Noooo... Why Nokia?
Nokia has all but sold itself to Microsoft.
It could have been worse. It sounds like they are keeping symbian around for the phones that they will sell in the developing world to billions of people, and keeping Meego around as an experimental project. They should have gone full force on Meego as soon as the n900 came out.
They had a good strategy. But it took them so long to acquire Qt (their development tool that worked across platforms ), too long to take control and completely open source the Symbian operating system, to long to work on the platform and ecosystem. I would have much preferred it if they had dived into the maemo/meego project. It was already a great OS for phones, and it was already competitive, with just the need for some more polish.
How Ironic that years after snubbing Microsoft by creating and coming to dominate the world with the Symbian OS that they have now struck an alliance with same company that was their main competitor.
"So the Nokia content environment will be within the Windows Phone Marketplace. Microsoft brings that, while Nokia brings the carrier billing relationships around the world."
From the Register:
"Nokia's going all in with Microsoft, after spending years trying to avoid Windows. It joined and bought Symbian, hooked up with Intel on MeeGo for mobile Linux, and bought the Qt cross-platform brains. That means Nokia has now got an army with completely the wrong skills. They'll need to decide who will be retrained, will be cut, or who will simply decide to leave for new jobs."
That about sums up the problem with this deal. Years of man hours and resources invested in work that has now been marginalized.
From a business perspective, this is a smart move. This will probably go down as another example of Microsoft coming to the aid of another group. Microsoft has bailed out Apple, and Bungie studios, snatched up the group that was creating the kinect technology and now is getting a great deal with Nokia.
They will both be able to combine their work on maps, with Bing and Navtec.
Nokia will get access to American carriers since Windows Phone 7 has already had success there.
Microsoft will get access to markets outside the US, where Nokia and Symbian is still the global leader.
Nokia will bring their expertise of imaging, localization for other markets, hardware and scalability.
Microsoft is giving them billions worth of subsidies towards putting their OS on Nokia phones.
And various collaborations of services, products, software and direction of the OS.
Both companies really need this partnership succeed. Nokia can't be relegated to just another hardware vendor in the android market, and Microsoft needs to see substantial growth in sales in the mobile market or it will lead to erosion and influence of their main ecosystem (Windows).
This is going to be a great deal for the two corporations, a betrayal to the open source community and Nokia employees (who will lose their job), and a bitter pill for loyal Nokia users and developers.
What a shame. I had really hoped for the next Meego/Maemo smartphone. Now I'm worried its not going to get the support it needs to be a success. I guess we will see what Nokia does next.
It could have been worse. It sounds like they are keeping symbian around for the phones that they will sell in the developing world to billions of people, and keeping Meego around as an experimental project. They should have gone full force on Meego as soon as the n900 came out.
They had a good strategy. But it took them so long to acquire Qt (their development tool that worked across platforms ), too long to take control and completely open source the Symbian operating system, to long to work on the platform and ecosystem. I would have much preferred it if they had dived into the maemo/meego project. It was already a great OS for phones, and it was already competitive, with just the need for some more polish.
How Ironic that years after snubbing Microsoft by creating and coming to dominate the world with the Symbian OS that they have now struck an alliance with same company that was their main competitor.
"So the Nokia content environment will be within the Windows Phone Marketplace. Microsoft brings that, while Nokia brings the carrier billing relationships around the world."
From the Register:
"Nokia's going all in with Microsoft, after spending years trying to avoid Windows. It joined and bought Symbian, hooked up with Intel on MeeGo for mobile Linux, and bought the Qt cross-platform brains. That means Nokia has now got an army with completely the wrong skills. They'll need to decide who will be retrained, will be cut, or who will simply decide to leave for new jobs."
That about sums up the problem with this deal. Years of man hours and resources invested in work that has now been marginalized.
From a business perspective, this is a smart move. This will probably go down as another example of Microsoft coming to the aid of another group. Microsoft has bailed out Apple, and Bungie studios, snatched up the group that was creating the kinect technology and now is getting a great deal with Nokia.
They will both be able to combine their work on maps, with Bing and Navtec.
Nokia will get access to American carriers since Windows Phone 7 has already had success there.
Microsoft will get access to markets outside the US, where Nokia and Symbian is still the global leader.
Nokia will bring their expertise of imaging, localization for other markets, hardware and scalability.
Microsoft is giving them billions worth of subsidies towards putting their OS on Nokia phones.
And various collaborations of services, products, software and direction of the OS.
Both companies really need this partnership succeed. Nokia can't be relegated to just another hardware vendor in the android market, and Microsoft needs to see substantial growth in sales in the mobile market or it will lead to erosion and influence of their main ecosystem (Windows).
This is going to be a great deal for the two corporations, a betrayal to the open source community and Nokia employees (who will lose their job), and a bitter pill for loyal Nokia users and developers.
What a shame. I had really hoped for the next Meego/Maemo smartphone. Now I'm worried its not going to get the support it needs to be a success. I guess we will see what Nokia does next.