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Post by Forum Cat on Feb 19, 2011 14:08:33 GMT
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swatty
Senior Member
Grumpy old Man
Posts: 256
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Post by swatty on Feb 20, 2011 12:15:22 GMT
As far as I aware this agreement is a result of Nokia desperately looking for a big software partner to save the company from oblivion. They courted both Google and Microsoft and Balmer's lot were the highest bidder.
Microsoft have paid Billions of dollars for the privilege of having Windows Mobile 7 on Nokia phones, not sure who the winners are though.
It is almost certain that the losers, in the short-term, will be HTC et al who already sell Windows phones. In the longer term it depends on Nokia & Microsoft getting the youth market (I know my kids and their friends will not touch Microsoft phones as they are not considered cool, Microsoft do X-Box not Phones) and of course emerging markets like China & Africa.
It is interesting to remember that Google, who I consider a much more savvy company that the redmond behemoth, thought the Nokia deal was not worth chasing.
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Post by Forum Cat on Feb 22, 2011 0:46:45 GMT
It is interesting to watch. I really can't predict what will happen here. The N.+MS combo is a LOT of firepower. They could carve a large slice of the mobile market or it could flop. I would not like to call it would you?
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Post by Alan on Feb 22, 2011 12:25:35 GMT
They must be working on the principle that two wrongs can sometimes make a right. Good luck with that then.
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Post by Alan on Feb 23, 2011 13:56:03 GMT
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Post by Forum Cat on Feb 23, 2011 18:17:15 GMT
Oh dear. Poor old Microsoft.
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Post by Forum Cat on Feb 23, 2011 18:18:02 GMT
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Post by OziDug on Mar 2, 2011 13:32:32 GMT
Speaking as a (retired) Nokia employee, I can only say that most of my mates were aghast (as I was) when the news broke. There are a couple of factors which are troubling:
Nokia's software engineers outnumber Apple's, and yet Nokia had no response to the iPhone, and in fact there was a lot of nerdish contempt for the iPhone since many of the individual functions (Facetime, for example) were already available in various Nokia phones. But not all of them, and each Nokia phone was different - this is now the Android problem.
It took a year or more for the software guys within Nokia to Get It, but Nokia was stuck with a keyboard/top-down menu step-by-step mindset.
Just this past year, some of the graphics teams were putting up internal videos of great interactive touchscreen devices (which Nokia has been playing with for years) with excellent software. The switch to Qt was also a promising move but they were stuck in internal political battles so nothing emerged from the repeated re-organisations that shook the company every two years.
Nokia just got too big, and innovation was followed by bureaucratic job preservation - you can't fail if you don't do anything. It also technically went backwards, so that the E71's replacement E72 had telephony problems from new (a chip fault, apparently). So although they have had a great reputation for hardware, my feeling is that over the past two or three years even that has deteriorated.
It remains to be seen whether Win Phone 7 will do anything. Symbian's virtues as an OS were masked by the awkward Avkon User Interface Belated moves to get Qt as a platform across all Nokia phones was gaining ground, but the new (ex-Microsoft) CEO strangled that at birth. Conspiracy theories abound.
By adopting WP7, they are trading 38% market share (Symbian) and 30-hour battery life for 1.5% of the market and 4 hours battery life (Motorola Droid). I don't actually expect to see Nokia in the phone business in five years' time.
Apologies for the rant. I'll get back in my box.
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Post by Forum Cat on Mar 2, 2011 17:31:06 GMT
Apologies for the rant. I'll get back in my box. I find your insight fascinating. No apology needed. There where initially six front runners in this race Symbian Blackberry OS Web OS iOS WP7/Win Mob Android Then Web OS died but has been defibrillated by HP. This was how it stood after Web OS died Can six still stand? Does the Nokia deal mean we are now down to five or discounting Web OS, four?
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Post by OziDug on Mar 4, 2011 0:38:37 GMT
Your pie chart is interesting - the Windows 5% also includes the inglorious Windows Mobile OS, just to clarify.
Symbian is still way ahead of whoever's second (Android, I think by now). Blackberry, through their focus on business, stole a march on the volume market but that's being eaten by iPhone sales as Apple carry out further enterprise-friendly enhancements so I see them falling away - unless they can steal part of the fading Symbian marketplace.
I can't see Apple gaining more than, say, 25% of the market, although they are continuing to lower their prices. But Nokia's main volume come from the sub-£50 3rd world marketplace- and they're good phones. They don't have the PDA facilities which IMHO makes a phone "smart", but they do have Contacts and web access, so they're pretty near to what Smartphones used to be only a few years ago.
So I think Blackberry could fade, leaving the new star (Android) taking up to 45%-50% of the marketplace, the iPhone second at 20%-25%, and Blackberry, Nokia/MS and the rest fighting it out for the remains. The Third World market will belong to Asian manufacturers, who are about to introduce competitive phones with additional features.
It used to be an internal joke in Nokia that you could tell a fake Nokia phone because it looked like a Nokia phone, except that it included a second SIM - something we'd been trying to get to the market for two years and still hadn't succeeded.
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Post by Forum Cat on Mar 4, 2011 1:19:42 GMT
I think it is too early to tell. Until a good portion of the Symbian slice has been eaten we are not going to know. Two big factors wrt Apple's potential 1) What will iPhone 5 bring? 2) Will Apple ever reach the point where it can cope with demand? One of the main reasons that Android has a big slice is that Apple have not been able to meet demand. Only recently for example has a large part of America been able to have iPhones. Many countries have only recently got the iPhone. Also IF Apple wish they could slash the price of the iPhone to undercut the competition. Just like they did with the iPad.
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Post by OziDug on Mar 8, 2011 0:39:15 GMT
For the moment, I don't think it matters what iPhone 5 will bring - it still dominates the market with clean and functional design. But better integration of all its disparate roles can improve the usage.
Apple can cope with the demand - why else do they keep dropping the price? Their problem in the USA was the link with AT&T & T-Mobile without Verizon, which is the dominant supplier there. That's now been fixed, so expect to see iPhone sales get a new lease of life - once iPhone 5 is announced - there's no point in buying a CDMA iPhone4, when you know iPhone5 is coming out.
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Post by tumnurkoz on Mar 10, 2011 19:54:27 GMT
So, if the iphone is SO good, why does Steve Wozniak carry two and a motorola droid? because the droid makes good calls! iphone has become so ubiquitous (think different?) i have avoided it on purpose, hence the very good Nokia N8 (loves itunes, isync, ical etc and has great custom options) Nokia may struggle to get windoze os up to the symbian 3 maturity quick enough. I have found the Nokia beta labs to be a great place to try new things, they just need a quicker rolling firmware update pattern (they obviously do listen to customer feedback-beta lab experiences) I guess stephen (gates' spawn) elop had put paid to most of the excitement and drive at qt and Nokia.
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Post by millstonebarn on Mar 10, 2011 22:09:22 GMT
Interesting thread. Many years ago I actually paid for the Psion SDK (precursor to Symbian). Great stuff too at the time.
For me, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone, making and receiving voice calls on a smart phone is actually now a secondary function. We can always return a voice mail when we need to. It's all about device usability in a wider sense.
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Post by tumnurkoz on Mar 10, 2011 22:42:34 GMT
Wider sense, as in angry birds and the like? very vhs/betamax...
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