Nokia Unveils Its First Windows 7 Phone 349
mikejuk writes with an excerpt from an I Programmer article: "Nokia has just launched the Lumia 800, its first Windows 7 phone, and it is basically a modified N9. CEO Stephen Elop said: 'It's a new dawn for Nokia.' He also called it 'the first real Windows Phone,' and said, 'We believe it is the first ever instantiation of the Windows Phone platform that properly embodies, complements and amplifies the design sensibilities of Windows Phone' ... It is being launched in Europe now but the US wont see one until early 2012."
By "modified N9" they mean the N9 but running WP7 bundled with Nokia's navigation application and a streaming music service.
2002 called and they want their... (Score:5, Interesting)
So... Stephen Elop calls it 'the first real Windows Phone'
I thought this was the first windows phone: http://www.dcviews.com/press/Orange_SPV.htm [dcviews.com]
Orange was a Microsoft Gold Partner, and I wrote the Orange custom home screen software complete with easter-egg while working for Orange in Leeds.
Now I learn it was all just a dream... it wasn't a REAL windows phone at all... or maybe Elop is too young and inexperienced to remember recent history... ah well..
Re:Why Windows? (Score:5, Interesting)
No offense, but Elops says a lot of things. Most of them are utterly stupid, like bitching about symbian that has carried a company through last year, and is still growing in spite of CEO telling everyone who bothered to listen to him how much it sucked.
Want a recent example? Nokia unveils it's new phones. Stock jumps up.
Elop steps on stage and starts talking. Stock plummets.
I'm not kidding. It's hilarious just how bad of a speaker he is.
Re:Why Windows? (Score:4, Interesting)
This has been covered widely in the business media, best article probably being from Bloomberg
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm [businessweek.com]
Why not Android:
[Elop] tried to negotiate a deal with Google to run Android, but Google refused to give the world's biggest phonemaker any advantages over its smaller partners, meaning Nokia's corps of 11,600 engineers would have next to no ability to add their own innovations to Google's software. "It just didn't feel right," Elop says to the crowd. "We'd be just another company distributing Android. That's not Nokia! We need to fight!"
Why Windows Phone:
Elop says his software deal with Microsoft was misconstrued as a Hail Mary to the receiver with the worst hands in the business. Microsoft had just 4 percent of the overall market prior to the Nokia deal. What Nokia didn't gain in market share, however, it hopes to gain in flexibility. The contract grants Nokia the right to stuff almost any innovation it can muster into its Windows Phones