Since February 2011, Nokia has abandoned Symbian, cancelled Meltemi and mothballed Meego - and will license Microsoft software for its high- and mid-range phones. Nokia continues to develop only its venerable Series 40 software in-house.
Windows Phone 7 software will soon power all Nokia phones, reps for both Microsoft and Nokia announced today, effectively making the global cell phone market a "three horse race" between the Apple iPhone OS, Google's Android, and Microsoft-Nokia. According to Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, Nokia phones will now run the Windows Phone OS, instead of the in-house Symbian OS; in exchange, Nokia would help Microsoft improve its hardware.
Nokia House becomes Microsoft House
Yesterday, I wrote that Microsoft had completed the transition from Nokia to Lumia branding on its in-house Windows Phone apps. And today, Microsoft provided a few more details about this transition, including some pending changes.
> Nokia's current CEO, Stephen Elop, worked for Microsoft as the head of the > Office business division before joining Nokia. Whether or not you believe > his business decisions were in Nokia's best interests, he definitely knows > the difference between Windows and something else.Well, I can believe that, and I already knew he previosly worked for Microsoft. Taking everything else aside, I really can't believe how such a great CEO could've been asleep for years, without realizing that Symbian -- Nokia's flagship and business core -- was already dead in water for years. So they've been floating already dead on their previous glory and reputation, and suddenly the big CEO realized that leads nowhere, so he boldly killed everything they've already developed in-house and went to his old home -- Microsoft. Well, however -- I'll never again buy a Nokia, and many people I know will do the same. When compared to Android, Windows Mobile looks like a joke. (Log in to post comments) The embedded long-term support initiative Posted Oct 31, 2011 23:25 UTC (Mon) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
Nokia, in spite of consistent poor performance in the North American market, is a cellphone powerhouse. The biggest seller of cellphones in the world, it's a consistent technology innovator (for example, Nokia has had phones supporting NFC for several years: technology that other handset companies are only just beginning to integrate). It's also something of a smartphone pioneer; the Nokia Communicators were legendary, and even today the company's smartphone business is substantial.
With in-house development ruled out, the company had essentially two options: Android and Windows Phone 7. Android might seem the obvious choice, especially with Nokia's existing Linux experience from MeeGo, but Android has its problems. Android manufacturers are already engaged in a vigorous race to the bottom, with cheap and cheerful handsets like the Huawei Ideos (T-Mobile Comet), Motorola Cliq 2, and LG Optimus.
In 2013, the Los Altos Historical Commission designated the house a historic site, although Wozniak has called the company's story of starting out in a garage "a bit of a myth." He said that the garage was a place he and Jobs spent time and discussed ideas, but, "We did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no manufacturing there."
However, silly though it is to compare the household cookie-jar to an entire nation's fiscal responsibilities, there are instructive parallels. For example, both the federal government and the average family survive, thrive, and serve the greater good by embracing the concept of a substantial and prolonged deficit.
The reason both family and bank willingly join together to shoulder this big fat debt is the linchpin of capitalism: growth. Although the interest charged by the bank will grow, the family knows that the equity in their house, combined with their increased earning power as they get older, will almost certainly grow faster.
So it's really in a way coming very late, but also it's admitting that maybe its strategy years ago was wrong. It's now trying to in some ways mimic the Apple strategy by buying Nokia and developing in-house both the technology hardware and the software. And whether it's able to succeed in this way will really be difficult.
"Whether it succeeds or not, we will know in a couple of years time, but surely the strategy from our perspective is simple - we use the things that we have in-house, and try to see if they work. Once again, big screen, big battery, big processor - putting that in a device, that's fairly simple."
The only real design glitch is the way the display panel is attached to the phone's plastic back, leaving a visible crack where dust specs, cat hair, and whatever else you have flying around the house gets caught, and is very hard to remove once lodged inside. 2ff7e9595c
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