Cellphones Nokia CEO Stephen Elop rallies troops in brutally honest 'burning platform

It really seems like Nokia's software development methodologies are totally broken. Both as a result of mismanagement and incompetence. This is fixable, and I think Elop does intend to fix it or else the company is totally done for, but Windows Phone 7 does indeed substantially solve this problem for Nokia in the short term because you use the product Microsoft sells and that's it. Now I suspect that this will be bad news for Nokia as a business and that it won't help them lift off in the States, but it does get around their software development issues. They'd have something to sell. I'm just not sure anyone will necessarily want it.

I guess we'll see tomorrow. All we really have is a lot of vague speculation.



lol, what? Qt is not a programming language.
 
Nokia always was a closed platform, very similar to Apple. I remember when they firstly introduced DRM for songs and ringtones and they thought they were going to eat the world.
 
I am so freakin tired of hearing this statement. :doh:


Yes other OS phones have more apps (which makes their OS more popular) but that doesn't mean that Symbian is not a smartphone. Many people that make this statement have either never even used a Symbian phone or haven't used one in a while.


If you don't like Symbian for whatever reason that's fine, but stop with the whole not a smartphone stuff already... :disappoin
 
Sure, technically it's a smartphone, but what's the point of having a smartphone if there aren't any programs to run on it? That would be like overlooking Mac OS 9 and Windows 98 SE and using BeOS 4 instead, because it's a PC OS and therefore just as good as the other two.

All Symbian phones are good for these days is making phone calls, sending text messages and visiting websites - which is something any dumbphone these days can do.
 
Nah, nobody sticks with Nokia because of Symbian. That may have been why they chose them half a decade ago, but people nowadays put up with Symbian rather than looking forward to it. Nokia keeps selling phones because they still have the best RF and sound quality. Anyone who ditches Nokia when they switch platforms was going to do so anyway.



They've been screwing up on a massive level for a long time.

It was evident even when they were top dog. I remember being annoyed that the E62 only had mono audio while N-series had stereo. There wasn't a good reason for it aside from product differentiation. They could have very easily made a phone that was the most appealing in its class in every segment, but instead they always chose to hamper them on a hardware level. Even going back to v2, the 6620 was the only phone with enough RAM, all the others had it reduced so it would crash due to out of memory issues. They set themselves up with a business model while they were on top that took advantage of their customers, and now that they're not on top they don't have anything left to leverage. They need to do a complete overhaul - massively reduce the number of different devices they put out, consolidate so that everything in their phones is top end, and make sure they go with a unified OS that gets upgraded across the entire line.

WP7 does that for them in one fell swoop. If they choose to, they can do it with MeeGo - hell, they could have done it with Symbian too, but it's too late for that.
 
Meego might run on an ARM platform but that defeats its main purpose, which is to push Intel processors and Intel is specifically gunning for Qualcomm in its sights.

Another thing is that WP7 itself doesn't run on any ARM platform, it requires the Qualcomm 8250 specifically, as its hardware drivers and graphics optimization are meant for that chip. The N9 would have been more likely to run a Texas Instruments OMAP6 chip like its N900 predecessor, and once again, Intel has Qualcomm on its gunsights.
 
So they do a hard reset and go with another OS and you think that somehow will accelerate things?

The fact is Nokia hasn't had focus, and thats mainly a management problem. You see stuff done halfway and then just stop. Their departments have no synergy. If they go WP7 it will be even worse. Now you add another OS into your stable, and I say add because you know they can't drop Symbian completely, so you either suck your mindshare out from the Symbian side to the WP7 side, or you hire from the outside and suck Symbian dry of the resources.

And then not only that, you think the third-party developers will be overjoyed when they suddenly realize that not only have they wasted their time with Symbian, Maemo/Meego, and Qt, but they don't know wtf Nokia might do if this plan doesn't work and Elop is replaced in 8 months when their numbers don't reverse?

How are you guys not seeing that going half-cocked to yet another path is EXACTLY what Nokia has been doing wrong all this time. Not following through on their vision. They finally had a somewhat coherent vision with Symbian road-map, Maemo 6, and Qt (4.7/QT Quick/QML), got derailed somewhat with the partnership with Intel for Meego, and if they go WP7, again beyond just making MS a phone, this train is going completely off the tracks.

At that point they might as well just relegate themselves to being an OEM hardware provider...

PS I agree with bringing Symbian back under the control of Nokia. Open (or Foundation/Council, whatever) Governance was not working. We'll see with Meego.
 
Those are great and all, and I think one time I actually wished that my phone had HDMI out... but most normobs could care less about such things.
 
They're already at a dead stop. Only people with their heads burried in the ground think there's anything left for Symbian. About the only thing they could do is leverage the N8 and E7 to get everything designed for Qt 4.6 so that MeeGo gets all of Symbian's apps (solving the lack of Google Maps that the N900 currently has, among other things). MeeGo isn't going to launch any time soon, and all the reports suggest that they could get a WP7 N9 out faster than a MeeGo one.



They can drop Symbian completely, for all intents and purposes they drop it on previous devices each time they launch a new one. The S^3 devices are the only ones that aren't like that. Symbian doesn't need the resources, it's only sucking Nokia dry. There's nothing left for it, other than giving it a graceful death before it takes Nokia down entirely.



Devs have already given up on Symbian anyway. Especially with Alien Dalvik I'm pretty sure they'll just say "screw Qt, let's just develop for Android instead and port to MeeGo." That really makes the most sense. If Nokia is lucky, then AD will work for S^3 as well.



Yes, there's an issue with switching gears again, but they have WP7 working well enough to release on the N9 right now, but MeeGo still isn't ready for release. Hell, they released the N900 before it was really ready. There's no point in them sticking along a route if they're not going to get there at all. The N9 should have been released last year. MeeGo should have been out last year. They haven't even officially announced the N9 yet, and it usually takes them 4-8 months to get something out after it has been announced, meaning if lucky we'd get an N9 MeeGo phone in November, but more likely it won't be ready until next year. Sure, keep working on MeeGo, it's good to have their own OS and Ecosystem to build, and within a couple years it could take off with all their other partnerships, but until then, they really need to get something out now.


The biggest strength of Nokia is their hardware. It doesn't matter what OS they run on, I'll still buy them because they make the best phones. A lot of people feel that way as well. Given hardware is what they do well, and everything else is what they **** up, maybe it's best for them to go that direction.
 
THank you - well said.
Idiot bloggers definitely don't get this. It is unlikely forum/blog commenters would, but it does get annoying to hear drivel :)
 
Hmm interesting.

I think the only thing left would be Camera quality... I think I may replace my N8 this summer. I guess it depends on third-party developer support and whether or not the N8 gets any of the updates we were promised.

Geez, who knew the guy that said Nokia has unpolished gems were going to polish them only to sell them to MS.
 
I'm all for change. Whatever it may be. I've tried too many of Nokia's phone in the past 3 years and in the end, I'm still using an N86. Since the release of the N95/N82 Nokia has been spiraling downward.

Will the change be for the better? Who knows. The market is a completely different animal. But Nokia has been unable to bring a phone to market in the past 18 months that gives me what I want.
 
Um, what? WTF are you talking about? I'm not sure how you rationalize any of what you rambled on about. iOS is not a desktop OS, Android is not a desktop OS, any more than WebOS or Symbian are. All are smartphone OSs with the ability to browse full web pages, sync multiple email accounts, calendars, contacts, open and edit office documents, PDFs, play multimedia files, high quality video, etc. iOS and Android aren't running desktop apps either. By your definition my freakin' wireless router is a smartphone because it has a Linux kernel in it. iOS != OSX

Symbian has an eco system, it can run complex apps, Symbian is more widespread than any other mobile OS and has more marketshare. S^3 devices are running 3D games with a powerful GPU. Just because developers aren't flocking to a platform doesn't make it any less a smartphone. Are you saying that Twitter couldn't develop an official client for Symbian? What "powerful" apps are being developed for iOS and Android that couldn't be developed on Symbian?

So it's a smartphone OS but much of what you said in the second part of your post was spot on. Nokia can't code to save their lives and it shows in their inability to update phones without breaking something. It's taken way too long to improve the UI and UX and it's better to just kill it off now. Personally I won't miss Symbian nor will I miss Nokia's failed attempts at updating their devices. I had hopes for MeeGo but it's taken way too long with so little to show for it.
 
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