearly feel there is far greater synergy/potential with Microsoft.

I believe that there is a strong possibility (especially now with Nokia 100% on board) that Windows Phone will become the 3rd ecosystem. This does not mean that there is no space for other players (Symbian, MeeGo, WebOS), it simply means that they'll most likely become niche segments.

The decision has been made. It is irreversible. There is no turning back. If you want a mainstream smartphone surrounded by a large ecosystem, your options are iOS, Android and ultimately WP.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

This is my 2 cents;

As a consumer I have been using Windows Phone 7 back since I reviewed it in November and I must say I love the operating system. It is fast and ridiculously responsive. I have turned on my N900 from time to time and it is painstaking how slow it is. As for 'features' it's not really missing much except USB OTG. The app market though is very healthy, the current fastest growing out of the major three.

From a Developer perspective there are other bonuses too; the platform is ridiculously easy to develop for and the tools are world class. Microsoft are renowned in the business for making their developer tools outstanding and the ones for Windows Phone 7 are no exception. I personally love developing for the platform.

From a world wide approach it makes sense. From a competitive advantage point of view the Maemo / MeeGo customers couldn't competitively sustain a company like Nokia and they needed to change.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

I sincerely doubt that WP7 which has been selling poorly will suddenly start selling well in 2012 and 2013 because of Nokia. Especially since Nokia has ticked off most of its fan base. Yes Nokia will sell a couple million phones in the US but lose tens of millions of sales elsewhere. And by the time there is finally a Nokia WP7 android and ios will be so far ahead I fail to see how WP could be called a third eco system since it will always be far far closer in sales to Web OS than android or ios.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Most of Nokia's fan base are people in a demographic who don't care about their phone.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Fans who don't care about the thing that they are fans of?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Install Base; Fan Base. Etc. Twist the words as you will.

My Father is a fan of buying Nokia phones yet doesn't care about his phone in the slightest (sub $40 phone).

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

When you move from the most advanced platform available to a system that doesn't compare at all (WP7) and then say "it's not really missing much features" (when in fact it misses all of them).... What does this tell us?

It tells us you never depended upon, used or even noticed the features Maemo on the N900 offers and the WP7 phone lacks. It tells us you don't actually need a smartphone. It doesn't say that feature-wise WP7 can compete with Maemo or Symbian.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Just because you have a feature I don't doesn't mean it's well implemented.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

And which exactly feature you were using was not well implemented?

Lets take a simple example - did you ever watch video on your n900? If you have any clue what I am asking - how was it encoded?

Lets put in in this way - find and download some xvid on the web and try to play it on you WP phone. Then return here and tell me what the result was, OK?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Way I see this there were two possibles that lead to this.

Elop came in with this in mind from the start and the board hired him to do just this.

Elop came in looked at where the programmers were with Symbian and Meego and realized it was in worse shape than anyone knows with no hope of getting better anytime soon and decided the only hope to save Nokia was to take this big punt.

I think there are may other paths he could have taken to right the ship including building a WP7 and Andriod phone to gain some market share and get back into the US, while continuing to try and develop the Symbion and Meego platform to come up with the Halo phone they need.

As I see it now Nokia are just an also ran that will never be a major player again.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

??? even if you were right about features not being well implemented - which you aren't: if you need a certain feature, wich is better? not having it at all? or having it in a working state, but with some rough edges?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

I would rather leaving features out and properly implementing core features. This seems trivial but using WP7 I can open an SMS instantly. I personally loved sometimes waiting a good fifteen+ seconds for a message to open on my N900.

Regardless have you even used WP7? It was a good choice on Nokia's part for the sake of the companies existence. MeeGo was developing too slowly and the company needed to respond to change.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

you could have had all of this beautiful simplicity for a quarter of the price on an average S40 model. welcome to the joys of cheap feature phones. i honestly think you'll enjoy it and never look back, because you don't expect much of a phone. you don't need the full PC-experience in the palm of your hands.
(15 seconds for a text message to open? never on an n900, except you did... you know... "things".)

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Sorry for interrupting your conversation but since you're using WP7 you could help me in this one. Have you been successfully installed any unsigned CAB that used to work in WM?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Nokia as a company will hardly be 100% behind Windows Phone.
At least the work force will be torn apart, maybe half-hearted effort.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

For every 'your father', there are at least five others that will look what features/possibilities their next device offers them and/or ask for an advice from people not in the fanbase, but in the 'knowbase'.

Easily, Nokia sold more than 100 devices in the past 10 years just based on my advice to my family/friends/coworkers (three of those being N900). I could not, in my right mind, honestly recommend WP7 to anyone - it's a glorified feature phone platform, and for people that only need a feature phone there are far better and/or far cheaper options - for those that want flashy and trendy platform, and have money to waste, I'd recommend the iPhone; for those who only need to call/SMS from their device there are good sub $100 options, and what's more - usually not coming from Nokia.

He won't be able to try that - the Zune SW will not let him upload it to 'his' device (one would debate whether you own such a device or you are just leasing it from the manufacturer), anyway. :rolleyes:

So that's the only thing you can name in favor of WP7? Good, let me find my old, trusty 3310 - it was also able to open everything in an instance... Of course, that 'everything' was mostly nothing, but it could open it in a blink of an eye.

Yes I did. One of my friends work at a local Microsoft branch and all the employees got them for Christmas even tho they won't be doing any mobile development - I guess Microsoft cares about the numbers of 'sold' items. And, I kid you not, in the middle of me playing with it, I was reading some blog on the intertubes (at least they've got the browser, finally, to usable-ish state) and there was an extremely good, albeit lengthy quote I wanted to forward to couple of my friends - beep, can't do it! The exact same thing I'm used to do, and consider it granted, since cca. 2002. I won't even mention the lack of multitasking, many people do not understand the importance of it anyway.

But ok, I was aware of that limitation - what truly came as a nasty surprise (at that time I really haven't read much on WP7 so I didn't have the idea how limited it really is) is when I wanted to transfer some my music library from my N900 (or my laptop) to it so we can test how well it does BT streaming to my car's infotainment system. Since I often lend him my car, he considered that a crucial feature that had to be thoroughly tested. No BT file transfers, ok I can live with that, but I couldn't even transfer it via cable from my laptop because, oh I don't know, I need a special software to do that which, surprise surprise, does not exist for Linux. Being stubborn as I am, I tried to do it through Win7 installation in VBox, but to no avail - it wouldn't even recognize the damn device. So we tried to pair his device with my car anyway and at least get it to play what he already transferred to it, and there comes another cold shower - my car didn't recognize it not as a phone device, and not as a multimedia device! At that point even my friend, who is a strong supporter of Microsoft way of thinking which from time to time stirs fierce debates, called it a POS because, I don't know, his three years old Nokia s40 device (can't remember the exact mark) could do all those things without breaking a sweat.

On an off note, I think that the UI is actually more horrid than the one on the iPhone, but that's, I guess, a matter of personal preference so I wouldn't hold that against it.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

5x, you sure? When looking around on less-techincal forums, comments like "Looks hot! I gets oneoneone11!" are awfully common.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Since Elop came to Nokia still being a huge M$ stockholder, #1 is far more likely. Clearly MeeGo/Qt was moving too slowly, but that should've called for a better effort, not giving up. Symbian/MeeGo/Qt was a solid plan for long-term success. Of course they were scared to death of it! And remember, to M$ Linux will always be nothing but a disease that needs to be exterminated.

With this deal in one clean sweep M$ has accomplished several goals critically important to them:

1. Taken a major Linux (MeeGo) supporter and their resources out of the game.
2. Convinced Nokia to eliminate another rival OS, Symbian. That's 2 rival OS out, WP7 in. What a deal!
3. Considerably weakened Qt, another competitive technology.
4. Picked up at least several million WP7 customers.
5. Made Bing the default Nokia search engine, strengthening their position against Google search.
6. Picked up millions of customers for M$ gaming.

And on and on... An unbelievable deal for M$, and one they would've done whatever it took to make happen. Monkey Boy Ballmer and Elop, the huge M$ stockholder, win bigtime. Ballmer and Elop dance, awkwardly. Nokia gets...a totally closed, unfinished crap OS and a dim future. Their employees bend over and grimace.

Elop and the Nokia board should be put back ON that burning platform to roast. Nokia employees should do an Egypt kinda action.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Well, I can't be sure of that - I think that 'Looks hot! I gets oneoneone11!' approach is more applicable to the USofA market, but it is my general impression that in Europe, especially the less developed part of it, people rely hugely on techieheads in their surroundings when it comes to obtaining a new piece of technology.

I know that I get at least one phone call per day either from some friend or a colleague asking me for an opinion or a recommendation on a device they (or some of their friends/family/colleagues) need/want to purchase. Just last night Nokia lost one C7 sell as I've advised my best friend not to be hasty and wait to see how all of this will unfold - at best, he'll eventually get it for a considerably lower price as it will be considered a DOA device, at worst he will get something from Samsung or HTC. And the true irony is that it was me actually convincing him to wait for S^3 devices to hit the shelves before making a purchase, explaining him the advantages of possibly having an upgradeable OS and the awesome promise of Qt - he's been bragging about needing a new phone since last September.

I really cannot recommend buying any Nokia device atm. except the N900, but I'd recommend that only to those that truly need it. And while I'm just one person and Nokia might lose ten-or-something sales from me not recommending their devices, which might not matter at all in the grand scheme, I'd take there are significant number of 'techieheads' that will be doing the same. The way it is, atm., Nokia's plan on pushing another 150M Symbian devices in the following years is, IMO, the truest form of wishful thinking. And WP7 is even in worse shape, I really couldn't recommend that to anyone.

edit:
Forgot about the 'less-technical forums' part, I do not condone conspiracy theories, but if you take a look at Engadget's post on Nokia WP7 concept device - most of the comments, especially the high-praising ones, are coming from people that have posted only a single comment on a Disqus system - that one highfiving the decission. It awfully smells like guerrilla/viral marketing if you ask me :rolleyes: With the NOK stocks spiraling down that day, I would not be surprised if that really was the case.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

nokia usa head replaced by ms stooge as per engadget.. so it begins... the end is near!

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

I too am disappointed about Meego. But is this the end of nokia? Is WM7 really INFERIOR to Meego / Maemo? Apart from opensource what else does it Maemo benifit over WM7?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

i would say real multitasking as an example.. but more than that it isn't so much wp7, but the abandonment of a very promising os that is free for all. face it, meego had a real chance of challenging android. in your wildest dreams do u see wp7 doing that?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

with consumers like you, the future looks bright for nokia.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Nice article there. It is good to read something a little more positive on the subject even if I am still a little miffed with the Nokiasoft merger.

One thing that I still do not trust though is the intergration of Microsofts schizophreniac search engine Bing. Really, how many times have MS revamped and renamed their search engine and social services in the last 10 years and by the time we see the WP7 phones what will it be called then?

I suppose a more serious question should posed as: What use would adopting a brand for your product when the brand in question has a history of identity issues?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

For me absolutely. Probably as the leading (as in sales or innovation) phone manufacturer.

Does the sun rise and set?

Many ways, but that alone is plenty.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

My response, for what it is worth, is that while this is definitely not a result i ever wanted to see, it is worth remembering that Nokia will still be investing >around< half a billion annually in the broader MeeGo ecosystem after this change in direction.

While MeeGo is not now going to become one of the 'big-three' or the lead Nokia platform, it probably does have a healthy a viable future as a niche platform.

http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/20...-qt-and-meego/

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

First of all, the board should be replaced. They don't know the other way and Elop is just executor.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Most likely. QT + Meego may become a potential threat to Microsoft's Window plans on non-computer devices (desktops, laptops, and netbooks) if it were to be a success across various platforms. They already have Android to deal with as it is.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

You would be surprised but Maemo and Android have much more in common then WM. I hope you confirm Android benefits, isn't?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Elop: "It has been discussed that Nokia plus Microsoft together have an extraordinarily strong intellectual property portfolio."

Quick, everyone save this, and hope we don't need it soon...

Edit: More quotes here:

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Elop: "our first priority is beating Android." WTF????? Nokia, you just gave up on the software side of phone/computer development and now you just started a war with something that could help you recapture some of your market share. Brilliant! You had a chance if you offered WP7, Android and Meego (when ready), but you completely dropped the ball and insulted, not only your own employees, but also your customers....by not offering any choices (specifically, Android). If I was Ollila I would seriously question the motives of the person I just put in charge. Corporate schizophrenia at it's finest! Nokia has lost it's identity for sure. Game over......you can't win.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Understood, but MeeGo is/was positioned as a mobile computing platform, which by any rational analysis should not be niche! Mobile computing is the future... not "smartphones".

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Well, it is a word of software company but not handset manufacturer.

Re: breaking news:nokia partners with microsoft
 

Absolutely, no doubt at all.

None of these, either together or separately, are required parts of an operating system.
All an operating system really is required to do is allow a user to run programs of their choice. ANYTHING beyond that qualifies as smart.

Services:
Xbox integration: I have access to all my xbox friends and their avatars and information. I can send and recieve messages from them. In the future there will be chat and game invites and most of the features already present on the xbox itself.
Zune: A huge catalog of drm-free music at competitive prices. Also available is the Zune Pass, of which I've been a subscriber for a few years now. I can download whatever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want, and however much of it I want. No hassles. I get to pick 10 of my favorite songs each month and they're mine forever, no questions asked. I can have only my phone, and stream the vast majority of songs available on the marketplace seamlessly. If I'm at my computer I can use the fantastic software client to manage/buy/play my music. If I'm at the library, I can log into the zune website and stream music through the web browser. I mean the abilities are astounding! Plus every night I go to bed, plug in my phone right beside me nowhere near my computer, but when I wake up the next morning all my new music and podcasts from the computer are magically on my phone. New pictures and music I have on my phone are on my computer.
Windows Live: Anything from any of my windows devices can be synced to each other seamlessly through WL Skydrive. I take a photo on my phone, I can set them to automatically upload to Skydrive and from there they can go anywhere: flickr, my computer, etc. I don't have to go through a "share" menu, it just happens.
Then there's the social integration. I don't have to load up the facebook website or even the app. Its integrated into each person's contact.

Community:
Granted there isn't anything in the windows world, that I'm aware of, like the "communities" that gather around open source projects.
That said, consider that there are TONS of blogs and podcasts by Microsoft employees about all of their projects. For Windows Phone, there is the Windows Phone Radio podcast that is run by two developers from the team that develops Windows Phone. Furthermore, its not just them broadcasting, they answer emails, ASK QUESTIONS OF THE USERS LISTENING, and generally CARE and care PUBLICLY. Then there's the Zune Insider podcast if you care about the Zune side of things, which I do. Its incredibly informative and since Window Phone users use the Zune software client on PC, its informative since one of the hosts is a developer who works/worked directly on that. They consistently talk about feedback they've received and what they're doing to act on it. Just the fact that they let their users know that they HEAR what users are saying and take it back to the team is amazing. NOTHING like that exists in the Nokia world.

Applications/Development:
I'm not going to espouse an app market as the best feature about a phone. Android and iOS have larger markets. I just want to say if you care about that sort of thing, WP7 has an excellent market that has a lot of apps in it and its consistently growing by leaps and bounds.
As far as development goes, ITS MICROSOFT. They make some of the best development tools and environments that exist.
Lets face it, developing for the n900 when it first launched was a joke. Thats partly why it never gained the sort of traction that could have inspired Nokia to put more support behind it. It got better when you could use Qt to develop for it, but that was always more of a work in progress than a fully integrated experience.
With WP7, you're using proven tools with EXCELLENT documentation. Development is a breeze. Thats all that needs to be said.

WP7 isn't a smartphone, its the future of phones.

I can go on, and I probably will to correct some of the blatant idiocy I'm reading in this forum, but for now I'm going to get some pizza.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Just a quick aside as someone who used to work in Nokia. The reason Nokia failed to produce compelling products: arrogance, laziness by the symbian developer teams, piss poor control of user testing (in the end as a test user of pre release phones I eventually gave up as I got sick of what I saw as real errors being marked as 'as specified' or the more brutal 'ignored'.

Nokia has become full of dead wood engineers who are waiting around for their 15 year renewal option when they can take voluntary resignation and coin in 15 months of pay. Nokia became like a socialist model of a country where 'good enough' became an accepted pass criteria for product launch. Nokia finland is strangled by union control - Elops life is going to be real hard getting rid of the cruft.
Symbian OS was known for being the thing that would eventually kill Nokia - and lo its come to pass. QT was killed by it as symbian is the OS that was holding up its release to the outside world. Maemo and linux already had QT grounding - all the qt r+d time was sucked up by the pile of fail that is that POS OS.
I'm off to android now..

Re: breaking news:nokia partners with microsoft
 

We'll see fanboy! Troll else where stooge....

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

To all those "Elop was ony very short at M$ and isn't necessarily thinking M$ centric anymore. He's number eight of the list of single people holding M$ shares:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/company/...ional-ownershi

Now you know who's benefiting from this deal ....

Re: breaking news:nokia partners with microsoft
 

Don't have an Xbox, don't want an Xbox. Not everyone is a gamer. And not all gamers use Xbox.

Don't have a Zune, don't want a Zune. Better DRM-free services are available elsewhere.

Don't get me started on M$ reliability or security.

Ya suppose there might be good reasons for that?

Also known as propaganda.

There's reasons for that, too.

Heaven help us.

If you get open source pizza you can eat it or whatever you want, but if it's M$ pizza you only get a limited user's license.

Look, I don't have time or inclination to go into more detail refuting your points and would obviously be beating my keyboard against a wall anyway. Clearly, you're Elop's kinda guy.