Nokia's VP talks N8, MeeGo 'milestone product,' tablets, Android and more

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Nokia's VP talks N8, MeeGo 'milestone product,' tablets, Android and more!. From Engadget:

?On the N8: The N8 is more of a high to mid-range smartphone. It will be launched before the end of Q3. It will be available in the US, and carrier partnerships will be announced at a later date.
?On MeeGo: The first MeeGo phone will be announced before the end of the year and will be a "milestone product" for the company. Nokia's done a lot of work on the interface and done away with a lot of the "legacy" of Symbian.
?On Android: Nokia has no plans to use Android on its smartphones. End of story.
?On tablets / larger phones: The company's made "no decisions" on entering the market. Savander seems to think larger screened smartphones are awkward.
?On netbooks: The Booklet 3G was priced a bit high, but they are still in the market.
?On 4G: Nokia has no plans to produce WiMax devices, but LTE will be a big focus.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/06/nokias-vp-talks-n8-meego-milestone-product-tablets-android/
 
Yeah, I think the bit of really 'new' news he made was that, as of now, no plans for a Meego tablet. Savander thinks that over the next year, with the iPad, and the various Android and Win7 versions chasing after Apple, the space will be too crowded.

And yeah, no plans to enter the larger screen phone (HTC Evo, Droid X, Samsung Galaxy S) space.

A bit disappointing, but I guess they have to stay within their *sweet spot*.

Also, as usual, some of the most entertaining parts of the Engadget piece are the reader comments, ranging from the cynically snarky to the sometimes hilarious, to the stupid. ("Vampires DO exist!" etc. LOL)

Also interesting, that he actually gave an interview to Engadget, one of the widely read American tech blogs, which many European Nokia-fanboys consider 'the enemy'.
 
Im looking forward to that Meego device, as long as it has a 4"inch display at 800x480 res then it should be great. I wonder what chipset it will use? TI OMAP3630 like the Droid X maybe?
Im guessing we wont be seeing a Nokia Symbian with anything above 640x360 3.5inch anytime soon? or even with an A8-Cortex?
If the Samsung i8910 OmniaHD got an official port to S^3 that would realy mess up Nokias plans with the N8.
 
Regarding their experiment with netbooks, I think it was just that, an experiment. From the gist I got from that interview, it was a 'one and done'. I didn't get the impression that Nokia really wants to be in the PC OEM business, unless you're using your own custom OS, like Apple.

And Nokia would never put Meego on netbooks. It would TANK their current business relationship with Microsoft. Steve Ballmer would go absolutely ape-s***.
 
Nokia wouldn't really have a choice. An Intel chip, that is low power consuming enough to power a smart phone with halfway decent battery life, from all accounts, won't be ready for another couple years.
 
Well if the currently empty tablet space will be "too crowded" by next year then the phone market will also be "too crowded" at the very least. Basically they are saying that the company that used to offer varied form factors and sizes will no longer be doing so.

The interview was the typical "all talk, no action" sort of thing Nokia has been doing for years. There will be no next generation product for 2 years. It better be:

2007:iOS::2012:Meego

Anything less and there will be problems.
 
I'm not sure what sort of business relationship Nokia has with MS and exactly how valuable it is. Besides MS is a direct competitor on phones and tablets. If Exchange support is used as an argument then I'd argue that MFE is the absolute clunkiest, most unreliable exchange on any smartphone today. Where did MS really help? Also iPhone gets more MS support than Nokia does today. Even MacOS natively supports Exchange now. Better to consider MS a competitor and one that has a head start relative to Nokia. I would roll out that OS on every conceivable form factor and device type because everyone else will since Meego is not exclusive to Nokia.
 
I am confused. They say the N8 is a high-to-mid phone and yet there is no indication of a flagship in 2010. And my impression is that the N8 is going to be priced quite a bit above what early reports said and perhaps on par with other flagships.

If that is the case, Nokia is in serious trouble. The N8 is a good device with perhaps the best camera every seen on a phone but no way can it compete with the top Android phones running 2.2 which will be available soon. It has to be priced at least 20-30% below them.

And it is disappointing that there is no Meego phone in 2010. As I have said all along Nokia has lost an enormous amount of time because of their lack of focus and their decision to split their OS resources between Maemo/Meego on the one hand and S3/S4 on the other hand. I guess their hope is that their mid-end models and the N8 will tide them through for a year while they finally manage to launch a top-class touch phone and touch OS some time next year.

It's going to be very tough though with Android progressing in leaps and bounds and Windows Phone 7 soon to be launched. There is just not going to be that much developer interest in yet another platform not matter how attractive the Qt framework is. IMO Nokia really needed to have a stellar high-end device by now.
 
Well there is a clear indication that the first Meego (N9) will be launched this year. So there is your flagship product. And where do you get the N8 being priced higher? Already, Amazon.de has it for Eur 429 in Germany which is actually slightly below the Eur 375 without taxes and subsidies guidance. Of course, some other stores, including Nokia's own online store (which is always expensive) will try to cream some of the early adopters, but after that it will most likely drop pretty much smack on or below the guidance + taxes price point.
 
I suspect you'll get a Meego announcement by the end of this year, but nothing will ship until some time next year. Isn't the Meego software still officially in an Aplha state? There's no way it'll be shipping by Q4.
 
Nokia's 1st Meego implementation is using large chunks of their Maemo Harmattan. So, while the Meego foundation (right term?) version is in Aplha, Nokia's first version is much much more advanced (even Eldar said in a tweet yesterday its "ready to rock".. :p ).
 
I think there's some misunderstanding here. MeeGo is an open source operating system which is made out of merged components of Moblin and Maemo. The UI that goes on top is separate, like S60 is to Symbian.

There's this immature UI, which is the OS's stock UI: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/30/meego-for-handsets-makes-its-first-appearance/

And this more mature UI, which is Nokia's: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/02/nokias-treatment-of-meego-smartphone-ui-revealed/

The 1.0 version of the OS was released on June 30 and the steering group for MeeGo has schedule in place to deliver releases every 6 months (with nightly and weekly builds delivered in the interim for development purposes). It seems like the schedule for an end-of-year device release might be tight but it's not impossible. Cannot really speculate one way or another on the likelihood and Nokia has been pretty cagey about this. At the very least, we can expect an announcement before the year is out.

Also, as far as I know there's nothing to preclude N900 users from running MeeGo on their devices. It just seems like they won't get official support for it from Nokia. The N900 is on MeeGo's list of officially-supported handsets and N900 users are welcome to take it for a spin. I don't see Android users complaining about community ROMs and it seems like a lack of official support doesn't stop them from jumping on Froyo before they get support from their device's manufacturers (if they ever do at all).
 
True, but XDA Developers are pretty helpful, and even go so far as to hand hold newbs to the platform, how to root, flash ROMs, etc. There are even step by step instructionals, as in step 1. plug in your device, step 2. press this button.....along with the occasional demonstrational video.

Porting Meego to the N900 seems like it requires one to be more technically adept and to know some basic programming....which disqualifies large swaths of people. I know there are some enthusiast forums for the N900 and I've checked out a couple, but there didn't seem to be a lot of newcomer hand holding going on.

It seemed like it was assumed you knew your way around code.
 
I had read this article which said the German N8 was 479 euros.

Also is the N9 going to be launched this year? My interpretation is it is going to be announced this year but presumably launched next year. But yes if the N9 is launched this year it would be a positive step.
 
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