So what do you guys think?

I am overall pleased. There's a lot of potential in such an agreement, I think. I do hope some more real competition is generated by this.

I think it's one of the only things Nokia could do given all the bad moves they have made over the past decade to put themselves here.

Bridging another recent news item, Nokia should really have dumped Symbian and their other OS efforts long ago and made a strong move to acquire Palm when they had the chance. That would have been better than the announcement today.

As I mentioned in another thread a few days ago, I think the best move for Nokia and Microsoft, would have been a completely exclusive partnership for this OS. That would mean Microsoft ending their licensing of Windows Phone to other handset makers, all of whom are already more interested in Android anyway and Nokia going exclusive on every single handset other than burner (free/disposable) models which they could brand differently.

It still looks to me like Nokia and Microsoft are going to get clobbered in the smartphone game. Nokia may be right that there will be three leading platform, but I don't think Windows will be one of them.

Clearly iPhone and Android will continue to duke it out for the top, but the #3 position is going to be an interesting battle to watch. Will it be RIM, HP/Palm, or Win 7 Phone?

Just looking at market share, particularly among firms with slow-changing IT departments, you really have to give the advantage to RIM in the #3 position. On the flip side, that advantage is a fleeting thing, since it's all about firms that want to connect to their Exchange servers. Win 7 phones would seem like a natural challenger in that ecosystem, if not exactly right now but certainly as the Microsoft team continues developing it.

I don't see how HP/Palm is supposed to get a toe-hold.

As to Nokia's position in this world, I don't entirely get it. HTC, Samsung, even Motorola make sense. They want to build awesome hardware and run whatever software that people want. Nokia seems to want to position itself differently from that. We'll see how it works for them.

Flashback / deja vu: discussing the #3 smartphone operating system wars sounds not entirely unlike discussing the #3 PC wars of the mid-late 1980's. Amiga vs. Atari ST. That wasn't exactly a good outcome for either one.

In the short-term (2 years) I don't think MS can even begin to touch RIM's numbers. If we're talking 5+ years, then maybe. but RIM would have to make some serious mistakes.

Microsoft's only positive position in mobile was when mobile barely existed as a computing space. Big fish small pond type of analogy. Now that mobile has exploded, their past numbers are a joke and their current numbers don't even have a punch line.

It looks like MS has more friends at the top at Nokia as of today's most recent VP appointment. Some people seem to think that this is a Microsoft coup: http://www.appleoutsider.com/2011/02/11/nokia/

Maybe we'll see them end their licensing with the other handset producers. I feel really strongly it's the only way they can possibly solidify their product offering and make a real go of being relevant.

MS is missing out on the new generation's primary platforms. They've been completely shut out of the tablet game as well for now. In 10 years, I can honestly see MS in a strictly applications-based space if they don't start firing on all cylinders again.

I hear you, but I still don't get it. What you're saying is that Nokia becomes the manufacturing arm for Microsoft phones. Microsoft can already get stuff built to its own specs, whenever it wants, from the usual overseas suspects, as does Apple and everybody else

What value does Nokia bring to the table? Are they really better at engineering hardware? Are their distribution channels notably better? Is the Nokia brand that big a valuable property?

Frankly, I don't think they would have to make mistakes. I think they'd just have to continue the way they do now, which is clearly a tactic of "we're the best, we're the biggest, it'll always be that way." They seem to have this arrogant and ridiculous idea that they're perfect and because everyone loves them they don't need to try.

Just look at the phones they've released. Their biggest device announcement in the past year was the Blackberry Torch, which was underpowered at the time it was released. Their latest product is that hideous flip phone, which makes it clear that they're living in the past.

It really seems to me that RIM doesn't realize that people don't talk about "crackberries" anymore. That was a term used when the Blackberry was the best way to get email.

It's inevitable that, if they don't change their ways, RIM is going to slide to a very small slice of the market. Their business is held up by businesses, but those businesses have users coming in asking to use their iPhones and their Droids, and in some office environments (such as law firms), the user gets their way.

A friend of mine works at a major big-name consultancy. They have apparently just authorized the deployment of Android and iPhone in addition to their stock Blackberry gear. RIM should know by now that they need to pick up their game. Or else.

MS specs are not hardware designs. They're a basic list of hardware requirements, but MS traditionally relies on the engineering expertise of others. ODMs.



Not at all like Apple. Apple actually designs all their stuff and farms out only manufacturing and assembly.



All three of those a resounding yes. IMO, the other producers of Windows phones only serve to devalue the brand MS hopes to build. With Nokia, I'd also suggest forgetting the WIndows moniker and build on something brand new, since for all intents and purposes, the product is new - at least looks and feels new along with needing all new third-party software.

I think RIM does realize that they're trending downward. That's one of the reasons for the big tablet play. I'm actually surprised they didn't go full Android on that thing. I think they'll be able to work it out and hold on to third place ahead of the others.

With Nokia, MS should be able to hold 4th place ahead of HP/Palm.

So, if I'm reading you right, you're saying Nokia is to Win7Phone as Motorola is to Android. They're making a big bet that they can build better hardware than anybody else selling products with essentially the same software.

I'd say it's a risky, crazy thing to do, but it seems to be working reasonably well for Motorola. (Factoid: I thought Apple was insane back when they killed the Mac clone market and brought out the candy-colored iMacs, so I tend to doubt my own instincts on these things.)

Well, except Google doesn't need Motorola. The rest of the industry can push Android units without them, and I think Motorola end up competing more with other Android partners than anybody else.

Apple made a wise move killing the clones. They brought back their premium status instead of having their hardware commoditized amongst the other beige boxes out there.

IMO, it's where Android handsets are now. All disposable generic grey slabs. It doesn't matter what the specs are, none of them says premium to me and none of them have more than a few months of lifecycle before their makers kill them with something new.

It's kind of funny that Motorola got the 1984 concept completely backwards in their most recent commercials. Apple is among a small group of other companies who are doing their own thing, rather than following the Google directive.

Working out kinda ok for mot, though they're not making much money doing it and I suspect they are kinda annoyed that "Droid" wasn't their brand.

Nokia do make some nice hardware, it's just the specs tend to be a bit screwy - like woefully underspecced CPUs. This is likely because they have a platform team that develops phone platforms, and when these are reasonably baked and functional, product teams pick a platform for their phone and build it. Problem is, that sticks a 6-12 month spanner in the "silicon to consumer" timeline...

In general though, I can't see what other options nokia had. Symbian really did suck - designed for a different age when memory was expensive. I wrote the IMAP code for Symbian ER5 (as in the series 5MX and Nokia 7650) and it was a bitch to program for (I'd hack on empeg code on the trains to and from london when I was doing that contract ).

Meego... well, let's just say that it had a lot of loose ends and it never seemed to get polished and "consumerised".

Yeah, right down to the screws. Check out the iPhone 4 screw heads under a microscope, and bear in mind that there were several designs for the number of concentric circles on the heads under careful consideration at one point. I think we went with 7 in the end... now *that's* attention to detail.

After the Nokia-MS agreement, I actually don't think n. 3 position is at stake, but rather n. 1 and 2 in 5/6 years time. Rather than Amiga vs Atari ST, I see a PS1 vs Nintendo situation, when MS entered the game with XBOX.

I agree with Bruno that current hardware manufacturers for WP7 are the main issue with WP7 phones, for the simple reason that it is such hardware, primarily, that is not making WP7 visible to most consumers. WP7 phones just look like any other, while an iPhone has a clear, distinct, shiny personality. A LOT of it, actually by far most of it, IMO, is in the hardware - each component of it. Personally, that's what I actually like in the iPohones, especially the 4, which is a masterpiece in this. Antenna issues aside, design hw is just so good.

IPhone/Pod software... I am not impressed. It's not bad, but I think it is definitely worse than what what most people think. And, on that note, after testing WP7 for a little time, and as a Zune owner, I - by far - prefer the MS GUI paradigm that is underlying to both those devices.

So, I've been wondering why MS did not bring to market its own device with WP7 - I would have entered the market with two: one super shiny to rival the iPhone, another inexpensive -, and I suspect that partnership with Nokia is specifically aimed at creating both: some very shiny and cool and fashionable hardware, and other cheaper "for the masses". And yes, I think Nokia is pretty good at that.

Also, Nokia has a great reputation in that regard, especially in the EU. Here in Italy, for example, nobody/very few people would buy a RIM over a Nokia, still today. You end up with a RIM if your company gives you one. But Nokias... people just considered Nokias as the best mobile phones in the World for the last 20 years. Nokia was just amazing at building trust in consumers. If you want to go safe, people say, get a Nokia. Yes, it may be more expensive, but it's a Nokia. People tell stories on how their Nokia never broke and could pass it to parents, grandparents, friends, and it still works. And Nokia had some very iconic devices which are well remembered by most (and there again stories of when they fell from the 20th floor in a storm only to be run over by a truck... and it still works ).

And yes, now it it different, Nokia fell behind, but it would take nothing to build on such a long standing great reputation. From this perspective, MS just made a very smart move. Of course, there's plenty of room for a failure. But, not necessarily. Interesting times.

I don't think MS has much of a chance to get to #1 or 2 in that time period. They were not able to do it in the past with less competition. And the competition today if fierce, commanded by giants, the likes of which have never been seen in this market - I mean Google and Apple of course.

In the console game Sony didn't make any money for a long time. Is MS making any real money yet with XBOX? Not really. Profits are minuscule in the grand scheme of things. It's also a very different game than mobile, with far less innovation and over a very long development cycle. This coupled with very slow unit sales compared to Mobile.

Google and Apple are not suddenly going to stop trying to increase market share and profitability. Handset makers that get their OS for free aren't really going to want to jump into bed more often with MS, especially now that Nokia has entered the picture.




Every other manufacturer and software producer agree with you. It's why you are seeing more companies copying Apple more closely every day. It's why Google and Palm/HP are copying Apple's software designs. It's not difficult to make some improvements on individual Apple apps, they've left a lot of room for that. But it's amazing why you don't see it more often. Remember that I have always been very critical of Apple's iOS applications. I think they all have some very serious weaknesses, while I still think the platform is far and away the best out there.

Just look at the newest Samsung leaked today. If it's not an iPhone 4 knock-off, what is? Now it looks like they are also infusing some of Microsoft's UI innovation into their designs. I swear, Samsung has never, ever produced anything even remotely original.



I don't think they have enough consumer brand caché to pull this off. It didn't work terribly well with the Zune and you can bet that's one of the reasons they didn't try it with phones. Also, having two models as you suggest would only serve to devalue the high end product. Apple's strategy has been working very well, where the "low end" product isn't really a phone at all. They're king in profitability, and at the end of the day, as long as they maintain decent unit numbers to keep the platform widespread, that's what counts.



But everyone (with some exaggeration) would buy an iPhone over a Nokia given the chance. I do agree that Nokia has had a decent brand reputation, and it's why I even proposed the idea of an exclusive MS-Nokia relationship. The other brands can cause confusion and help bring the platform down.

I personally have zero interest in Nokia as a mobile phone hardware manufacturer or MS as an OS supplier getting together. The thing that scares the living crap out of me is what will happen to Qt.

I've used the Qt toolkit nearly every working day for the last 7 years, I do all of my desktop application development in it on OSX, Linux and Windows. The TV channel I run uses it all over the place, from UI to backend. I was fairly sceptical when Nokia bought Trolltech thinking something like this would happen. My only hope is that if Nokia are no longer interested in keeping it, that they allow a management buyout and not just sell it on to some equally feckless hardware manufacturer.

Everything I've read recently regarding the outcome of this agreement between Nokia and MS has been about Qt as a mobile toolkit, in fact, I think some of the people posting comment aren't even aware its history as a desktop UI toolkit.

The fact that it was released under GPL/LGPL puts some firm limits on the worst-case scenario. Even if Nokia never again contribute a line of code to Qt, it'll never disappear (though it might change its name à la Hudson/Jenkins) -- because someone high-up in Nokia was smart enough to realise that, in the long run, it's only the stuff that you "give away" that you actually get to keep.

Peter

Nokia stock prices drop 14% after the Microsoft announcement. :schadenfreude:

I imagine that Nokia will try to sell Qt to someone else. At this point, I have no idea who would buy it, though.

Same here. However, the past year has seen zero advancements in the desktop world of Qt, it's all been mobile oriented, I posted on the labs comments when they announced that the plain old Qt creator SDK was being deprecated in favour of a mobile SDK which also targeted desktops. I commented asking if this was the beginning of the end of the desktop ports being a first class citizen and that I was worried that "when nokia stop flogging the dead horse that is symbian" what would happen to Qt? Funnily enough, nobody from Qt/Nokia responded, some devs did saying that they thought I was reading too much into it......humn.....I should have placed a bet!

Well, I'm a little perturbed by this development. I recently purchased a Nokia N8. Since Nokia and Microsoft decided to announce the death of Symbian even before (years?) any Nokia branded Windows phones are released, any hope of app development is now over. I suppose this is the best Symbian app developers would get (now at least they can cut their losses right away). But from a consumer point of view it's a disaster.

I now have zero hope of any new Symbian apps being developed, and the ones we do have will no longer be updated. Symbian^3 was just released and with Qt supposedly being ramped up along with Meego devices it looked like the future was bright. The best I can hope for is an updated and refreshed UI and some bug fixes in the OS itself.

It seemed to me Nokia's problem wasn't so much Symbian, but it's glacial pace of updates and Nokia's refusal to bend at all to the will of US operators to customize a Nokia device to what they requested. If they could have cracked the US mindset and market share who knows what would have happened. Oh well, my N8 still has a great camera and it's not like it's stopped working. I just have to figure out (plenty of time since I just got the phone!) where I go next...

In current mobile market, with Apple, Android, and WP7 looming? I honestly doubt it would have been a bright future regardless of agreement with Microsoft. I am afraid the latter just killed Symbian a year (or so) earlier.

Well, relatively speaking. It seemed like Nokia was actively courting developers. See: Nokia Calling All Innovators

Ironically the deadline for this promo isn't even over yet! This is (was?) a North American specific program. AT&T was involved, to me at least it looked like Nokia was finally taking the North American market seriously and with AT&T on board it also seemed as if they found a carrier partner.

AT&T is likely just throwing their hat in to diversify a bit after losing iPhone exclusivity. They want to do all they can to keep their smartphone levels at their current percentage, since it's leads to more profits then non smartphone marketshare. Had Nokia and AT&T announced this a year or two ago, I would have seen it as a more serious effort.

In the end, Nokia let the North American market slip away long ago before consumer smartphones were popular. In not reclaiming that market space, they let 4 American companies come along and just own the consumer space (Apple, Google, Palm and Microsoft). Even the Canadian based RIM did well in some part of the consumer market, due to their brand awareness in the corporate world.

It's been interesting to see the shift over the past many years in the mobile space. American companies contributed very little to the initial mobile phone rush, but have come back strong in the era of consumer smartphones. Enough that the rest of the world is also enjoying the products designed here, instead of looking at them as behind what people had access to overseas. Look at the popularity of the iPhone in Japan for example, a market well known for it's national pride in buying locally designed products.

Exactly. Which is why Nokia+Anybody here in EU, where Nokia has always been very big, is quite interesting. If Nokia suceeds in building on its already good reputation by providing some device which can, to a significant extent, compete with the experience provided by Android and Apple, then there's a lot of people ready to go for their products. Those are very big numbers.

You have no idea how many people here, when facing the "need" for a smartphone and being presented with the Android/Apple choice, just ask "what's the Nokia phone to do all this?".
Indeed, this is not true in the US, instead.

I believe competing with Android-based manufacturers will be easy for Nokia, since I have not actually heard of anyone outside of Internet geeks who actually wants an Android phone. As far as i know, normal people only buy Android phones because they're cheap, given away by the carrier (again cheap), they want something like an iPhone but can't get or don't want an iPhone, or they buy based on the brand of the handset, such as Sony Ericcsson.

Nokia will have what Apple has, which is brand recognition. And that brand is much stronger than HTC, Samsung, etc. in mobile, especially in Europe.

I recently talked a decidedly non-techie friend through the iPhone vs. Android decision process. Her iPod was ready to die, and her phone was antiquated, so she wanted to get one device to do everything. We talked it over, and decided the iPhone was the right answer, since it's the best drop-in replacement as an iPod. Stars sync up properly, etc. Otherwise, if that was less important, but having really good Gmail/Google Calendar/etc. support mattered more, she would probably have gone for an Android phone instead.

What really tipped the balance was a deal where Target was doing a $100 trade-in deal on old iPhones. I gave her my now-unused iPhone 3G and she got $100 in credit toward an iPhone 4. Yeah, it's AT&T, but in Houston their service actually seems to work...

Sorry, but Nokia doesn't mean anything in the US to those users you're talking about. At least, not more than the companies you mention, and possibly less when it comes to smartphones. People in this country will go "oh yeah, I remember when I had a Nokia phone in 1999," but they won't associate that with a smartphone. Besides, Nokia isn't doing that well in smartphones outside the US either. In Europe they're doing pretty well, but I wonder how many of their current customers will stick with them now that they've changed platforms.

I'm curious, though. What does Nokia pay for WP7 for each phone? I assume they pay a license fee, don't they? Samsung doesn't have to pay anything for Android, and their brand recognition in the product category is far better than Nokia's or Microsoft's at the moment.


Frankly, as much of an Android fan as I am, that's the same discussion I have with those same people. I ask them if they use iTunes or GMail and then suggest the phone based on that. If they use both, I ask them which is more important, and if they think they'd use their phone for listening to music. That's pretty much what it comes down to these days. Aside from gaming, the apps are fairly equivalent now.

I actually know quite a few, and my experience is significnalty different from what you describe, Bruno. Galaxy S is quite popular here. This could also be a geography-based phenomenon.
If I had to describe perception of the Apple/Android competition here, I'd say Apple is considered more stylish and fashionable, not at all a "better" product overall. I can think of many non-techie friends who are ahppily downloading apps on their Galaxy Ss and having fun, to the point that almost all of them considered the Galaxy Tab last Christmas. Galaxy S is actually more popular among my non-geek friends and relatives than iPhone.



My idea is actually that MS did not really try. Zune is the prototype of such decision NOT to really compete, but rather live in a nich, probably test the mkt, and give signals to competition. One of the things that I find different now with the alliance with Nokia, is that they seem to really want to compete with Apple (even more than with Android). Just as they did in the console mkt. That's the parallel I see, and, if so, this can only be good. This may even push Apple to improve where they would not even plan to do so, otherwise.


True, but while on one hand I don't think it's impossible for them to create one - consider they could begin by building on the vast perception of Apple's smugness which is actually quite widespread - on the other hand I agree that they chose to use "Nokia" brand instead. Which has a big potential and it is another reason why the agreement is interesting.


Only if you don't differentiate them enough. I am not thinking at two products with the same identical OS feature set in different boxes. I am thinking of various product lines, which is possibly what they'll do in Nokia. Nokia has also license to customize WP7, so that's already planned, IMO.

Again, just guessing here. We'll see.

That's absolutely insane. Both to have actually been in that position and to think that. You'd better believe that MS tried. They were however tempered by reality and some amount of self-awareness, unlike some of the competition. And you'd better believe they're trying now in mobile too.

The world of computing is shifting fast. The mobile space, including tablets will soon account for more money than traditional PC-based channels. MS is SCREWED if they get left behind. It's what I said before, they may end up as strictly an applications company.

BTW, if MS don't start cutting back on the other Windows licenses, I think Nokia is going to be no better off in the long run than they would have been otherwise. They will not likely dominate like they did back when no one else was actually making smart phones.

The Nokia-MS relationship had better produce some very special products, not just some random run of the mill Windows phone anyone else could have deployed.

In the mobile space, in the US, I believe the only brands with any level of attachment are Apple and RIM. The others are just what you get form what's available. I don't believe anyone actively looks for any of the other brands in general. There are exceptions such as when a particularly desirable product emerges, such as in the first half of the 2000's when Motorola's RAZR gained some popularity.



The word on the street is that Microsoft is paying THEM. Which makes some sense. Android was available to them for free (not as in beer). And they already had two platforms baked at home to choose from. The really interesting bit of information is how MS is monetizing this opportunity/venture?

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9209259/Microsoft_to_pay_out_billions_as_part_of_Nokia_deal

Then I'm proudly insane, Bruno!

On that note, why is the Off Topic forum now called "Market Research"?