If you go over to Nokia’s announcement where they announced a sweeping deal with Microsoft and read all the comments you’ll see that most of the comments are in total despair mode.
It’s like a bunch of Google employees are astroturfing the comments there. “I’m gonna buy Android” they all say. Many others say “how can Elop (Nokia’s CEO) bet on a failed platform?” Other blogs are calling this note “a suicide note.”
You all are nuts.
So, let’s all take a deep breath together and calm down. I know it’s shocking to hear that your beloved Symbian sucks, but I’ve been saying it for years and you’ve been calling me names. I come from the future and I know you don’t like to be dragged into it.
You’ll soon come to see that Windows Phone 7 actually rocks and actually is a lot nicer to use than Android.
“So why has it sold so poorly then Smartass Scoble?”
Because it has no apps.
Nothing matters in this world more than apps. Write that on your forehead. Write that on the mirror on your bathroom wall. Write that on your car windshield. Whatever it will take so you remember it.
HP execs know this. Google’s execs know this. Everyone in Silicon Valley knows this.
Apps are the ONLY thing that matters now.
Why? Because when a customer, whether in Cape Town or San Francisco or Tel Aviv walks into a store to buy a smartphone they will NOT want to feel stupid.
What makes you feel stupid when buying a Smartphone? Buying one that doesn’t have the apps your friends are taunting you with.
Right now Nokia and Windows Phone 7 are out of the game. That’s why Google’s exec, Vic Gundotra, is calling them both “turkeys.”
Does this get both into the game? Yes!
Here’s why.
1. Nokia has distribution. Distribution Google doesn’t yet have. Nokia has dealers and stores in the weirdest places on earth. Places Apple won’t have stores in for decades, if ever.
2. MIcrosoft has a great OS. I like it better than Android. If you actually USED a Windows Phone 7 you’d see that to be true.
3. Microsoft has great developer tools.
4. Microsoft has Xbox. Which has just been rejuvenated with Kinect (hottest selling product in history, even hotter than the iPad!) IE, some parts of Microsoft ARE cool!
5. Nokia has great hardware design and supply chains. They always have great cameras, great screens. Supply chains matter. A lot more than anyone thinks (the stuff Apple never talks about, but works its ass off on is supply chain management — I got to see this first hand when I visited China).
You add that all up as a salad and now the smart developers have to take another look at Microsoft and Nokia. They can’t ignore them like they can RIM (we all know people won’t use a lot of cool apps on a Blackberry).
So, should Nokia have gone Android? No way. That takes them through a real commoditization (IE, non differentiated) minefield. One that Nokia execs aren’t smart enough to get through.
See, what you don’t know is Nokia just doesn’t have the right people to play in this new world. They needed to join the engineering teams at Nokia who know how to build great hardware with someone else who knows how to build services. That someone else is Microsoft. No one else was as strong a fit and if you think Google is it, well, sorry, no. That would be even worse for Nokia because Nokia needs to have something different than HTC has (Nokia can’t compete with China’s brightest minds).
So, sorry, Nokia fans, you just aren’t looking at this deal the right way.
This is the only way Stephen Elop could go in this war to get app developers excited again.
What you should be asking yourself is “can Elop really execute?” That I’m not so sure about and we’ll only know for sure six to 18 months from now. But the strategy is the right one.
You should buy a Windows Phone 7 before you run off your mouth. That’s why you all are nuts when you say you’re buying Android. What a hoot!
Photo credit: Iain Buchanan, Creative Commons licensed photo.
UPDATE: Engadget just released these Nokia/Microsoft concept phone photos.
Scobleizer 
I agree completely!
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Still a few seats left on the Titanic. Better hurry.
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You go ahead wardmundy, with you there it’s plenty crowded enough along with all the other negative idiots. I dare you to use WP7 for a month. I dare you.
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WP7 is a in many ways a step ahead of both iOS and Android in the modernity of the UI thinking underlying it. It’s smoove, and surprisingly well conceived. MS has employed and funded some people in the last several years who are serious design people. Happy to see it.
But:
iDevice –> iTunes
and
WP7 device –> Zune
The big part of the new smartphone market will be people for whom their new cheap smartphone is the only computer they have. Rural China and much of SE Asia, most of Africa, lots of S. America, etc.
Android wins in those situations going away.
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WP7 is a in many ways a step ahead of both iOS and Android in the modernity of the UI thinking underlying it. It’s smoove, and surprisingly well conceived. MS has employed and funded some people in the last several years who are serious design people. Happy to see it.
But:
iDevice –> iTunes
and
WP7 device –> Zune
The big part of the new smartphone market will be people for whom their new cheap smartphone is the only computer they have. Rural China and much of SE Asia, most of Africa, lots of S. America, etc.
Android wins in those situations going away.
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The 3 words that sum up perfectly this Scobleizer post. First time I have ever agreed 100% w/ Scoble. Seems that the best opinion pieces are delivered from fanboys on stories that have nothing to do w/ their fanboy-company. That’s annoying.
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I was a Nokia die-hard before the i-Phone altered the landscape forever. It’s easy to dismiss this as another blunder in a series of blunders but I think the long term outcome of this marriage would be interesting to follow and watch. Two former giants going against the two that are currently dominating. Best of luck to all.
cheers,
Dennis
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It would be really interesting to see the new Windows Phone 7 specs and how Nokia played/will play a role in the direction. Ballmer said changes are on the way.
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Robert, I don’t always agree with you, but I am 100% with you on this one and I AM a Nokia fan. I am also a huge WP7 fan and LOVE the OS too. I don’t know what Nokia fans wanted Nokia to do, stick with a platform that has been on a downward trend for the last couple of years? WP7 brings services and a slick OS and combined with Ovi Maps and Nokia hardware we will have an extremely compelling product lineup.
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Many of the points are true. Are WP7 phones good, yes. Do they sell, no. Is Nokia putting WP7 on their devices going to sell more of it, maybe no.
A couple of years back Sony was going in losses, their phone business was a big fail. Then they came out with Xperia X10 and other line of products which revived their industry.
HTC started their first touch phone with Windows Phone 6 or 6.5, I had that phone, it sucked. They then came out with several Android phones and just steamrolled over Nokia and others.
Samsung who? Well after Android people talk about their phones.
LG? Optimus anyone? One of the best phones available today.
I disagree with your thought that Android is better than WP7. Just because Microsoft put some panes it does not make it a better OS.
While the Nokia-MSFT partnership might make sense right now, the bigger winner in the deal is of course MSFT and not Nokia.
Also hardware and device wise, I haven’t seen Nokia produce a top-notch phone like N95. After that most of the phones look pretty frail, even the N8 hardware looks like it was done in a haste.
Of course, we have our own opinions. We’ll see where this goes one year down the line.
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HTC made a TON of sales and money from their Windows Mobile 6 and 6.5 phones. Where do you get off lying like that?
BTW, there are already $100 WP7 devices on the market today.
You really need to get out from under that rock.
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Great, so I have been lying under a rock. Let’s see. How many phones today from HTC run Windows Mobile and WP7.
Which Samsung phones are you talking about, those that ran Symbian? Which one’s did you even like.
Which $100 WP7 device can you buy off the shelf without a contract.
I have used Windows Phone 7. I guess you did not read my comment properly, I said it is good.
At-least I live under a rock and not inside a cave.
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Fundamentally Nokia was out of the game. Robert is right that Apps/ecosystem is key to the hardware sales. Nokia has by FAR the best supply chain in the mobile phone industry. By having them leverage their strengths and hope that Microsoft dev community and bottomless ability to invest will allow to provide a true alternative to Android. Mid-term, Apple is not the competition. Closed systems always end up (relatively) failing.
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Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
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Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
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If the world goes HTML5 then Microsoft Nokia wins even more. Why? Their OS feels nicer to use than Android does and is very differentiated. They just need to fix the bugs in the browser. Those bug fixes are coming anyway.
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I’m on an Android device and the browsing experience is fine. As is browsing on the iOS. As is browsing on a Windows phone.
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Sorry, Mona: browsing isn’t all that we’ll want our devices to do. It’s all about apps and HTML 5 isn’t it, according to the coolest developers who I’ve been visiting lately.
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Sorry, Mona: browsing isn’t all that we’ll want our devices to do. It’s all about apps and HTML 5 isn’t it, according to the coolest developers who I’ve been visiting lately.
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It’s not about browsing. It’s about the ability to go from mobile → pc/laptop → mobile seamlessly.
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soon it will be to go from tablet to smartphone seamlessly- but what needs to be seamless? cal-contacts-email yes! games? maybe weather apps? nav apps? yes! but full blown productivity apps like Office? no, and if so that’s a segment of the market, not the broad consumer market
@randygiusto and @ipsosvantis
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The “Cloud” will allow that today. Microsoft does it better than either iOS or Android at the moment too. MUCH better.
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Actually the browser is still one of the suckier things about WP7.. it is IE of course, and behind the curve even for microsoft..
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More and more I think the world will NOT go HTML 5 any time soon.
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Why is that? It makes sense, major sites are converting. Mobile no longer means only phones.
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Why is that? It makes sense, major sites are converting. Mobile no longer means only phones.
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Why are app developers making apps? Control of hardware. Look at games. HTML isn’t it.
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It’s starting! http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=535547
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You are living in a dream world. Remember today’s date – let’s come back 1 yr from today and see how many HTML5 apps are actually there in the mobile market. Native apps feel better, are more quicker and could provide better seamless integration with a smartphone. People have been talking about HTML5 since the past 1.5 yrs but it hasn’t impacted app development in mobile app stores one bit.
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Mobile Safari is hobbled in some important ways (for purposes of my business anyway). It’s easy things like PDF… you can’t follow a link or interact with an ISO standard PDF in Apple’s own Open Standards touted browser. WTF Apple!? C’mon, you’re better than this.
Tell me Robert… can you click on a link inside a PDF on WP7 or Android? Betcha can.
(and I’m a fanboi…)
Apple best get it together muy pronto or they’ll be lapped by others who are more feature rich and not so anal about the “user experience” or platform lock in. We’ve been here before and the other team won (by certain measures for a while). The reality distortion field is fading…
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The UX is better for native apps and the distribution is too.
37Signals was highly criticized for choosing the a web only approach, but its just not as good.
Plus there are lot of features you just can’t access in HTML right now.
Camera and address book are 2 huge ones.
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The amount of fragmentation between Android versions continues to go on. The OS upgrade strategy vendor by vendor, device by device is horribly frustrating to any Android customer. Agree with you that MS has a good HTML 5 strategy.
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Well I don’t know abput developers, but for the normal customers it’s not even a topic. Fragmentation? Lol look at desktop windows, look at Linux. Does that stop anything? No. May be that devs need to do more work, but either you’re a normal non-techie customer, than you probably don’t even know about the “newest” release, or you are a tech-savvy user and you can root your phone in 1 min. and put on anything you like. I don’t see much of a deal here besides new fodder for tech-blogs bashing Android.
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Er, the browser on “cutting edge” WinPhone7 is… IE 7. Fixing bugs? They need to gut the thing and replace it with a real browser (i.e. something not called IE).
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Er, the browser on “cutting edge” WinPhone7 is… IE 7. Fixing bugs? They need to gut the thing and replace it with a real browser (i.e. something not called IE).
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So developers would rather get 0% exposure by not being on an app store at all?
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Exactly: and Xbox shows that Microsoft +can+ build app stores.
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Why should companies / developers keep investing in three platforms? The world would soon get used to non-native apps and that’s when mobile will go platform agnostic.
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Why should they? Revenue from selling apps thats why.
App stores give you a central database where every user on that platform can get exposure to your product, a solid payment collection system so you don’t have to set up your own and access to a mobile ad system to generate more revenue.
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I agree with Andrew. I give Apple 30 cents for every $1 music I sell. But it’s a trade off, because the amount of traffic that the ecosystem gets is insane. Really. Selling the music independently though my site doesn’t get a fraction of what I get through iTunes. Sure, you can argue and say ‘well then drive more traffic to your site instead of iTunes’. But it’s not that easy. Being part of an ecosystem and marketplace is vital to a business. It’s why music festivals are incredibly successful for bands. It’s why Flea Markets and Malls are alot more successful than yard sales. It’s why McDonald’s build across the street from Burger Kings.
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First, they already have gone agnostic. It’s called Flash. Except on the iOS platform of course. WP7’s development tools are considered the best and easiest in the industry. Once the $$$ shows a little more growth, which it will with Nokia, the developers will start to drop the other two platforms like a rock and move to a much easier platform, with even better income ability.
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Mona I couldn’t disagree with you more. The industry made a fundamental shift over the past 3 years away from the importance of the Web on the handset to the importance of the app on the device, from the app store. Yes, the browser is there and Google keeps saying “write for the browser” but we aren;t there, nor will we be in at least 2 years. The cloud may be the dream but it’s not the reality in volume any time soon.
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It wasn’t the industry, it was Apple; specifically the iPhone.
But with HP’s WebOS announcement, iPad and its predecessors (2 and 3 rumors all over news this week) and Rupert even venturing into the digital content realm, mobile is no longer going to be dictated by just phones.
It is inefficient and costly to develop for iOS, Android, RIM, Windows/Nokia, WebOS and whatever other mobile OS.
I’m not saying the change is going to come today or tomorrow but it’ll happen sooner than later.
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From what I remember, Apple initially encouraged developers to make web based apps since they didn’t have an app store and had locked down the device, not allowing 3rd party content to run at all.
However pressure from developers, who wanted to develop applications stored and executed from the phone, encouraged Apple to make the app store.
So it was the industry that demanded the shift, Apple simply catered for it the best.
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The common denominator is still the iPhone; regardless of what Apple initially or eventually decided.
At the end of the day Apple initiated a creation of a need (mobility of web content) and a solution (iOS). But just like the Internet, mobile is democratizing and I firmly believe it’s up to the devs to dictate what the industry wants.
Why should devs waste time learning various languages? Has anyone done the numbers to see if apps are more profitable than web apps? Why wouldn’t you want to consolidate efforts into one language? …rhetorical, btw.
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i totally agree with you Mona. There is only one important and free app without any limitations: the browser. Sooner or later people will realize it.
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Devs don’t waste time learning various languages, they do it because that’s what the industry dictates, because that’s what the consumer wants.
The industry is not dictated by anyone but consumers. There were plenty of smartphones available before the iPhone, however the general consumer wanted smartphone features that were accessible to the majority of users. Hence why the iPhone was successful. Apple didn’t initiate anything, they just catered to a need.
People wanted an easier way to buy, download and use applications on their phone. The app store was created and people responded. Eventually, other manufacturers responded with their own versions of the same system.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love it if their was a universal programming language to make it easier for developers to create their products and to have those products work on all devices. But the reality is just not the case, and developers need to cater for that.
Consumers don’t adjust for developers, developers cater for the consumer.
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Are you serious? Would Apple would be where they are catering to consumers? Mobile was stagnant before them — most of the devices required hunting and pecking; carriers kept proprietary webs. i.e. Verizon’s first iPhone competitor Touch ring a bell? Holy hell that browsing experience was horrible, I can name a lot more devices too.
It’s no just mobile though — look at all the innovators on the web. Facebook. Twitter. And as much as I hate to say it, Zynga.
Would they be where they are today if consumers dictated their visions? Think about that for a sec.
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EVERY company develops their products/services based on what they believe will attract the consumer. Great companies will develop something that the customer didn’t think of beforehand, however it still means that company is catering for those consumers. Apple is all about creating products that make technology more accessible to the consumer.
That’s just the way business works, creating something you hope consumers buy/use so that you make money.
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Not any more Mona. iOS devices will be outsold by Android this year, and both WP7 and Android will bury iOS in the next year.
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Apple was just the first kid on the block with a phone that people actually wanted to use. I’m sure if all 5 major touch OSes were around in 2006, we would see a lot more web apps and nobody would be making any money. Actually, when I think about that aspect, it seems rather unlikely haha. Anyway, going forward, developing an app for 5 OSes isn’t viable.
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That’s why developers are smart and cater for only the OSes they will profit on, They aren’t required to develop for every platform out there. Which is why the Nokia/Microsoft merger will bring more developers to WP7 as it increases the opportunity for profit.
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So in your view WP7 and WebOS have no future?
Here’s how it plays out in your premise:
2012: Android is “free” and brings smartphones to the low end around the world.
2013: Android 60%, iOS 20%, BB 10%, WebOS 5%, WP7 5%
2014: Developing for WebOS and WP7 is not profitable and support is dropped by developers.
2015: No Apps = Nobody buys it
2016: Android 65% iOS 25%, BB 10%
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Personally, I don’t see WebOS making up a huge market share. Which is a shame cause I do rate the OS higher than WP7 and at times Android. Their problem is timeframe; summer release for WebOS 3 devices and that is likely U.S only.
This is why the Nokia deal is so crucial to WP7. Nokia have a worldwide reach and, despite recent declines in smartphone share, a great reputation with consumers. For the past 4 years I have worked in the mobile industry here in Australia at various levels (direct sales, business management etc) and Nokia is still a much admired brand here in general. Many people still have a fondness for Nokia but have moved onto other brands because Nokia’s in their current state can’t compete with the features of other platforms. These people wouldn’t have switched to another brand if Nokia had a viable alternative. Now they do.
As far as the ‘No Apps = Nobody buys it’ prediction for 2015, who knows what the market will be like in 4 years. But as the market stands currently, consumers want apps. Maybe that will change and more web-based services will rise replacing the need for an app. However having an application on a mobile platforms (especially iOS) is such a huge marketing tool for companies that I can’t see that trend changing anytime soon.
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Indeed. The same fragmentation is happening all around the industry. Great for Devs but not in my opinion for consumers. Look at gaming, media extenders, smart phones, tablets and personal computers, the whole thing is a big filthy mess.
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It wasn’t the industry, it was Apple; specifically the iPhone.
But with HP’s WebOS announcement, iPad and its predecessors (2 and 3 rumors all over news this week) and Rupert even venturing into the digital content realm, mobile is no longer going to be dictated by just phones.
It is inefficient and costly to develop for iOS, Android, RIM, Windows/Nokia, WebOS and whatever other mobile OS.
I’m not saying the change is going to come today or tomorrow but it’ll happen sooner than later.
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And now, it’s moving back to the web. Or did you go to sleep after than app move thing?
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In game development both the open (i.e. PC) and closed (i.e. console) markets survive and thrive. I think both models will coexist on phones as well.
As an aside, it cracks me up when people say Apple’s approval process is so awful – you should see what it’s like to get a game approved on consoles.
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HTML5 and JS are going to win for 80% of the non game apps out there. There are to many platforms to write proprietary code. 5 major mobile OS’s, each with their own tablet, then a bunch of TV platforms. HTML5 is going to win, but it might not be distributed the way you think. The app store model has clear benefits, so I think the HTML apps won’t be in the browser, they’ll be embedded in the apps with things like phonegap. You probably already have some running on your iPhone or android device.
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Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
LikeLike
Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
LikeLike
Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
LikeLike
Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
LikeLike
Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
LikeLike
Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
LikeLike
Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
LikeLike
Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
LikeLike
Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
LikeLike
Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
LikeLike
Robert, I adore you but you are wrong. The future of mobile development is to be platform agnostic. Developers are going to start creating webb apps relying on HTML5/CSS3 so they don’t have to put up with the BS that is the app stores.
Do you know how much devs go through for Apple approvals?
And for Android devs, I feel so bad for them the app store is a mess and they don’t get the exposure they need.
I can go on but you get the idea, right?
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I do admit Robert that you’re right about not having used a Windows Phone 7 running phone. That said, I am still saving up the money (still a broke college student) that would allow me to buy phones running the different platforms and see which one works for me. Of course I could always try getting review units and going about it that way.
I do agree with you 100% on the article but I’m worried about a potential brain drain of the people who were working on Symbian, Meego and most of the Ovi services.
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Nokia already has lost a lot of those folks. Elop is gonna fix that problem another way: fire all the idiots inside Nokia and make the organization flatter, which will improve morale.
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Did you consider the numbers behind the deal?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-11/nokia-joins-forces-with-microsoft-to-challenge-dominance-of-apple-google.html
Some aspects of this partnership just do not add up, at least at the first glance.
1. Microsoft shipped approximately 2 million wp7 licenses in its first quarter on the market and Nokia shipped 28.3 million smartphones in that period. What will be the desired proportions of Symbian vs Meego vs wp7 in 2011-2013?
2. Nokia phones are comparatively expensive, that is in terms of pure horsepower it is already a better deal to buy e.g. Samsung. How much are they planning to charge for these wp7 phones? Currently n8 (and samsung galaxy s) is around 350 EUR, but components inside of n8 are quite far from the requirements of wp7. How are they planning to maintain reasonable margins, quality and competitive edge just selling hardware and leaving services to Microsoft and telcos? Is it a fight down to the bottom against Samsung and LG?
3. They will fire a lot employees in Finland, today I heard on bloomberg about ‘thousands’ to be laid off, and it will definitely damage their image in Europe. How are they planning to fight the PR problem? Moving it jobs to the US will not be popular here 😦
P.S. I am not a nokia fan; I have e90, it is still working as a resonable textmessaging phone. Weighting price/performance ratio I decided that it is the last nokia product I ever bought 🙂
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fire all the idiots.. ..will improve morale
Yeah, that always works
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Most carriers give you a 30 day trial of a phone (or some at least a week). Go ask and see.
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I had completely forgotten about that. Thanks I’ll see what phone I can get in about in about two weeks from now and post my findings on http://gadgeticmusings.net/.
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“So why has it sold so poorly then Smartass Scoble?”
“Because it has no apps.”
“What makes you feel stupid when buying a Smartphone? Buying one that doesn’t have the apps your friends are taunting you with.”
This is so very true and yet so hard to get across to people who dismiss apps as a fad. They sell phones. Otherwise why would every manufacturer include them in literally every single ad campaign at the moment.
If you watch people in bars and resturants, they are showing apps off to each other ‘look at this!’. I’ve never seen anyone of my friends show me a Ovi app.
Right now Microsoft is going around to agencies offering to pay for apps (in full, partially or via promotion) for their big brand clients. However it doesn’t look like its working.
To be honest with mobile budgets at the moment you have a hierarchy of platforms, iOS, Android and Mobile Web being the top 3 and if there is anything left in the pot maybe Blackberry.
WP7 is generally way down on the list unless it’s asked for specifically.
And if this continues to happen then you have another ‘no decent apps’ scenerio.
Another problem is speed, working at Nokia they are awfully slow to get something out the door. They have to get in there before the next iPhone and wave of NFC Androids.
Let’s give it 6 months
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I had a major developer tell me the legal team at Microsoft was just too difficult to deal with. They ended up turning down Microsoft’s money (I’ve now heard this from several developers — this is something Elop has to fix and fix fast).
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I heard the same, defo needs to change. Agreements were made then the legal team gets involved and then….nothing
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Robert… Now Nokia is supposed to fix Microsoft’s LEGAL TEAM!?! Oh come on, they just got taken to the cleaners by these guys. Nokia will have a hard enough time splitting the company into two (feature phone and smart phone units) and keeping them going through the conversion process.
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Your correct, it’s Robert that’s “nuts”
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Dear mark “I control the English language version of Mobile-review.com” webster:
“You’re”
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“Right now Microsoft is going around to agencies offering to pay for apps (in full, partially or via promotion) for their big brand clients. However it doesn’t look like its working.”
So Netflix, Kindle, Daily Motion, Flickr, facebook, Shazaam, ebay, Need for Speed, Assassins Creed, Monopoly, Fruit Ninja, Pocket God, Flight control means its not working?
I would think in fact that their strategy has been very successful indeed.
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Do you know what agencies do and how many of the apps you mentioned were not built by a agency?
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Do you know what agencies do and how many of the apps you mentioned were not built by a agency?
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Given that in the end it comes down to the presence or absence of “decent apps” that is irrelevant. WP7 already has plenty of decent apps and games, with more coming fast.
In fact anyone objective can see it is ramping up faster than Android, and at about the same pace as the iPhone did in its early days.
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This deal will speed that up.
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This deal will speed that up.
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Of course it’s relevant. And who do you think makes apps for most big brands? Agencies.
If you can’t attract them to a platform or to sell it into their clients then ..
Remember brands don’t rock up with a unlimited budget for mobile, they say we have ‘£X’ budget, here’s our brief. Very rarely will that budget cover more than 3 mobile platforms.
If the other apps work out well then a brand looks at covering the rest. That’s the reality
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“Right now Microsoft is going around to agencies offering to pay for apps (in full, partially or via promotion) for their big brand clients. However it doesn’t look like its working.”
So Netflix, Kindle, Daily Motion, Flickr, facebook, Shazaam, ebay, Need for Speed, Assassins Creed, Monopoly, Fruit Ninja, Pocket God, Flight control means its not working?
I would think in fact that their strategy has been very successful indeed.
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What’s really sad is that WP7 has more apps in 6 months than iOS had in 2 years. Amazing how people are so greedy these days.
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iOS didn’t have apps in its first year.
And WP7 has paid fully or partially for the development of almost all of its apps. It is still missing heaps of apps — many of which are simply restricted from existing such as Swype.
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The fact that iOS didn’t have apps in its first year DOES NOT MATTER TODAY. The world is different than it was back then. Geesh.
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Exactly, iOS has 400, 000 apps and apps are expected to be there from day 1 now.
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Best post ever!
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Robert, very nicely articulated!! However, here are some reactions to your posts:
1. As you rightly point out, APPS are the driving force behind adoption of smart phones. Consumers really do not care about whether they are using iOS or Android as long as they can run the desires apps. Nokia really needed some help here, but WP7 is struggling in this respect itself. May be WP7 is a superior OS, but that does not seem to be front and center in consumers mind.
May be Nokia made the right choice, but I am finding it difficult to see how Microsoft will help Nokia. The stock markets do not seem to like this decision either. Meanwhile, I was just reading the fate of previous MS mobile partners (http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/11/in-memoriam-microsofts-previous-strategic-mobile-partners/)
2. Android commoditization is a misnomer to me. Motorola and HTC seem to be the dominant ones. Given Nokia’s strengths (e.g., distribution, hardware), they are in a much better position to out-compete any Android phones. Given Nokia’s clout, Google would have bent backwards to work with Nokia.
Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how this evolves.
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Samsung is well on its way to being the dominant global brand-name Android-based phone maker. It’s already pulled about even with HTC, despite starting about a year later. It’s got tremendous supply chain and distribution advantages.
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Oops….thanks for bringing Sammy back in the discussion. In fact, Samsung’s ascent just supports the argument that I was making earlier. Samsung has better brand equity and distribution as compared to both Motorola and HTC and this helped Samsung become a dominant glabal brand-name Android phone maker.
In the mobile space, it is difficult to argue that Nokia has a much better penetration and brand recall. If Samsung was able to differentiate its wares from the other Android phones, why can’t Nokia?
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Multitasking OS? Symbian, yes. WP7, no. That is all.
Apps? Seriously?
http://maemo.org/downloads/Maemo5
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Foodspotting? No.
Word Lens? No.
360 Pano? No.
Star app? No.
Shall I go on? I could for hours.
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Scoble, you should seriously visit Getjar.com, also don’t compare the apps on iPhone with others, it’s the developers who have to create apps not platforms.
Once Android fixes their issues with the market, they will see more developers. It is hard though for Windows because of their botched marketplace.
Anyways, I am a mobile app developer and seriously made my company think about developing HTML5 apps rather than platform specific apps. who wants to take the headaches of redeveloping the same thing over and over again.
I believe many developers think like me too and in the coming year you will see tons of apps available as HTML5 apps rather than platform specific apps, except for maybe games.
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Funny, I just had dinner with GetJar’s CEO. Agreed that HTML5 will see more apps, there are a range of apps that don’t need platform-specific stuff.
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Grow up.
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You didn’t look very hard, did you…
Star app:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/Maemo5/orrery/
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Foodspotting? No.
Word Lens? No.
360 Pano? No.
Star app? No.
Shall I go on? I could for hours.
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I am a android dev and I sort of agree that Nokia had no choice but to go with WP7. They could have heavily skinned Android to differentiate and add services on top of if, but they don’t need to do that with WP7. And since WP7 hasn’t really got on yet, they can be more involved in the direction of the platform.
However, I think Nokia is dead regardless.
WP7 might have been the better pick but it doesn’t mean it will be successful.
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This was the only choice that Nokia had. Android was a pool in which to drown in commoditization. I outlined this back on Tuesday in my post The Burning Platform- Why Windows Phone 7 Makes Sense for Nokia http://newdigitalcafe.com/?p=2616
Symbian was rapidly losing mindshare among consumers and enterprise users alike. WP7 is a great UI, but I agree, it has not sold a lot of phones yet! There has been so much focus on the tablet wars this past year that the smartphone war now has time to re-adjust.
For several year’s I’ve been saying that the industry can not support 6 smartphone OSes- Apple, Android, BlackBerry, Windows, Symbian, WebOS and that we would see at least one or two shake out by late 2010/early 2011. So one has.
HP is putting all its chips behind WebOS now. We’ll see how global they can get.
@randygiusto and @ipsosvantis
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I agree – the industry has to go through further consolidation – I can see HP buying up RIM over the next 24 months. If HP can execute – they can carve out a huge business that a bit more focused on SME – Apple has the premium consumer market that leaves Google and Microsoft to battle it out in the mass consumer market. I also believe over time we’ll see a shift to more and more HTML browser based app that gives “publishers” direct access to their customers rather than having to deal with the vagaries of the apps sorts rules.
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This was the only choice that Nokia had. Android was a pool in which to drown in commoditization. I outlined this back on Tuesday in my post The Burning Platform- Why Windows Phone 7 Makes Sense for Nokia http://newdigitalcafe.com/?p=2616
Symbian was rapidly losing mindshare among consumers and enterprise users alike. WP7 is a great UI, but I agree, it has not sold a lot of phones yet! There has been so much focus on the tablet wars this past year that the smartphone war now has time to re-adjust.
For several year’s I’ve been saying that the industry can not support 6 smartphone OSes- Apple, Android, BlackBerry, Windows, Symbian, WebOS and that we would see at least one or two shake out by late 2010/early 2011. So one has.
HP is putting all its chips behind WebOS now. We’ll see how global they can get.
@randygiusto and @ipsosvantis
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I’m an Android user and big fan, but Nokia/WP7 combination puts them back on the market for me. My sister has the HTC Mozart and she loves it, and playing around with the OS is a really nice experience.
I haven’t moved to WP7 yet cause of the lack of apps. Nokia adopting WP7 gives Microsoft more phones out in the market, which entices more developers to write for the platform.
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Hi Scoble = Halley here. Thanks for this reasonable blog post, but you know I’m a little biased as my husband is a Nokia Senior Software Engineer and should hear a little more today at his office about what’s next for his team.
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There are over 8,000 apps in the WP7 Marketplace, which I believe is more than webOS and approaching what BB has. That’s not bad for a phone that has only been out for just about 3 months. They are seeing over 400 apps released each week and many are high quality ones. The Xbox LIVE games are awesome too.
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Exactly and with Nokia on board the app developers will pour more resources into this. They all just got the signal that Microsoft AND Nokia are serious.
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I don’t think that that necessarily follows. WP7 programming is not Symbian programming – if you’re moving off Symbian development you’re going to go to iOS and/or Android as that’s where the users are. You’ve already been burned by Nokia (there were just saying QT was the way forward, now it’s not), so why would you stick with them? Nokia and Microsoft might be sending signals that they’re serious, but all that means is that they’re serious about a platform that few people appear to want.
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The Nokia developers don’t matter. They can go wherever they want. They weren’t doing the bleeding edge innovative apps (name one innovative app developed for Symbian only lately). Those folks already are on iOS. So, you gotta convince the iOS folks to take your platform seriously.
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Like I said, Nokia doesn’t have smart software leaders. I don’t know that they could put this through.
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not only that OVI was a money losing business. They have been searching for a leader for it for almost two years. I was approached by a leading search firm looking for this person about a year ago, and it was clear that it was far from profitability and they wanted them in London, Espoo, or Boston. That was a clear mistake because they needed to be in the Valley of LA where the content is. NYC, maybe.
After 10 years of trekking to Espoo I’d say they had decent SW leaders once, but the industry and the capabilities by others changed dramatically and pulled their rug out from under them.
Where they have struggled, and continue to struggle is services. Navteq one exception.
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NYC? London’s a better place for app developers than anywhere on the East Coast. Agreed that California’s the only sensible choice, though.
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I don’t understand that. If they had done this, they would specifically have NOT needed to worry about the software side of things. The irony is that by not touching the software, and by letting Google handle all the OS updates, they would have differentiated themselves from every other manufacturer on the market.
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Slight problem with this is that if Nokia were successful doing this (no customization), the other vendors and carriers could stop very easily. Android is a race to the bottom for manufacturers.
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Mary McDowell is smart as hell. Worked with her at Compaq in Houston in the early 90’s when she put NT Server on the map and killed NetWare. Wouldn’t be surprised at all if some of those same Microsoft contacts were involved in this deal.
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At Nokia Mary has been managed to create unbroken chain of failures. She destroyed Nokia in US, she destroyed the business/enterprise phone segment for Nokia. I was sure she would be ousted based on results, or lack of them, but apparently Elop likes yes-(wo)men.
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HTC is from Taiwan, not China!
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I agree and would like to extend: I love Nokia Phones. Top hardware. my N95 had better (and more) hardware than anything else for 3 years. I hate Symbian. Why? I can’t even listen to audiobooks! It’s impossible! There is NO software. Why? Because coders are stupid! The market is unbelievable! nokia still has 34% market share! apple has 2%! http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1421013 Still, complaining does not help.
I love Windows. Why? Software! more than anywhere else! Every game, every tool, every nieche product is there for Windows. Now combine best hardware, best distribution and most widespread operating system (windows owns the world and even if you like iOS Stats are clear) and thus the best syncing experience, the broadest code-support, the best and most diverse hardware driver support and there are no limits to the potential. now if only they execute it well. AND if only enough developers realize their chance! with mobile and fixed computers fusing for work and fun ever more having great sync, apps that run on full-sized hardware just like on your mobile will be key. And I will buy the very first Nokia Windows 7 device that’s out, simply because it’ll make my life so much easier!
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I agree 100% with your take on this. Microsoft was having slow sales. Nokia had TWO old OS’s that would take years to bake. Together though they have a modern OS with a hardware maker that has a huge global reach, and as noted TONS of carrier agreements for things like billing which is vital to a successful app store (Apple is only able to get by because of the wide reach of iTunes already, everyone else needs to bill through the carrier to be competitive). This means a really strong three way race with each player having massive strengths. Going to be a fun few years.
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I agree 100% with your take on this. Microsoft was having slow sales. Nokia had TWO old OS’s that would take years to bake. Together though they have a modern OS with a hardware maker that has a huge global reach, and as noted TONS of carrier agreements for things like billing which is vital to a successful app store (Apple is only able to get by because of the wide reach of iTunes already, everyone else needs to bill through the carrier to be competitive). This means a really strong three way race with each player having massive strengths. Going to be a fun few years.
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I think Microsoft will succeed here, most people buying android or WP7 don’t care about OS or apps, they are just looking for the latest mobile phone (MOST, does not include you guys reading this) so good distribution, brand and availability is what matters in this space, Nokia is the best for Microsoft.
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If its all about Apps then its also all about the developer platform and platform reach. Microsoft has the best dev platform and Nokia brings the reach.
This deal looks very sound to me,.
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Great to see the positivity around this collaboration! We look forward to delivering our first Nokia Windows Phones in 2012 to ensuring that your experience with Nokia is even better than before!
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Scoble, I just snagged an HTC HD7 to test out for a few weeks. I’ll post my thoughts and reactions on RickyCadden.com (and maybe MobileRnR.com).
I agree with you. Nokia has demonstrated time and time again that they suck at software. This morning, my computer was running slow, so I pulled up the process manager – 160MB of RAM was going to Ovi Suite. I haven’t connected my N8 to my computer in several days. WTF?
Here’s to the future, whatever the crap it’s going to look like.
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its just too late for me since I got Android in July. I could try WP7 but why would I? I also have year and hall left on contract but think it would be a step down.
There are other people who’ll try it if they haven’t used Android or iPhone lol
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I predicted this yesterday: http://splatinteractive.tv/2011/02/nokia-to-partner-with-microsoft/
The prediction was: “Nokia and Microsoft will enter into a strategic partnership that will increase overall sales of WP7 phones, but will not materially affect the declining sales figures for Nokia smartphones. They will make this choice because it is a better corporate fit, not because it is the best long-term bet.”
Why do I say it won’t help Nokia’s market share? Elop himself has said you have to market into an ecosystem. The problem is that ecosystems build on the network effect and Android already has momentum. Any arguments about technical excellence (right are not) are wasted effort, because that isn’t the determining factor. WP7 is a lost cause in the long run.
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You are forgetting Xbox. This can work, but it will demand that Elop not just is a master strategist, but someone who can execute. So far Nokia execs who are working with him are impressed. We’ll see, but at least this company has turned the corner into the reality-based world. That’s HUGE.
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You are forgetting Xbox. This can work, but it will demand that Elop not just is a master strategist, but someone who can execute. So far Nokia execs who are working with him are impressed. We’ll see, but at least this company has turned the corner into the reality-based world. That’s HUGE.
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How much money did MS pump into XBox before it started to be profitable, in a market with almost no competition? If it took an astounding amount of cash to succeed in market with two competitors (both with closed platforms) how much is going to take to compete in a market with several platforms (some closed, some open) and loads of manufacturers?
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No competition? Ever heard of the Playstation?
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LIke I said – almost no competition … market with two competitors (both with closed platforms)
Did I really need to explicitly state Sony and Nintendo?
So, they had only 2 competitors to contend with in games compared to mobile where they have Apple/iOS, Crackberry, Samsung/bada, HP/webOS and the ever increasing legion of Android makers. If it took a vast amount of money to get anywhere in games with a tiny amount of competitors how much is going to cost them to get anywhere in mobile where they have dozens (if not hundreds) of competitors?
If anything, Nokia’s going cost them extra – if you’re one of Microsoft’s other WP7 makers are you going to stick with MS now that they have their new super special best friend Nokia and your WP7 phones have had dismal sales compared to their Android siblings? Probably not, unless MS give you something in return.
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Its not really how many competitors there are its how dominant they are, when the XBox launched nobody though they had a chance against Sony, look at them now. Its simple incorrect to say Sony was almost no competition, they pretty much owned the console market.
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I am not buying this XBox argument. The total of all Xbox consoles sold since 2001 is 70 million. There are 30 million Xbox Live users. However, the users are located not exactly where Nokia is strong, because Xbox Live does not work in the developing world (see the map at the bottom of the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Live)
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Neat UI on WP7. Personally, can’t consider it due to lack of a file manager, mass storage mode, multitasking, and it’s as tied to a Win/Mac client as iOS is.
You shouldn’t have to run Win or OSX to fully use a smartphone.
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Broadly agree with your post and I am a dyed-in-the-wool Nokia fan (though not nuts).
It wasn’t the only way that Elop could have gone. He could have built and put all resources behind Meego and Qt. The results would have been amazing, and could have been delivered much sooner than the first Nokia WP7 phones will be. I doubt whether any major roadblocks with Meego were technical and I’m sure that’s a key reason why Microsoft was chosen.
Nokia’s company culture sucked, it was bloated, arrogant and blind to reality, it never understood the web (Ovi was an absolute disaster). There’s a huge swathe of middle-management who will never realise that _they_ are the people responsible for the pivot we see today. They will always want to blame someone else for what has happened.
There’s a whole lot of interesting opportunities now provided that cuture can be/has been changed and the strategy executed.
PS: Qt in particular has an excellent developer community that today feels like it’s been shat on from a very great height. Do please try and maintain some empathy for those developers.
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From what i heard from Nokia execs they just don’t believe in Meego. Plus, their message with third-party developers just wasn’t working. Nokia couldn’t get USA-based developers (which are 70% of what matters to this app world) enthused by Meego, no matter what. Nokia realized this. Microsoft, however, does have some traction here and good relationships with developers. This is a far better choice.
Remember, the ONLY thing that matters is apps. Meego was NEVER going to get them there.
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Not sure “the ONLY thing that matters is apps”. Integration, usability and hardware are higher consumer draws. Never having seen MeeGo, most can’t speculate how good this would have been. Agree that M7 stacks-up well against Android 2.2 now – but 2.3 is pending and GOOG iterate MUCH faster than MSFT. People are shocked why Nokia shifted from an OS with maybe 30% worldwide market share to M7 (1.5%). They also remember Sendo/Kin drops from MSFT.
It would be great to get your follow-on views on the Elop announcement around how the company is now split (Smart devices/phones).
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As I understand it, any Nokia exec approved to brief people like yourself would have been be on-message and ambivalent on Meego for quite a while.
Intel have stated that they are ‘not blinking’ on Meego. That’s a great decision.
Native apps are very important, yes. Web apps are also important. I founded a mobile app dev co in 2006 – in Beijing. Naturally, I’m inclined to disagree with you on the US 70% RoW 30% metric too.
Guess we can agree that for Nokia and Microsoft it all comes down to execution now. With 1,000 feisty Finns walking out in denial yesterday, that’s not looking good.
We’re going to see just how good a leader Stephen Elop really is, in short time.
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Yes, Symbian is flawed and was NOT going to enthuse developers. Elop realized this and scrapped it. Have you ever talked with a third-party developer? I have. They hated Symbian.
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we hate 7 phone 7 windows 7 phone 7, too
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They hated C++, not Qt.
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I agree, apps are what make the platform. Since there are no apps on WP7, will Nokia users just migrate to a new platform? It just seems to me that this is a “swing for the fences” shot here for Nokia, like one last try before becoming irrelevant.
Will Nokia just use internal resources to build-out the apps that Microsoft can’t seem to conjure any third-parties to write.
The problem with Microsoft is they are damaged goods and I don’t know if they have what it takes to be relevant any more. MS used to be a giant marketing machine but now they seem like Godzilla in a bad Japanese film just swatting at things in the air hoping to knock something down. It has been a long time since they “got it” and more developers are migrating from MS as opposed to migrating to them. WP7 may be a rocking OS but MS is the company nobody likes or will give a chance to any longer.
Just my 2 cents.
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WP7 has about 6,000 apps on it already. That’s far from “none.” But they have a long way to go. The thing is, will developers take WP7 seriously now? Certainly they will take it more seriously than yesterday. But, like I said, execution is what matters now that the strategy is set.
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Right, they do have 6,000 apps but I was comparing to Apple. 6000 vs. Apple is almost none. I think folks will wait for apps but it is still up to the developers. Can they make money on the platform? I am a developer and I stand a decent chance of making money on iOS but very unlikely on Android. From what I see with WP7, no one is making money with it because there are few users. There has to be a draw for devs to come and it is usually money.
Bottom line, if people won’t pay for apps the devs won’t come. I certainly would not waste my time on Android just to give my app away HOPING I can make it in advertising. It can be done, is being done, but I can’t rely on it.
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In reply to rbazinet — thread didn’t work right; I did something wrong…
Try comparing 6000 apps to the “quality” apps for the iOS. Quantity isn’t everything. Also, the whole “no one is making money” thing is chicken and egg. “If you build it, they will come.” – yeah a bit simplistic, but there’s some truth in that.
Also development productivity (via Silverlight and XNA) for the WP7 will prove to be much improved over Objective-C / Cocoa Touch.
It will happen. Don’t decided on day one. Come back in a year or so and say you haven’t changed your mind.
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I understand what you are saying, WP7 is young and you are right. I am comparing what *might* happen to WP7 as what *is* happening on Android, lots of apps but few are willing to pay.
I also agree there is a ton of really crappy apps on iOS but there is also a lot of really good apps that people are actually paying for. I have an iPhone and a Droid X and the experience means a lot, Android is crap, in my humble opinion. I have heard a lot of good things about WP7 but not having played with one, I have to reserve judgement.
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Actually there are over 8000 apps now, and the app store is growing at around 1000 apps every few weeks. Some of the big development houses are starting to notice, and there are many indie devs that are filling in the gaps. Not to mention some of the apps are stunningly beautiful examples of how powerful Silverlight can be ( http://youtu.be/Qghf4e2n0Yc ).
http://wmpoweruser.com/over-8000-apps-in-the-wp7-marketplace-growing-same-pace-as-iphone-appstore-much-faster-than-android-market-did/
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People are still buying Nokia symbian phones in truckloads, wherein no. and quality of apps is poor. WP7 gives atleast a better experience, and growing ecosystem. But both of them need to sprint. It is a marathon but other players are 20 miles ahead.
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People are still buying Nokia symbian phones in truckloads, wherein no. and quality of apps is poor. WP7 gives atleast a better experience, and growing ecosystem. But both of them need to sprint. It is a marathon but other players are 20 miles ahead.
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I don’t know if it’s about apps as much as it is ecosystems. Apple has the iTunes ecosystem of which the App Store plays a big role. It includes easy updates, backups, media syncing etc. Which is compelling to users. But Android and Windows Phone both have different ecosystems that are also compelling to certain users. Android has Google services such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Maps, Picasa and a plethora of other Google centric tie-ins that are more useful to certain users. Microsoft brings Office, Zune and Xbox Live to the table.
Apple has a more attractive ecosystem to most users and developers therefore they see more adoption and customer satisfaction. Apps are obviously a huge part of that, one thing to keep in mind though is that most apps are simply front-ends for web sites. The main reason they exist is the constraints of both mobile screen real-estate and mobile browser power. I agree with @Mona that the future of apps is platform agnostic.
Nokia (Elop) has recognized the importance of a strong ecosystem and has found one in Windows Phone 7.
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Nokia also singlehandedly created a market for mobile phones as fashionable gadgets. Look at the black plastic brick phones from the late 90’s and see the evolution, with colourful and sometimes zany designs and fantastic additional features. And what do we see on the shelf now? Row upon row of identical black plastic slabs.
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I always felt that Meego was a distraction from what Maemo could have been. The N900 was such a great device for it’s time, but instead of focusing on it Nokia decided to partner with Intel and start the process all over again.
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And now once more with MSFT
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Completely disagree here. WP7 is up and running and out in production, Meego seems nowhere near complete. Nokia don’t have to spend time and resources on OS framework & UI design anymore, only integration with existing Ovi services.
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1. WP7 is up and running and out in production?!? What about the promised copy and paste and multitasking?
2. only integration with existing Ovi services?!? Same as saying the WP7 only needs integration into iTumes and you’ll have an iPhone killer
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So… How much did they pay you to write this down? :)) You are “Gone with the Wind” bro :)) As I say it before: Eslop is the Poison Apple of Ugly Queen/Blue Screen (Microsoft) for White Snow (Nokia) :))) Read my lips: Nokia is going down with this stupid move.
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I am not paid by Nokia. Thanks for playing the game.
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HAHAHA the market tells you All about this stupid Move. Nokia drop “just” 14% of the price. As I said it “Mark my Words” Nokia buried :))
This is why you flagged my answer? :))) Mubarak? :)))
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And btw, i ask you who pay you not that you were paied by Nokia :))))) My question still goes to you. Your flag still comes to me? :)))
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Robert, it seems our latest discussion was not so far off the mark as we thought
Yes WP7, Yes Symbian will not be dropped on the spot but will continue to be developed (perhaps “even” slower) for as long there is reasonable demand, and MeeGo is not ready yet and is used as a future scout?
I wish them luck, I would buy an E7 with WP7, on the spot.
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This is a great deal for MS; whether it’s a good deal for Nokia remains to be seen. Nokia as a commodity hardware manufacturer making phones running stock WP7 is competing with the likes of HTC, and needs to cut its workforce by ~90% and get used to a life with 2% profit margin and very marginal stock growth. The principle profits in computing are always at the non-substitutable platform levels.
MS has a platform in WP7, and MS is a platform company, well used to extracting rents by exploiting the inability of vendors to make the underlying platform easily substitutable. The more developers they can attract, especially developers who are exclusive to their platform, the more lock-in they can get, and fight against Apple lock-in, Android lock-in, etc. Makes their platform sticky.
Nokia had a couple of platforms, and they were in deep trouble. But by now decisively abandoning those platforms, they have not shown that they have any platform strategy. If they ship a stock WP7 – and it remains to be seen that they will – using an MS store, MS dev tools and the whole kit, then they really are screwed, and the market will cut the stock down to its appropriate size. The stock may have been inflated in the past over uncertainty over potential platform rents; by decisively forgoing those rents, the potential future upside on profits is forgone, and the stock should fall back.
I think Nokia is still in deep trouble, not because they risk going out of business, but because they have now effectively given up on being a major player in what phones become in the future. I hope they have a secret back-up plan.
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The real winner is Microsoft. Nokia will make sure ‘Windows Phone 7’ brand is marketed with every advert. This will make other manufacturer (Samsung, Moto, HTC, etc) also jump into bandwagon seeing the popularity. MS will forget their old partner Nokia. Then it will be too late for Nokia to realise the situation. All said..they do not have any other choice it is a burning platform, it will burn slowly rather than fast just like Yahoo-Bing..but will ultimately go down.
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Android > iOS > WP7 > Symbian
WP7 – Symbian – Meego = FAIL
Android is selling 4x faster than iOS, about 300x faster than WP7.
Android sales will only accelerate while iOS sales are going down and WP7 sales will go nowhere.
UIs mean little compared to the ecosystems, Android is by far the best ecosystem.
Ecosystem = Manufacturers + Developers
The only manufacturers making WP7 do it at gun point with Microsoft basically threatening them (see Motorola) with lawsuits if they don’t make WP7 smartphones. Nobody is actually buying WP7 devices and carriers don’t even want it.
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Yup, but this does change the game more than you are willing to state. But, yeah, both Microsoft and Nokia are in a deep hole together. It’s smart to join forces when you are in a deep hole, though.
And don’t count out iOS. At the recent LIFT conference in Europe most of the audience had iPhones. I don’t see that changing noticeably. Apps will drive sales and profits. Apple has most of the profits for a reason and they will use those profits to make sure developers keep building the best apps for its platform.
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Scoble, once again you miss the boat. I know you have made it, and are no longer alligned to a single organization, but wake up dude.
MSFT and Nokia are the two dead last players in the mobile segment. They will burn a ton of cash, and take too long to be relevant.
Who is their target audience, people who have NEVER seen a real smart device (Android, iPhone), so they can promise features, yet fall way behind the curve?
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I’m an Apple fan and was first in line for both the iPhone and iPad (literally). So, my cred as being “in the boat” is well intact. That said, Nokia and Microsoft together get them into the back of the boat. They weren’t there before.
Thanks for playing!
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I’m an Apple fan and was first in line for both the iPhone and iPad (literally). So, my cred as being “in the boat” is well intact. That said, Nokia and Microsoft together get them into the back of the boat. They weren’t there before.
Thanks for playing!
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But if that strategy proved successful, other manufacturers would just copy it, then Nokia would just be a commodity again.
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But if that strategy proved successful, other manufacturers would just copy it, then Nokia would just be a commodity again.
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You seem to have no idea or knowledge of the possibilities that were just coming with Qt, while speaking about your Apps, Apps, Apps. Qt could have become the next platform, with webOS, even Android and iOS, if executed well.
Why don’t you jump over to the dev site of Nokia and have a look at the developers’ comments under today’s announcement of killing Qt and MeeGo.
http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/nokia-developer-news/2011/02/11/letter-to-developers?sf1066337=1&
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i think my first comment on this topic was a little bit harsh today:
“the Nokia/MS partnership feels like watching a sexscene with Joan Collins & Hugh Hefner. It might work but it will take forever”
Robert, i am really getting your points but the problem is, when you add two units of mobile computing valium (Nokia and Microsoft), you won’t get mobile ecstacy.
I hope that i am wrong cause i adore Nokia for it’s build quality and the strongest distribution channel in the world but this seems to me like a very desperated move. Even though they can exclusively change the GUI of WP7 (can’t wait to hear the complains of all those other WP7 manufacturers), they are not unique at all. WP7 is dragging them down on a level, where they will face a tough competition from all these asian companies, even though Nokia still has this amazing brand equity.
WP7 isn’t bad Robert, not at all. Same with the Xbox, i have 2 of them. But they just have no chance against the app and revision avalanche of Android and iOS. No chance, nada!
Consoles are becoming obsolete, by the end of the year we will have smartphone platforms with way more performance than any console. Hook it up to your TV-set and you can not only share your media content but also play your games on the big screens (well you can already do that with the NVIDIA Tegra 2 phones but i am talking about the next generation quadcore Cortex-A9 and beyond).
Consoles are a dying species and interconnections between a console and a smartphone are just… well, they make no sense.
Robert, i dunno anyone who can make a prediction over 6, 9 or 12 months right now. 2011 is the year of the real mobile revolution (even though we are talking about it for ages)and i know one thing for sure: If Nokia and Microsoft are going to screw this one up, they have a problem.
P.S. I have to add that i am a huge fan of Elop! Finally someone who doesn’t seem to have this typical Nokia arrogancy (“we are Nokia. We deserve to have our own OS”)and who can kick some butts. They needed it!
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If you got me drunk I’d probably end up agreeing with you. But, I keep hoping there will be a third strong competitor. So, see, I’m nuts too! 🙂
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I would even love to see a competitve webOS and BlackBerry ecosystem. Competition always drives innovation! I am just doubting that Microsoft can be innovative when it comes to mobile platforms but i have no doubt, that Nokia is capable of building great phones.
and by the way, we are all nuts, that’s why we are so excited about technology 😉
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I would agree that Nokia shouldn’t go Android way. But not because “Windows Phone 7 actually rocks and actually is a lot nicer to use than Android.”
Robert Scoble, do you actually believe in that?
“Microsoft has great developer tools”
I know you didn’t try to work with those tools, Robert. Are you aware, that they take an enormous amount of computer resources, so you need a super-powerful machine to actually develop.
Do you know that it can only work under Windows 7 or latest Win Server 2008 incarnation?
Do you know it cannot work inside Microsoft’s own Virtual Server hosted VM?
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Any serious developer has nice machines with Windows 7 on them anyway. Unless you’re developing for iOS, in which case you have a Mac. THAT actually +is+ a huge impediment to getting developers excited by Windows Phone 7. Microsoft should have cut the Windows OS “strategy tax” a long time ago.
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What I’m not getting is why they felt the need to lock themselves into one OS? Samsung, LG and HTC is developing phones for both Android and W7 why not Nokia? You make some good points about why W7 makes sense for them, but all those points would still be valid if they made phones for both systems and they would have the added bonus of getting all the Android fanatics loving them as well.
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All I can say about this topic, it’s SAD for meego and qt, because of huge potential.
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indeed, MeeGo has huge potential and devs were really excited about it. Ditching MeeGo would mean that Nokia has no tablet strategy, ouch!
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“3. Microsoft has great developer tools.”
Nokia *had* great developer tools. Qt Quick was a pretty neat way to make native applications using webapp style development.
Additionally, many app developers were from the open source crowd just because Nokia was leveraging Linux. How many of those Linux developers are going to jump at the chance to switch to Windows-only tools? Nokia has to attract a new developer-base now.
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Nobody has mentioned India in this so far. I think it forms a crucial element in this considering it is Nokia’s largest market.
From what I understand, Nokia has split the company into two divisons, ‘smart devices’ with WP7 (aimed at North America) and ‘mobile phones’ with S40/S60/Symbian (aimed at India).
The partnership is a great idea but if it fails, then it will be because Nokia did not think about extending its Indian ‘cash cow’ to build a new ‘rising star’. In fact, it has ignored it completely and now appears to be focused on the iphone/android sector in a geography it is currently largely absent from (US).
This strategic error is even more significant because Nokia and Microsoft expect to ship large volumes only starting 2012. India is going to become even more attractive by then. It is the world’s fastest growing mobile market (and the 2nd largest) with 752 million subscribers in Feb 2011. It also has the youngest population. More of these guys are going to want better phones and they already love Nokia. Sure, its smaller in dollar terms now, but 2015 could be a totally different story right?
Phones developed for western markets do not work in India – they never will. This is partly the reason Apple has been a non-winner in India, other being import duties and lack of local knowledge.
Nokia has a manufacturing plant in India. It has tons of local knowledge. It could have leveraged its experience in India by shipping WP7 smartphones tailored to the market. This could have happened if it was able to define an integrated strategy. However, as the new Smart division is not focused on India, this is not going to happen as much as it should have.
Big failure for Nokia. The biggest winner out of today’s announcement is going to be Samsung – but the markets don’t think. At least not yet!
[There, I just wrote a whole blog post in a single comment!]
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WP7 is on an upward trend. You are just another idiot who makes things up to be negative. Sad.
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Heh. Yes, it’s on an upward (very very gradual) trend. Up is the only way it could go. It certainly can’t go down any farther.
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Heh. Yes, it’s on an upward (very very gradual) trend. Up is the only way it could go. It certainly can’t go down any farther.
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It’s been available for 4 moths. How it could possibly be the leading os? But if we compere it giving it a same time frame as competition, then: It has same number of apps as Apple had and way more what Android had when it shipped. I’d say that this deal just created a another Apple in smart phone business = Nokia. They just gained overnight the online services capabilities they were lacking, connections to both consumers, on-line players and corporate users – the whole Microsoft ecosystem. And they have HW and one of the best manufacturing capabilities in the world.
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That is so true: The fucked their loyal developers. Meego would have been the better choice for customers and developers – but maybe cariers played an important role and the money from Microsoft.
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Windows marketing power may work in the U.S. – the ex-Microsoft CEO of Nokia seems to think it will. Hopefully they don’t smother MeeGo in the process, because the rest of the world seems to think that Open software is preferable to Microsoft.
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Just like OSS is beating Microsoft on the desktop?
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Kinect hotter than iPad … what stats is that statement based on? It’s stated like it’s a fact … any room for debate there? Kinect is the Wii, very hot (and really cool) but the “what’s next” question is tough – revenue will flatten and then decrease.
In my opinion, it’s not that WP7 will continue to not matter. It’s that it will never matter as much as iOS or Android. Most people just don’t go out and buy smart phones for fun. It’s a major purchase and expense. Right now WP7 is a novelty – nice or not, it doesn’t matter. Mr. Elop should have considered the tablet question in the frame of 12-18 months, I think he’s looking at it more like a 3 -5 year question – Nokia and MSFT execs fail to realize how fast markets are moving today. Windows 7 on tablets while Apple and Google both use mobile OS platforms? Who is in those MSFT meetings? Check your ego at the door – the top 2 and HP have already shown you the way. Windows 7 will never be a major player in tablets.
iOS is barely staying out in front of Android and it has a 1 year head start and WP7 is going to catch up? That’s not happening. Nokia has distribution, so we’ll get a lot more of those WP7 “sales numbers” but people ultimately buy phones, this is about the consumer. MSFT has enough money to make WP7 the Bing of smart phone operating systems. Great because it keeps Apple and Google on their toes, but most people are extremely satisfied with the best two options. You just can’t buy market share with TV commercials like you could 10 years ago. Before you get to “why not” buy a WP7, you need a “why”.
Nokia’s platform is on fire. MSFT makes all their money from client/server – isn’t that burning as well? Interesting debate if you’re over 35. Non sensical for everyone else.
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What do you mean iOS is barely staying out in front of Android?
iOS has been behind Android most of last year.
Android would have just overtaken Symbian for the first time last month.
29% marketshare (Android) vs 17% (iOS)
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Um, read the LA Times from January 10, 2011: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/01/android-beats-apple-in-market-share.html
In US:
Blackberry-maker Research In Motion continues to lead in market share, with 33.5% of U.S. smart phone subscribers for the three months ending in November 2010. But it lost market share to Google’s Android platform, which was up from 19.6% to 26% in the period.
Google narrowly beat Apple for second place. Apple took 25% of the market.
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Sorry, I thought we were talking about worldwide marketshare. I don’t really care about the US and it’s a shame that Elop *only* cares about US.
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Ahh.
Repeat after me: the only thing that matters is apps.
USA drives most of the app companies. That’s why USA marketshare is so important. But, even more important, is the share amongst developers. I noticed the developer I had dinner with last night had Android. Listen in here: http://scobleizer.com/2011/02/12/developers-tell-me-im-nuts-and-say-nokia-rim-microsoft-are-still-screwed/
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What we don’t know is what did Microsoft have to give up in order to be on Nokia handsets?
Everybody is focusing too much on Microsoft being the winner on this deal. I doubt that Nokia is that stupid, they are not! WP7 could end up being the largest mobile OS in a couple of years especially if Nokia manages to push down a version of WP7 to lower end handsets.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this deal includes a free license of WP7 for Nokia in exchange for search revenue ect. and perhaps some kind of exclusivity.
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Even if WP7 was free it doesn’t help much.
Microsoft was paying Nokia to use its maps (Navteq) and now it doesn’t need to.
Microsoft gets money from every Nokia WP with Marketplace and Bing search anyway.
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While a radical change in strategy was expected, it is not aggressive enough.
On a previous post on my blog I shared some thoughts on what Nokia should be doing; some implemented on this new strategy (such as transitioning out of Symbian), but more is needed. And while the new relationship with Microsoft is a start, it is the wrong kind of start IMO, and it points to the fact that Nokia is not understanding its real threats. Nokia’s real threats are:
1) Apple with its iPhone, and,
2) The manufacturers of Android devices; this is, HCT, Samsung and the the like. Note that I didn’t say Google or Android. Google is the enabler and indirect beneficiary (in big ways).
Relationship with Microsoft will help fence off HCT and similar just on the WP7 front, but that is a tiny front. If Nokia thinks that Microsoft is going to take Nokia to the next level, they are not.
:
Perhaps this is only the beginning of a series of changes that will expand across Mobile platforms, including the complete strategy for high-end smartphones I prev mentioned that puts emphasis on the app layer and services, in addition to spreading their HW design across mobile OSes; that is the differentiation Nokia must execute.
For low-end phone, S40 is fine. MeeGo should not be dropped as it gives Nokia an opportunity to innovate and differentiate on the mobile OS area; and it should be kept as an “R&D” effort; which means, continue investing on it while waiting what happens next.
:
Read the whole things here if you care:
http://weblog.cenriqueortiz.com/mobility/2011/02/11/reaction-to-nokia-2011-strategy-announcement-and-microsoft-relationship/
ceo
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One reason I really hate nokia for doing this is accessibility. Now, I am totally blind. Symbian had a well established screen reader. Microsoft ignored disabled people completely, since they built in totally no accessibility API’s to windows phone seven. So right now, as it stands, if you don’t want an iPhone or can’t get one then going with symbian was a good alternative… but now it’s like… yeah.
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my first AT&T phone was a Nokia 6200, nice little phone 🙂
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And what about for people that want to be able to do everything from their phone (manage their phone, do work, do updates, everything).
I thought Android was my alternative lined up but I was updating a friends Xperia X10 today and found you need to use a computer (no OTA) for the 2.1 update. Further, the Sony software kept saying installation error so I had to use a ‘flasher’ in the same way custom firmwares are installed on other devices. But this was official firmware.
So I’m not sure anymore. I don’t think there is anything to replace Symbian. I’ll have to keep up stuff no matter what.
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I use my iPhone for nearly everything. What doesn’t it do that you need?
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Swype.
That’s an example of a restriction enforced by Apple (which is the same as WP7 restriction).
Really there’s hundreds of things actually. Even small little details like keeping previous web pages in RAM in case I press back.
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Ahh, I love Swype too but I got used to life without it. But that is one thing I really loved about Android and wish Apple would get over it. I know why they don’t allow it, though. Steve Jobs wants everyone to have a common experience and doesn’t want anyone to destroy that experience. Overall I’d say he’s right.
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LinkedIn
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Greater New York City Area
Confirm that you know David Gross
https://www.linkedin.com/e/-9wg14i-gl17o8kb-2o/isd/2465845491/cQ0NhTTz/
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LinkedIn
————
This is a reminder that on March 8, David Gross sent you an invitation to become part of his or her professional network at LinkedIn.
Follow this link to accept David Gross’s invitation.
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Signing up is free and takes less than a minute.
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Samsung is overtaking Nokia slowly in many Asian markets. It wins most from a Nokia failure.
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I’m not a big fan of Microsoft, even though I think Windows in general and Xbox are way better than the equivalents of their competitors.
But I fully agree with this post!
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It surprises me (vaguely) how quickly people forget…
This is why Windows sucks
http://en.windows7sins.org/
You may disagree with one or two of these – but you can’t get past them all. It isn’t a question of being “easy to use”… it’s a question of being treated like a criminal… of being locked in and spied on.
—
and while you’re at it, this is why apple sucks
http://www.genomicon.com/2010/01/against-the-white-cliffs-of-neopalladium/
That is why Android wins. It has the “Intel Inside” of not being top-down controlled.
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I really think that a blanket statement that apps are the most important thing in this market is misguided. Overall I think apps are really all just a bit gimmicky. Useful occasionally and fun to show off to friends.
iPhone which has the biggest app marketplace has the very limited app functionality that I have seen – by which I mean the things that apps can do on the iPhone is limited very much to the app model. There is no way for instance on an iPhone to change the keyboard, etc. The apps are all very segregated without any real multitasking capabilities.
Most people want a phone that works more than one that will do things they don’t need / want. I think HP’s range looks good for this.
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I really think that a blanket statement that apps are the most important thing in this market is misguided. Overall I think apps are really all just a bit gimmicky. Useful occasionally and fun to show off to friends.
iPhone which has the biggest app marketplace has the very limited app functionality that I have seen – by which I mean the things that apps can do on the iPhone is limited very much to the app model. There is no way for instance on an iPhone to change the keyboard, etc. The apps are all very segregated without any real multitasking capabilities.
Most people want a phone that works more than one that will do things they don’t need / want. I think HP’s range looks good for this.
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If they wanted Windows phones, these Nokia customers would have bought Windows phones.
Kinect is not applicable because it’s original (not typical Microsoft) and it’s hardware (Nokia is getting software) and the comparison to iPad is lame because Kinect is a $150 accessory for an existing product with a 5 plus year user base, not a $500-$800 new kind of computer nobody understands.
> execute
Adding Microsoft is not going to help execution. Elop also said Nokia was too slow. Adding Microsoft won’t speed it up. Ballmer’s Microsoft is sloooooooow and can’t execute out of a paper bag.
Nokia is the second-most profitable phone maker (after Apple) and makes almost double the profit of RIM and over 5 times the profit of all Android and Windows licensees put together. Where are the profits going to come from?
Nokia would have been better if they had bought Palm (with what they lost in market cap today) and put Rubenstein in charge instead of Elop? It is really frustrating to me as a European who lives in Silicon Valley to see Europeans who think Microsoft is a Silicon Valley company. People here don’t even use Microsoft Office, let alone Windows. That HP presentation about TouchPad was made with Keynote on a Mac.
RIP Nokia. You have to be high on business jargon to think otherwise.
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I agree. The only problem is Nokia never dominated the US market.
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Again… Sorry Robert, you’re just an Android hater. You say Win 7 is better than Android? LOL ROTFL … man… It’s not even the same league.
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Man, I really loved Nokia!
Two years ago I did not even think about ever using something else then Nokia. 2008 I started working at Nokia R&D in Ulm, Germany. A great job: prototype testing… a year later I left Nokia!
Why did I leave and give away the chance to get an interessting and well paid job at one of the worlds most successful companies? Because I realized Nokia is a struggling giant.
Nobody said it loud, but we all knew this iPhone is going to get a big problem. The execs in Espoo pushed Tube through the pipe. Success? No! Well, N-Series could still be sold in Europe. Then Android appeared…
At this point Nokia’s execs should have taken the emergency break. But they did’nt. Numbers on the markets got worse and worse. And so did the climate within the company. This was the time I decided to leave.
Today I see a Symbian OS, that did not make any interessting improvements and that lost its community. The decisions made in these days are the final use of the emergency break. But its too late.
And finally looking at Microsoft: Phone 7 might look good,it might be a great OS – but they don’t have the apps. iPhoner and Androider can share, work and play together without any workarounds. Trying to get in touch with a Phone 7 user is pain in the ass.
While Microsoft has an ecosystem, that might fit to Nokia hardware they both are sitting behind a huge wall, separated from the winners of this game.
Today I’m a happy Android user and everyone who asks me gets the same answer: no, no more Nokias – get an Android, or an iPhone! And please don’t even think about Windows on a Phone!
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Is that including the first year when iOS didn’t do apps?
Also Blackberry World has more than 7000 apps sorry.
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You forget that Nokia had 1.4 million.
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Dear Scobleizer
You don’t seem to talk technology or have an understanding of the fundamentals of a good operating system/platform and ecosystem. You purely are having some wild fantasy and thinking that this is a great idea. Please look at historical facts and use your brain before writing such trash. Did MS pay you for this? You sound like an airhead American lobbyist to me. Maybe you should be the Nokia CEO. roflmao.
MS has screwed Nokia over in this deal. This is not good for Nokia by any standard. Nokia has a far superior platform and Stephen is being very pessimistic. He isn’t managing the company he is damaging it. By introducing one more platform he is creating more problems. If you cannot manage three how are you going to manage a closed source MS platform which is years behind and the market has REJECTED IT?
Nokia should have a visionary leader like Steve Jobs who can capitalize on the company’s technologies and strengths instead of looking to someone else.
First lets talk historical facts and business.
MS has failed to conquer the mobile market in the last 10 years with Windows Mobile. Can you tell me what innovation has been there? The UI sucked wasn’t usable for a mobile and just mimiced the desktop UI. WP7 is even more sucky where you have to swipe and navigate through stupid USELESS TILES. Wow! Great differentiating unusable UX again! Also WP7 hasn’t achieved any significant dent or mind share in the last 4-6 months it’s been out. That’s what I call SUCCESS! 2% market share with many phones. Palm with just one phone has a comparative market share. LOL.
Stephen and Steve think people want to use Bing as their search platform. Ask a five year old and they will tell you Google is the best search engine. So much for being neutral, objective and giving customers choice. Stephen is moving his bias towards MS shitty services with a dwindling user base and forcing customers to use MS services. Wow! Was this the culture at Nokia? Wasn’t it about being open and choosing the best service? With this announcement he has also killed Nokia’s Ovi services division which was coming up with fantastic services. If you ask internal employees you will know how he has been sabotaging everything from the time he has arrived. And now he chooses an inferior platform. This guy is very smart I must say.
MS also has a stellar reputation for software delivery. They delivered Windows 7 at the end of the decade which is just a more bloated version of XP. Till then it was just XP. Windows 7 doesn’t have any improvement or real innovation over XP. It’s just got eye candy on the UI which has been brought to compete with OSX at the last minute. Wow! Look at the time MS takes to deliver it’s products. So competitive! Nokia only delayed it’s N8 by two quarters. MS delays their products by years. So much for efficiency. Wonder what Stephen is thinking about speed and execution. LOL. Now Nokia will get even slower and less innovative. This deal will kill all R&D and drive MS interests alone. Nokia cannot function independently now.
Lets talk technology.
Sandboxing applications is the security solution? Wow!!! So this limits so many other things. Limited APIs. Excellent. Wow! We are back in the stone ages for mobile development.
On the kernel level WP7 doesn’t support true multi tasking like Linux. Worse WP7 was so busy copying the iPhone they forgot Copy and Paste!!! WOW! Their security sandbox is terrific. What intelligence to choose such an innovative platform. Now Nokia will have to figure out using it’s employees how to implement such basic features.
You talk about apps being important. WP7 has a non existent ecosystem. How will they build one now? Obviously by MS feeding it’s money to developers. Wow this is such a win win situation for everyone! Now MS will pay people to make apps by making them buy Visual Studio and have developers slog with their primitive bloated technology which is pathetically slow.
What happens to the Qt story that Nokia has been building all these days? Do you know what a fantastic cross platform C++ library it is? The performance is far superior than .NET. Is the MS .NET runtime full fledged on any other Non MS platform? Also with free development tools Qt would have a much wider reach to developers on all platforms. Do you know Google Earth is written in Qt? It was a winning story.
Now Nokia has isolated all it’s developers with this new strategy. Third party application developers would rather jump to Android or iPhone where they have better chance. No one will write apps after this debacle. Nokia will not have the reach it had earlier. So much for building ecosystems. He just screwed it up big time. Who will develop the apps which you consider so important? We will again have low quality apps like on Windows desktop.
Sorry Stephen better jump off the Nokia burning platform on which you poured the gasoline and head elsewhere. Nokia doesn’t need you or MS. You have been unethical in bringing MS interests into Nokia. You are not a software leader. You have lost the trust of the world and tarnished the Nokia brand.
PS: I wonder who will buy the Nokia E7 now with this announcement? R.I.P. Nokia.
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>>You have lost the trust of the world and tarnished the Nokia brand.
First of all, I’m not paid by anyone but Rackspace.
Second of all, you sound like one of those developers who thinks that technical superiority is all that matters. I remember meeting people like you in college (back in 1991). They told me “why does anyone need a mouse and windows?” After all, they were so smart they didn’t need one. Later they told me that NeXT was so superior it was going to take over the world. Or FreeBSD would. Or Linux would. Etc etc etc.
I’ve heard these arguments from arrogant developers before. They usually are wrong and can easily be ignored.
As far as Windows Phone 7, yeah, you are right. They are behind. Keep in mind I’m still an iPhone fan.
But, really, just listen to a real developer (not an arrogant one) who tonight told me why he’s only building for Android and iPhone: http://scobleizer.com/2011/02/12/developers-tell-me-im-nuts-and-say-nokia-rim-microsoft-are-still-screwed/
That’s pretty much what should be listened to, not your brand of arrogance.
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Nokia’s differentiator from LG, HTC, etc. is their hardware. Before Apple was in the cell phone game, Nokia was able to wow the gadget nerd crowd with lust/drool worthy hardware (Matrix phone, 8800 series, Scirocco, etc.) The shortcoming was always Symbian, which didn’t matter so much when they were only competing with RIM and Windows Mobile.
Obviously the world has changed. I think Windows Phone 7 was the only decent card they could play. At least they now have a modern OS to compliment their hardware design. I for 1 can’t wait for a Nokia with Carl Zeiss optics running Windows Phone. I LOVE my HD7, but loathe the camera. A Nokia solves that problem for me.
As for apps, remains to be seen. I will listen to your Cinchcast, but I do know gains are being made every day. I use an Android phone and my HD7 and the gap is closing, albeit slowly. My Windows Phone now can do Dropbox, TripIt, Yelp, Rdio, Kindle, and a couple of other of the core apps that are important to me. Apple and Android will be the leaders in apps, but I do foresee a day when Windows Phone can have a credible arsenal of choices from an app standpoint.
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Nokia smartphones running WindowsPhone7 are gonna be the same as LG, HTC, Samsung phones running WindowsPhone7.
As good as WindowsPhone7 is, no one is buying it.
I guess Microsoft and Nokia are 2 companies that missed the smartphone and tablet revolution and they are joining their forces to try get in the revolution.
The future will talk but I’m pretty sure WindowsPhone7 won’t succeed and Nokia smartphones market share will continue to go down.
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Bullshit. You see those WP7/Nokia concept phones? You see how they look exactly like every other WP7 phone – that’s commoditization.
Had they gone Android, they could have built their own empire. They could have created their own UI, with their Ovi services on top. They could have done what HTC has done with Sense. They could continue with their hardware innovation, free from Microsoft restrictions. Heck, they could have put Bing on the things.
But no, in an allthingsd video, Elop mentions that he was afraid if they went Android, then Android would definitely win. And he’d prefer the OS wars to continue, because it puts hardware manufacturers in a stronger position if the OS guys were constantly duking it out.
Nokia had the distribution might to build their future. Instead, they’re now reliant on Microsoft. Because Redmond is the only thing Elop knows.
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Marketa are reacting to Nokia announcement that during the transition there will be lower dividends. Stock traders or investment fund handlers do not understand the differences of the OS. They understand the phrase “lower dividend for 12 mo” due investment.
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Let me reply to your 5 points:
1. [Global reach] If you live in one of what you call “weirdest places”, chance is you’d rather want a featurephone. Oh, wait: WP7 phones ARE featurephones. In any case, Nokia has nothing to gain from Microsoft here, on the contrary Symbian runs on cheaper hardware and is less power-hungry.
2. [Microsoft’s good things] Microsoft has indeed a great OS: it’s called Windows 7. Windows Phone 7 lacks features Symbian had in 2002 and it’s just about visual effects. Is that what you liked?
3. [Great dev tools] Nokia also has, it’s called Qt Creator. Why throw it away?
4. [MS has cool things] The cool parts of Microsoft you mention are for non-portable computers. Planning to port Kinect to the front facing cameras? Glad you did not mention MS Office: syncing with Outlook anyone?
5. [Nokia’s great hw] True, that’s why I am so sad that Nokia ditched Symbian. This was foul play, as even Intel knew nothing about Nokia disrupting their MeeGo strategy. Who will Nokia partner with at next MWC?
So, summing up, I feel that Nokia choose the easy way to cut costs. In return, they lost their identity and became a mere hardware manufacturer. Let’s see how far they will want to “customize everything” after they close OVI: Maps is the only valuable software asset they’ve left, I hope they make good use of it. They will have to compete with other WP7 phone makers in a battle where every penny counts. Are they ready to compete in this market? If they’d become exclusive WP7 phone makers, that would have been another story.
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WP7 might have been the only way to go for Nokia, but in the time it’ll take to get to market (at least 6 months, probably more) WP7 will need to change massively if they don’t want to be even further behind Android or iOS.
I work between China and France. Android and iOS support native Chinese characters. WP7 doesn’t. Windows has announced an upgrade for “second half 2011” to support Chinese characters, but the time for it to roll out to carriers, to be pushed to the consumer and to see some development of apps in Chinese is going to make it at least 2012 before it’s anything more than a very, very basic level of support. Ergo, Nokia isn’t even in the running for my money. Nor for most of my co-workers.
China is the elephant in the hall, but it’s not the only one. Japan? Indonesia? India (not everybody will want English as their smartphone’s native language, despite many people understanding it)? Brazil? Russia? Is Nokia’s strategy to wait for 2012 to even be mildly competitive in these markets? Sure, they’re still “developing”, but given how quickly the smartphone markets in these countries is growing, by 2012 they could already be playing catch-up to get developers interested.
If Nokia is hoping to keep on pushing Symbian or MeeGo or something else in these countries when WP7 development schedules mean it’s only going to be 2013 by the time Hindi, Arabic or Russian are supported, they’re not going to be anything more than synonymous for outdated.
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I think Google already has better distribution, If you through the list of manufacturer who makes Andriod phone, tell me their combined market reach is not bigger than Nokia?
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Robert, I think you are correct when it comes to this topic but you need to remember that this won’t happen overnight. It is a marathon, not a sprint 🙂 Both Nokia and Microsoft have deep pockets so this is going to go on for awhile.
We also need to remember that today the market for apps / smartphones and data connectivity is for the HIGH-END. Most parts of the world just want a darn phone connection and aren’t willing to put a premium on data at this point. Their countries are too poor to afford data networks that can only be afforded by a small percentage of the population. Don’t get me wrong, cellular is the way most of the world connects these days (not wireline).
As for your take on the high-end, smartphone market I agree 1000%. The power of today’s phones lies in the software and 24/7 connectivity. Many users increasingly use data at a 10-20/1 ratio vs. voice. The power clearly lies with the developers as their time is VERY valuable and they are only going to develop for large, installed bases of phones where they can monetize their application.
A few years ago people questioned how Android would get traction but, given that it was free and practically given away, manufacturers lined up in droves to develop an Apple competitor. They got app developers on board as they wanted another alternative to Apple’s app policy makers who appeared quite Draconian in their approval / denial of apps.
What will cause developers to develop for a 3rd platform given LIMITED time in this world? Most traditional markets have the #1 market share owner with 40%-60% market share, #2 with 25%-35% and the #3 competitor with 15% to 25% market share.
One key element that a Microsoft / Nokia agreement would have is the ability to make it EASY to make in-app purchases and have a CONSISTENT product. If they could make the purchase process SMOOTH like Apple does with IOS they could get some traction from the perceived weakness in Android’s system (shopping cart) and the fact that there are so many different versions of apps/hardware, etc that developers have to take into account.
I don’t think a #4 OS will ever survive.
keep up the great work Robert!
Dan Ross
@BetterBizIdeas
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Sorry, don’t see what’s so special about WP7. It does nice animated transitions between screens and menus but, beyond that, functionality is fairly generic when compared against iOS, Android, WebOS, etc.
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I’m one of those who really don’t like WP7. I’ve played with it, and all the swiping and the transitions just rub me the wrong way. I want something that can be operated more quickly, and WP7 just plain isn’t it. Add to that that there’s no multitasking, and WP7 is a no-go for me.
That is my own opinion, however, and I realize that there are people out there who like this kind of thing. They can go out and buy WP7/Nokia phones, and I sincerely hope they’ll be happy with them. After all, they are sure to get great hardware.
Personally, I’ll wait until my N8 no longer does the things I need it to do, and then take another look at the market. Maybe Android, maybe webOS, and, if there are changes that are entirely unanticipated, even WP7 on Nokia hardware. Never say never. I hope that I’ll be able to use the N8 for a while to come, though, since presently not just WP7, but all the other choices are also not really appealing.
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weew, before I only dreamt of a 3310 hahahaha, now phones can have connections from who knows where, have apps that track time and have gps like the one from http://www.tsheets.com, nuts and triple nuts.
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“Microsoft has Xbox. Which has just been rejuvenated with Kinect (hottest selling product in history, even hotter than the iPad!) IE, some parts of Microsoft ARE cool!”
This is a joke, right? Kinect has failed to actually convert non-Xbox owners to Xbox owners. Bundles are not selling at all! All you have is a bunch of Xbox fans buying Kinect, but no one is buying games.
Xbox and Kinect are failures.
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“Nokia can’t compete with China’s brightest minds”. Why not? Are you suggesting a genetic reason? Are you suggesting a reason for the Nokia demise; the Finns are just not as smart as the Chinese. If this were true then the transfer of the business management to the Americans should come as a great relief. Shame on you, this kind of racist logic does not belong in this discussion.
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Sorry, this came from a Nokia executive. They have too many committees, too much middle management and too many people who know hardware, but aren’t as fast moving as the Chinese.
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Absolutely agree that Windows 7 OS is better than Android. I wonder if there are too many people who disagree?
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Well i dont think nokia did anything wrong.
If all phone have same Android Os than no body will purchase nokia. So i think this is very good move of nokia that it going with window and not choose Android.
Even Local mobile phone company also has Android Os on thair Cheap Smartphones.
By the way Meego also have very small market till now.
But if nokie going with Window , so Nokia Qt will also support in Nokia’s Window phone. i dont think nokia wasted their time to make Qt Market and developers.
So i hope Qt will support in Nokia’s Window Phone.
Watch this what 3rd party developers have to say about the merger… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfWFvCJJaNs
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