Nokia and Microsoft Make Smartphone Alliance 479
pbahra writes "The smart money was right. Nokia has jumped into bed with Microsoft and will produce phones running Windows Phone 7. The cynics would say that, here, we have two lumbering dinosaurs of the technology world clinging to each other hoping that the other gives them a future. Optimists would point to two companies that need each other, both bringing vital components to the alliance. The big winner is Microsoft. Windows Phone 7, while reasonably well received by commentators, has not set the world on fire. An alliance with Nokia gives it access to the world's largest phone maker and its huge mindshare — in many developing nations a mobile phone is known as a Nokia. The biggest loser is MeeGo, the ugly, unloved step-child of operating systems."
Nokia wrote to developers, "Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same."
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nokia's last gasp (Score:5, Interesting)
Innovate or die.
And according to these charts [engadget.com], they are starting to innovate by cutting R&D spending.
Nokia, you've come a long way from rubber boots and bicycle tyres to mobile phones. But I fear this is where the story starts to end.
Minimum Requirements for Windows Phone 7? (Score:4, Interesting)
An alliance with Nokia gives it access to the world's largest phone maker and its huge mindshare — in many developing nations a mobile phone is known as a Nokia.
I was a little confused by this quote as the minimum requirements for Windows Phone 7 far exceed [wikipedia.org] the vast majority of those developing nation cellphones. I believe those are mostly the candy bar cell phones or "dumbphones." I was under the impression that developing nations had a vast population of users who weren't in the market for smartphones. That might be changing but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the current models Nokia enjoys widespread distribution hinge on a trim microkernel operating system with little to no system requirements and I'm unaware of a version of Windows Phone 7 that satisfies these hardware constraints. Simply put, it's going to be a long time before Microsoft's WP7 dominates the developing nations as the de facto operating system. And good luck piling those licensing rights of WP7 on top of the cost of the phone to people who struggle to find potable water!
Free Cellphone Company for MS, nice work Elop. (Score:4, Interesting)
Elop will certainly go down as a Hero for Microsoft, he managed to give Microsoft everything it would want from a Nokia Purchase, but without spending a dime.
No small coincidence that he is a former Microsoftie.