What Nokia Must Do To Stay Relevant In Mobile 289
snydeq writes "Mikael Ricknäs reports how Nokia can turn around its three-year slide in the mobile market — one that has transformed the company's iconic N95 into a distant memory given the pace of innovation at Apple and around Android. Completely underestimating the impact of the iPhone, Nokia took too long to realize that Symbian's lack of touch capabilities would hinder its ability to compete in the smartphone market. Moreover, the company's move to open source the OS has significantly slowed down Symbian's development, according to analysts, leaving Nokia with both a lack of support from other vendors and a platform on which competitors can keep a close eye. Meanwhile, developer interest in Nokia's Ovi app store is nearly nonexistent. 'Nokia's problems are still fixable but the window is closing. I am not optimistic that they will be fixed in 2010 because there isn't much time left; if they aren't fixed in 2011, Nokia will be in big trouble.'"
Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Insightful)
... the N900?
As far as I'm concerned the only thing Nokia is missing is a better marketing campaign for their product that compares very favorably with the Apple and Android offerings.
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:4, Funny)
I know what they overlooked...
N Gage 4.0
Seriously you guys, it'll work this time.
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Insightful)
Nokia has a significant market share in mobile world. Not just the toys. Apple only has one product line while Nokia has many, many different phones suited for quite much everyone, and is generally looked up to in the business world (as is HTC too). Not everyone cares about buying some simple games from the app store, you know.
I think the story would be better worded as "What Nokia Must Do To Compete With Apple", as they already sure as hell know what to do in the mobile world.
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Insightful)
Correction: "What Nokia Must Do To Compete With Apple and Android in US Smartphones"
For non-smartphones especially around the world, both Apple and Android do not have much of a presence compared to Nokia
OOH! OOH! I Know the Answer! (Score:2, Funny)
What Nokia must do to stay relevant in mobile?
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I don't know if you've noticed this, but the capabilities of technology tend to filter done the price scale rather quickly. 2010's $500 device is 2012's $100 device is 2014's "get two free when you switch to our network" device. It won't be long before just about every phone for sale is a smart phone.
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:4, Insightful)
By one standard, almost every phone sold today already is a smart phone. Somewhere along the line, a funny thing happened, and "Smartphone" got redefined to only refer to the highest end phones available at the moment, with what would have been a smartphone the year before now being called something like a "Featurephone."
There will always be some sort of market for high end $500+ devices, but as you point out, it'll just get harder and harder to justify spending that much on a mobile device when the lesser, cheaper models can do so much.
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For non-smartphones especially around the world, both Apple and Android do not have much of a presence compared to Nokia
The problem is that Apple/Android/Blackberry are cherry picking the most profitable customers. Apple and RIM would be delighted to sell nothing but higher-end phones forever, leaving the low-end, low-margin phones to Nokia and friends.
For companies who target marketshare and the low end like Dell, the last 10 years have been sort of murderous on the stockholders. Nokia's has been awful as well.
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Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:4, Interesting)
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I used to have an N Gage model train set. It rocked, with smoke coming out of the engine and working lights and everything.
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And it was actually quite widely used in Scandinavia and probably other parts of Europe. USA has always been the secondary market for Nokia. Also remember that this was in the beginning of 2000, times have changed a lot since then.
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:4, Insightful)
One good product in a sea of mediocrity ones does not make a good company. Just look at Sony's product catalog and see what I mean.
Why can't the companies focus on making one or two really GREAT products?
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess you missed the first sentence of the article.
Nokia still sells more phones than Samsung, LG, and Research in Motion (RIM) put together, but its inability to produce high-margin, high-end smartphones that can compete head to head with Apple's iPhone and Google Android-based smartphones is causing it major problems.
Companies that want to make money and stay is business tend to have diverse product lines, catering to multiple niches and price points.
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope the (soon to become) MeeGo line will be relevant. I want linux on my phone and I mean close to a desktop GNU/Linux distribution, not like Android that might as well have some other kernel for all I care (almost). Android isn't Linux in the overloaded sense we sloppy humans have come use the name.
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Funny)
Readers should not confuse this with, in order of increasing danger, the LG Migo, which "is perfect for your kid's first phone," the Bhutanese Migo, which is "known by the Nepalese and Tibetans as the Yeti, and to the Chinese and Soviets as the Alma," or the Lovecraft Mi-Go, which "are large, pinkish, fungoid, crustacean-like entities the size of a man with a 'convoluted ellipsoid' composed of pyramided, fleshy rings and covered in antennae where a head would normally be."
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Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Insightful)
The N900 is cool, but something of a niche product, and the only one of its kind. It's not for those of us who would consider Maemo but not the 181 grams. The iPhone seems to have aimed for a sweet spot between pocket friendliness and usability, and Android comes in just about every form factor if you have other priorities. Nokia is in trouble if the N900 is the only competitive smartphone they sell.
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Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Insightful)
When the average person sees that they can get an iPhone for $200, a BlackBerry for $100, an Android device for $100, a palm device for $100, a Windows Mobile device for $50 or the N900 for $650, people aren't going to buy it. People don't care that it is cheaper because you can use cheaper plans than the iPhone allows, they see an outrageous initial price and won't buy it.
In all honesty, the only people who buy their phones unsubsidized are geeks like you and me. The average person will never pay $650 outright for a phone.
Itemization (Score:4, Interesting)
When the average person sees that they can get an iPhone for $200, a BlackBerry for $100, an Android device for $100, a palm device for $100, a Windows Mobile device for $50 or the N900 for $650
This is true only because the U.S. cell phone market doesn't itemize the phone subsidy on the monthly bill. T-Mobile is the first U.S. nationwide carrier to introduce SIM-only plans that cost less than plans that include a phone.
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Informative)
One only needs to look at price to see why the N900 never caught on. People don't care that its unlocked too much, what they -do- care about is that a price of $650 was something that no one wants to pay for a phone. $100? People would have bought it. $200? People still might have bought it, $650 not subsidized? The average person doesn't want to pay that much for a phone.
That's only because US has got used to telco's cheating that way. Everywhere else in the world a person buys a phone and then gets (a much cheaper) separate contract for it. It was only a few years ago that the operators started offering the US-style subsidized plans, and they always end up costing a lot more.
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In Britain, they used to do it the US way, and still do to an extent, but you can now get much cheaper SIM only plans.
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Informative)
in the rest of the world buying your phone subsidized actually end up costing you slightly more. on the other hand, carrier subscriptions are extremely cheap "phoneless".
For example I pay 1EUR/month (thats 12EUR/year) for unlimited 3.5G, unlimited calling on the same carrier and land lines (theres a fee to other mobile carriers, and international of course).
The same one with a 2-300EUR iphone4 cost smth like 30 to 45eur per month during 12 to 24 month which is more expensive, locked during 6month (after 6month u can unlock and you want to change carrier you've to pay the rest of the phone;. slightly more in fact, once again).
In this case buying unsubsidized is actually better.
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bleh unlimited 3.5G *data* of course hehe
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Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:4, Informative)
It's not the hardware, it's the GNU/Linux software. And just because it doesn't succeed doesn't mean it isn't the best available from the perspectives of people who'd like a GNU/Linux computer in their pocket.
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Really?
Because I have a droid and have thought of making a debian chroot just to get some linux apps I know and love.
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:4, Informative)
Think of just about anything, and there is a free app which is a very small download for that. I don't know if that will sell any more N900 phones but it certainly impresses those that have them.
The multitasking alone leaves the iPhone for dead (ask an iPhone user about alarm apps and how they don't work), as does the ability to switch between virtual screens.
The device itself is an expensive bit of hardware with a lot of memory, high pixel density touchscreen etc, but that sort of environment (Maemo or Meego) has a lot of potential on future devices with lower end specs.
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What makes the hardware so special, is that it runs better software. As good as the iPhone looks on paper, it still, after all these years, doesn't even have the capability to run a "hello world" python script.
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Why is that more important than a stable, clean web browser or an app distribution system with, well, apps?
It seems like you OSS guys look at hardware and not realize what features are there. You completely miss the forest for the trees.
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If you're in Finland I've got a small question.
What's Nokia's presence on their own home turf? What's the excitement like for Android devices or the iPhone in comparison?
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Interesting)
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Holy hyperbole batman. The last piece of news from YLE (state TV and radio) last month was that over 85% of people still use nokias. I somehow find a drop of 5% to be very undramatic.
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N900 resolution is only 840x480 my droid beats that, and iphone4 is 960x360. Again all that I can do on my droid, heck I can have a debian chroot if I want.
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well new to iphone4 was a front facing camera 900 had last year. New to iphone4 and android phones is video out which 900 did last year also. Opengl es support and the graphics processor to run it is a huge bonus over iphone4 and android. Wireless sync 900 had last year. Slide cover for the camera 900 has dont think iphone4 or any android phone has. Then there is the application memory space which destroys both iphone4 and android phones. Standard Linux platform huge bonus. Multi task up to 32 applications
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Interesting)
They just can't get their act straight.
Apple came out with the iPhone and followed down the same path with respect to both customers and developers.
Google introduced Android and their efforts are just as consistent.
Nokia, on the other hand, bought Symbian which at the time was mostly a feature phone OS, introduced Maemo which used GTK, then acquired Trolltech which was Qt, then ported Qt to Maemo and dropped GTK, then started porting Qt to next version of Symbian, then dropped Maemo and started work on Meego. Now, what next? There are too many moving parts, and too much uncertainty, at least as far as "smartphones" are concerned. Are there politics going on inside the company? If so, someone has to take charge and make some tough technical decisions.
I personally like Qt and find it easy to program with and I hope they use that as their tool in their future phones and tablets; but, in general, Nokia needs to find a clear direction and stick to it.
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With the caveat of being the only vendor for the platform, which is extremely tightly controlled.
Which speaks nothing to the hardware manufacturers, whom are abandoning handsets left and right and leaving it up to the community to forge ahead.
OK
Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:5, Interesting)
If I recall the story correctly, the precursor to the N900 was very much a skunkworks project, and built at a point when Nokia was contractually prohibited from selling a phone running Linux; the N900 was thus a relatively small step that was easy to take once that contractual prohibition was no longer in place.
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Re:Did the author completely overlook,,, (Score:4, Informative)
Symbian OS has never been a feature phone OS. It was originally a PDA OS (Under the name Epoc 32), and became a smartphone OS round about 1999 when it was used for the Nokia 9110. None of the phones Nokia has released with SYmbian have been feature phones, they are all smartphones. Nokia's feature phones are Series 30 and Series 40, neither of which are Symbian.
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Then we have a different understanding of what a "smartphone" means. Pretty much all MOAP phones are feature phones, and if you are going to argue that phones like these [symbian.org] are "smartphones" - i.e. in the same category as iOS and Android phones - then I don't know what to tell you.
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The Samsung SGH-D730, like every other Series 60 device is a smartphone.
http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/5902.html [infosyncworld.com]
iOS and Android don't define what it is to be a smartphone, they came along a long time after the smartphone category was defined. The smartphone category is defined as a phone which is capable of running native 3rd party app downloads.
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That's a pretty vague definition. Some of the crappiest feature phones allowed you to download 3rd party software using J2ME and BREW. I don't call those things "smartphones" and then turn around and call iPhone by the same label, effectively putting them in the same "smartphone" category. That's just not right.
Besides, the definition of the term was not my point. I was highlighting the differences in categories. And iOS, Android and Maemo are not the same category as most of the phones you are referring to
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No it's not. Whilst there are lways judgements to be made, the reason you think it's vague is because you haven't understood it fully.
That's not NATIVE applications. Native apps means using the same APIs as the built in apps. Those that offer no more than J2ME or BREW are indeed feature phones. But Symbian phones are smartphones. Symbian apps can be programmed in C++ using the
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You are over thinking it. The issue of GTK vs. Qt on Maemo is just like on Desktop Linux. App developer can use whichever they want, and most users won't be able to tell the difference. It's lik
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They have already abandoned it. Until they stop doing that they cannot compete.
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i don't see why updates are so important. iphone1? it doesnt run ios3
iphone3G? ios4 on it makes you want to kill yourself
Next Android minimum specs are the nexus 1, likely the last update it will get ofc
as long as they support the phone 1 or 2 years, it's mostly on par with others. maemo still has updates, and meego runs on the N900, even thus its not official (meego for nokia doesnt exist yet..)
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You ever let a non techno-geek use an N900?
No amount of slick marketing is going to fix that.
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Nokia has massive infrastructure worldwide. They are one of the few hiring uberLinux geeks just now. If you can do high availability clustering using Linux regardless of distribution you should submit a resume.
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... the N900?
As far as I'm concerned the only thing Nokia is missing is a better marketing campaign for their product that compares very favorably with the Apple and Android offerings.
here here sir!
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The N900 is a class of it's own (Score:3, Insightful)
The N900 doesn't even try to compete with Apple and Android offerings, it's essentially a desktop computer in a small case. It essentially runs a flavour of Debian. (yes, you do have apt-get on those devices)
Now the next step would be to encourage more mobile phone vendors to do the same.
Re:Favorably? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the equivalent of saying a fully-fledged mobile Linux computer (with a really nice front-end) is nothing but a nice browser, while the other platforms do so much more...
Not exactly (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the equivalent of saying a fully-fledged mobile Linux computer (with a really nice front-end) is nothing but a nice browser,
That depends on what you mean my mobile. A great strength of Linux is the ton of free software around - but much of it targeting X-Windows.
How much can run on that mobile platform? Software that is not meant for mobile devices doesn't really work for users.
Re:Favorably? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not going to argue with you, because you're right.
I'd just like to point out that marketshare isn't awesomeness.
In the marketplace, fartapps and other apps are the thing nowadays, sure, but come on, the N900 is basically a debian computer in your pocket that can also (often) make phonecalls.
Sadly, awesomeness doesn't equal marketshare either, of course.
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Re:Favorably? (Score:5, Insightful)
You wrote: "The only fix for Nokia now is to go Android, then the fact they make nice hardware means something again.". Nokia has been well known for making good quality phones, but this is not the reality any more. Hasn't been for past 2-3 years. Flagship product N97 had so many flaws you can not even list them here. Do a google search. N900's hardware has been a nightmare! Just browse talk.maemo.org and you will see why if you are not aware already. Nokia phones used to be good quality phones some 2-3 years ago, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case any more.
i have said it before and i'll say it again
the N900 is a sweet smartphone.. i LOVE mine.
Nokia were VERY up front when they released it saying that maemo was "stage 4 of 5" and that it wasn't a phone that was for everyone. it was very much a niche of a niche phone.
the ovi store to be quite frank ISN'T where you get yer apps.. you get them direct to your phone from repositories. these can be accessed simply by adding them to your phone settings
check here for the settings [thenokiablog.com]
also you will find that maemo on the N900 is soon to undergo a change in that it will be going MeeGo - in a sense.
it's still going to have the debian based maemo under the bonnet and then the Meego UI.
Full on MeeGo is Fedora under the bonnet
how many of the people currently slagging off the N900 have actually had hands on experience with it? not too many i would hazard a guess
Re:Favorably? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah but that misses the point entirely.
N900 is a sweet phone but a niche phone as you have pointed out yourself. Its missing many features present in the top end droid/iphone software. Simple things like double tap to fully justify a column of text in a webpage, and with Froyo the one big standout - the browser - is left in the dust.
For example my friend has a n900, he is a linux dev so for him its awesome.
I run a fedora server @ home and have tinkered with linux for years, but no coding beyond basic scripting, and for me the 'openness' of the n900 doesn't mean much as I can't code for it and make it do all the crazy things you see people hack it into. Sure I can copy/paste other people's efforts but would that compensate for not having all the stuff I'm now used to in Android 2.2 (even 2.1)? not a chance.
As for the repos, its nowhere close to even the android app shop let alone the apple one. For most people, once the basic phone bit is acceptable (and it pretty much is, left handed fruit aside lol) its all about the apps. I don't know if you have much experience with the iphone or high end droid phones but my friend made the same point, 'there are apps in repos'. I let him play around with my N1 for a bit and he was flabbergasted with the amount of apps/functionality available, and that's just android, let alone the insanely big iphone apps market.
So the n900 is a great tech demo, great hackers tool for linux devs, but it ain't exactly worth a ---- in the fight for the smartphone market. Now they're going meego, you wanna bet how many issues there will be with version 1? Meanwhile droid will move up to version 3 and iphone keeps getting more polish, power (lockdown and anti apple backlash too lol). Every minute a polished software/hardware combo is not on the market they are losing.
As for asia/europe, sure there are lots of nokias around and it is still one of the best options for non-smartphones, but for the high end, nobody wants a nokia, they ALL want an iphone or android. There is NO buzz around nokia at all.
Re:Favorably? (Score:4, Informative)
"things like double tap to fully justify a column of text in a webpage"
That's a very specific thing to be complaining about. I'm not even sure what you are getting at. Double tapping on the n900s browser zooms out the page (to the equivalent of being a 1280 width screen i believe). Double tapping again zooms in on that region. It's very intuitive and quick.
It's not what you're describing but it seems to achieve the same goal; Web pages are easily viewable on the n900. You can also install n900 versions of Firefox, Chromium or Opera if you don't like the default browser on the n900. So i don't see what you are getting at here.
As for the app store it's really just a repository, don't use the OVI store browser as that's redundant, use the App manager to browse for apps. You click app manager on the phone and you get a list of programs available from the repositories (including the commercial OVI store repository). Mame, SNES and Megadrive emulators, OpenSSH, ftpd, all the tux games, programs to turn you phone into a wireless access point, VOIP apps, all the major linux apps etc. are all downloadable from these official repositories. The n900's a full Linux system and the huge number of apps for the n900 reflects this.
I don't understand how you think there aren't many apps available. All i can think is that the official developer and extras repositories weren't added to the app manager and you browsed nothing more than the OVI store. Nokia open their phones so that there isn't one source of apps for the device, make sure you add the other well known sources. Note that's also why you never here about how Nokia killed app X for their phone. They aren't Apple. They couldn't stop a competing source of apps for their phones even if they wanted to and the OVI store is a small part of the ecosystem.
Here's some extra sources for n900 apps. Click these on your phone to add them to the App manager. The first link, the extras, is especially important as it's official and has a huge list of great apps with seemingly all the major linux apps represented. The rest i've linked here are a bit more specific and some are for beta version applications. But even if you just add the extras repository you should be giving the Android a run for it's money in the amount and quality of the applications available.
http://repository.maemo.org/extras/ [maemo.org]
http://repository.maemo.org/extras-testing/ [maemo.org]
http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel/ [maemo.org]
http://my-maemo.com/repository/ [my-maemo.com]
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile [mozilla.org]
http://www.amsn-project.net/maemo [amsn-project.net]
http://b-man.xceleo.org/repo/maemo-nintendo-emulators/ [xceleo.org]
http://qole.org/repository [qole.org]
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Microsoft give the impression that they have completely lost the way with Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile 7 has all the disadvantages of the first generation iPhone, without any of the advantages. The 1st generation iPhone was a flop and that wass without a 3rd or 4th generation iPhone competing with it.
Given that existing customers are going to be forced to make a switch whatever happens, I suspect a lot of them with switch to Android, and once they do that, they aren't going to switch back unless they ha
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Microsoft give the impression that they have completely lost the way with Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile 7 has all the disadvantages of the first generation iPhone, without any of the advantages. The 1st generation iPhone was a flop and that wass without a 3rd or 4th generation iPhone competing with it.
Well actually the 1st gen iPhone was not a flop at all, yes there were a lot of people complaining but there were also a lot of people buying. It had a really large amount of growth for such a new platform.
T
For me .. (Score:3, Interesting)
Licensing? (Score:2)
Release to Carriers (Score:4, Informative)
Nokia needs to get their act together by flooding the market with their phones. Heck, even abandon Symbian for a while and create Android phones, really, despite how much Nokia seems to love Symbian, it kinda fails when compared to Android, iOS and even WebOS.
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The problem is the US carriers. Ask for a contract rate including a subsidized phone. Now ask what the rate is if you use your own phone and do not want them to subsidize one. It is the same price.
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Blackberry created a phone for the business user, not the carriers. Apple created a phone for the consumer user, not the carriers. We will see if Android is a phone for the user or for the carrier. What is clear is that Nokia is still producing phones that s
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Head over to T-Mobile and check out the Nokia 5230. I'm commenting from one of them right now, and for only $10 US per month unlimited. (no text messages) Oh and only $70 for the phone when I bought it. I love it. It isn't iphone slick, but gets the job done on the net and can run Opera.
Open phones (Score:4, Insightful)
Now they are going for Meego, still having closed components, and the question is for how much they will give to it attention or how soon they will forget about that platform too. They should be more open on them, letting developers fully take advantage of that hardware (i.e. there is an Android port for it, but the cellphone part don't work because being one of the closed components), and see how far it could get... if the phone gets wildly popular because its flexibility, maybe they won't sell so much associated services if what most run is not tied with them, but for sure they will sell a lot of hardware.
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The core of MeeGo will be fully functional, with closed platform-specific bits pushed to the fringes. Hardware support is essential, and at this point the necessary bits are available to device owners.
They can't. Bits like the 3D driver are held by a 3rd party that is very much not willing to go open with their sources. Sorta like Nvidia. This is, not coincide
Ah, Galen Gruman (Score:5, Informative)
We had a ill-informed article by Galen Gruman just yesterday. And here's another.
Symbian OS has ALWAYS had touch capabilities. It was originally released on a PDA called the Psion Series 5 under the name Epoc 32. That was a device with both a touch screen and a full qwerty keyboard. Touch was absolutely central to it. In all the smartphones Symbian OS has been released for, the OS itself still has touch central to the UI code. In the case of Sony-Ericsson, they released phones that used those touch capabilities. Nokia always chose not to. To release phones without touch screens. It was always Nokia's decision, never anything to do with the OS not being able to do it.
How can you take a tech author seriously when he makes false accusations based on a complete lack of knowledge of the facts?
Nokia's cameras (Score:2)
Software and some hardware considerations put on the side (cpu, ram, i suppose), the cameras they have in their phones are really good.
I'd like to find an android phone that can take pictures as good as the N8. Check this one out:
Colors, focus, sharpness are really good.
http://admin.conversations.nokia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/04062010253.jpg [nokia.com]
why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nokia makes great hardware, but they obviously have problems putting together a good UI or development platform. They are unlikely to come up with something better than Android, Chrome, or iOS.
So what Nokia should do is ship Android and build whatever software and hardware innovations they want on top of that. I think Nokia Android phones would be spectacular. Symbian^4? Sorry, not interested.
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they're too much ego for this i think
Look, it's simple (Score:2)
All they need to do is release a phone with the capabilities of the Moto Droid, and the durability of their own Nokia 3390.
Those things last forever. I know people who still use them despite only being good for phone calls and texts. (gasp, i know, do they cook over open fires too?) Other people would use them too, if they could slice, dice, and run Google Maps.
The last Nokia phone worth a look was the NGage, though mostly just for the look.
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management at fault (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I hold Nokia stock
What Nokia needs to do is replace it's top management. Unless some drastical measures are announced within the next 2 weeks (Q2 report coming up), the stockholders are going to be demanding that too (just look at Nokia stock trend over the past 8 years, it's really not particularly pretty). The problem is the arrogance and incompetence of the long-time top company officials like Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (the CEO). Nokia's current situation is very similar to Ericsson a decade ago. They had a very strong market position, but grew arrogant and slow, while the market churn kept on speeding up.
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To expand a bit.
Nokia is betting the house on Meego. Big time. By announcing that Symbian will no longer be the OS choice for their top-end smartphones in the future, Nokia has essentially cannibilized the sales of their upcoming flagship - the Nokia N8. The N8 is actually a very decent device and it's going to be competitively priced, but they have not only failed to gain any major mindshare for it so far via very lackluster pre-launch marketing, they have now essentially buried it by announcing that Symbi
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The Ovi store is a clusterfuck (Score:3, Insightful)
The article mentions lack of developer interest in Nokia's Ovi store, which is failing because there aren't very many users on it. This is because using the Ovi store requires surfing the web, cumbersome authentication, no downloading of free apps without a login, bad search, and other user interface fuckups. It's slow, it's cumbersome, it's confusing and it's not even used by Nokia. Handset integration is nonexistent.
Until the Ovi store works as simply as the Android store (ie. gets integrated with their handsets), most users won't bother with it.
And since no users bother with it, no developers will, either.
There are big bucks to be made elsewhere, and they don't require deep knowledge of Symbian landmines to develop for.
Western-centered view (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't try to be the iPhone (Score:3, Interesting)
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Probably the best thing they could do is license iOS from Apple. What are the other options? Put out the same exact Android phone that everybody else is?
If they paid Apple enough money it could happen.
Yeah, and after that maybe Apple will license OS X to Dell and HP for use on their desktop computers.
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So? People stood in even longer lines for The Phantom Menace. Standing in lines is a display of brand loyalty, nothing more.
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Bullshit, people stood in lines for incredibles too and EVO 4Gs too.
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Not everyone wants a smartphone.
Darn right. A dumbphone plan costs $80 a year from Virgin Mobile USA, and a lot of people don't see the benefit in paying ten times that for a smartphone plan when they can get Internet at home, at work, and at the restaurant.
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Yeah the part of the segment that has money, companies strangely seem to try to focus on that market a lo.
RPG maker (Score:2)
written in a decent high level language, like RPG
Is RPG [wikipedia.org] any better than the scripting language in RPG Maker 2 [wikipedia.org]?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.fool.com/investing/international/2010/06/18/can-anything-save-nokia.aspx [fool.com]
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/nokia-warns-on-handset-profits-ftimes-edf08c1a77e7.html [yahoo.com]