Peet | # 171 | 2011-02-14, 19:18 | Report

Something about that canned model smells like Intel Inside...


(from the mentioned Techcrunch article: )
I wasn't "aware" (still aren't, it's speculation) that instead of going with ARM's battle-tested mobile chips Nokia had tried jumping this early on the flamin' hot Intel platform!

No wonder if the hinges couldn't support the added weight...

shockgiga | # 172 | 2011-02-14, 19:19 | Report

as what i have read from the Q&A with elop at MWC, is that, nokia may be depending on microsoft and pay them royalties for it, but at the same time, there will be no more money spent on OS development. so those factors just balances the situation. ( and it may be cheaper just to pay royalties too )

he also stressed out that microsoft is actually investing money more than nokia coz of nokia's location based services & etc. ( as elop has claimed, by the billions in monetary worth )

i believe even if nokia has prioritiezed meego lesser or even the least now, that even though doing so means wasting a lot of money and effort invested already, it would still be the wiser choice in penetrating the US market. since meego is not really as welcomed there compared to WP7. also, as i have seen with intel's prototypes in MWC (video), meego still has a long way to go in terms of development as compared to an already polished, and currently already selling WP7 OS.

so did nokia really ruin themselves? not really. coz even if they dominate the rest of the world, it would still be something else for "total" world market domination again, as they used to.

Peet | # 173 | 2011-02-14, 19:43 | Report

Whatever monies MS might promise to eventually pay Nokia (billion+ $$ ??) as part of this pact:

1) MS has already benefitted many times over by fully kneecapping the only proper Linux + Qt system in existence. Their winpho is nowhere yet and it doesn't cost them anything to keep Nokia fumbling around for the next 1-2 years.

2) Nokia has already lost many times over. 25% and counting already lost from Nokia's asset balance since the news of the MS-elop pact leaked out. Nokia could've bought Linux #2 Novell (large patent & IP portfolio, Qt/GTK/.NET/Mono developers, also working on Meego) for a fraction of this lost valuation.

3) Nokia's subcontractor network (also well on their way to migrating to the Qt platform) are taking a massive hit now, as is the Finnish stock market/economy, but that's none of MS/elop's concern of course.

Did Nokia go all out and try making the Meego (they could easily have rebranded it FFS!) strategy work?

Nope.

alcalde | # 174 | 2011-02-14, 20:43 | Report

Ballmer did not lay awake at night worrying about a framework primarily used for Linux desktop KDE applications. Can you think of one major piece of software available on Windows, Mac and Linux that was written with Qt? I don't mean an open-source project; I mean a piece of commercial software. Developers were not chomping at the bit ready to port their Windows software to the 2% worldwide desktop Linux market. Windows developers are using things like .NET, not Qt. The Mono project would probably be more of a worry for Ballmer than Qt.

alcalde | # 175 | 2011-02-14, 20:56 | Report

1. You have a very different opinion of what this looks like than I do. What you lay out in your first three sentences looks like Nokia dropped the ball for three years before Elop even showed up, while you conclude these facts mean Elop is to blame. Or are you suggesting that MeeGo was ready and polished and perfect and Elop scrapped it for diabolical reasons?

2. There was no enthusiasm for MeeGo outside of here. There were no hoardes of users screaming "Give me MeeGo and I'll dump my iPhone! I want to get rid of my Android phone and use MeeGo! We need another OS! We're buying smartphones and apps by the bushel because we can't stand our current choices!!" There was no media buzz concerning MeeGo (outside of that created by the burning platform memo, which rather proves the point). You even had the one analyst call MeeGo a joke. I'm not aware of any analyst who praised the idea of MeeGo and issued enthusiastic buy recommendations based on the expected future performance of MeeGo. Carriers certainly were not thrilled by the idea of an open and unlocked OS on their networks.

3. Oh, the board saw this coming. They made it come. They got rid of the last CEO and hired Elop specifically to do what he's done now. They brought in an outsider to shake things up. Given his past affiliations, they may have even been partial to a Microsoft deal when they chose him.

alcalde | # 176 | 2011-02-14, 21:02 | Report

1. Elop said MeeGo was not almost ready. It's a fact and must be accepted barring any evidence to the contrary - of which there isn't because no one's seen a supposedly almost-ready MeeGo. It's unclear if it even has a UI yet.

2. Ovi-store is not exactly a runaway success.

3. Nokia isn't ruined. It was losing the entire smartphone market and facing new pressure from android in the low-end market and had to do something different and now. Sitting back and just saying hey our Ovi store and ecosystem is awesome (despite going from 38% to 28% smartphone share in 2010) and pouring more resources into a project that was over-budget and behind schedule wasn't a realistic option.

alcalde | # 177 | 2011-02-14, 21:08 | Report

Ok, Nokia partners with an industry giant who needs someone to put their product into smart phones and which a lot of people have an impression of as being inferior to the existing product (in this case, ARM). This industry giant promises OS help in exchange. This industry giant has been cited numerous times for monopolistic, anti-competitive and blatantly illegal tactics to maintain its position but is facing heat from an emerging mobile market for which it does not seem to have an adequate response.

Now, my simple, humble question is....


HOW COME NO ONE HAD A PROBLEM WITH THIS THEN BUT THEY DO NOW?!?

Rugoz | # 178 | 2011-02-14, 21:09 | Report

As a company you don't loose money if your stocks are going down. A high equity price is useful in the case you want to issue new shares, companies don't do that very often. So short-term fluctuations are no big deal.

I guess Maya is the biggest one. But Qt is usually used for smaller projects where making platform-specific implementations is too costly. Once worked for a company which used Qt for a scientific visualization software, they had approx. 10 developers.

Does not tell us much. As far as I know the harmattan handset ux should still have been in c++ (QSceneGraph), guess it was already finished, QML for 3th party apps.

zwer | # 179 | 2011-02-14, 21:23 | Report

Autodesk Maya, Skype (GUI/frontend part only), Google Earth... I'd consider those pretty much major. Plus most research labs I know of use it for scientific analysis apps that require GUI (and some that dont) - CERN being one of them. And if I remember correctly, Hollywood uses it quite heavily for custom written post-production and/or visual effects packages.

Qt is not used only for cross-platform stuff, albeit it is its strongest feature, it also has one of the best environments for GUI development. I'd much rather use Qt than WPF even in Windows-only projects.

Peet | # 180 | 2011-02-14, 21:24 | Report

That's a lot of LOLling (but to be expected I suppose)...

If Nokia's very first MeeGoh device was going to be Intel-based, I for one had no idea! Intel doesn't have anything nearly suitable for that space yet.

MeeGoh was supposed to be co-developed by Nokia, Intel et al, in the open. I wasn't aware of any plan, let alone requirement, that Nokia adopts Intel's yet unsuitable platform for their devices, esp. this early on. If Nokia did that by their own choice, well, what's new...

(and pardon my feeding the...)