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by pavlov
5831 days ago
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After some 8 arduous years of dicking around with the horribly broken Symbian/S60, Nokia finally realized in 2008 that their software process sucks and is fundamentally unable to deliver a competitive mobile app platform. Their solution was to purchase a smaller, nimbler company with a ready product, and let the subsidiary produce the user-visible framework more or less independently of the suffocating Nokia structure. After two years, they've finally shipped the first SDK which targets existing devices with the new framework. It's actually pretty nice: http://www.forum.nokia.com/Develop/Qt However, these transitions simply take a long time. Apple purchased NeXT in late 1996, and the first usable Mac OS X release appeared almost five years later. Nokia has split their "OS X moment" into two separate operating systems: Symbian^4 and MeeGo. But neither is ready yet. Meanwhile Nokia investors are getting very antsy: over the past decade, Nokia's stock has lost over 80% of its value, or something like $200 billion in market cap... If the Qt transition stumbles, heads will roll in Espoo. |
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I do think that they need to trim down quick. I know that might have hurt their stocks like a kick in the groin, but they've already lost a lot of their stock values. They should do some sort of reboot and becoming an underdog. Slim down that confusing offerings. Back then, they have tons of numbering systems that confuses people who happen to have interaction (reading news, chat, or whatever) with other people that live in different countries.
In Country A, the model might be called E1234, in different parts of the world, the model might be called E1235. The capabilities differ by tiny margin. It just doesn't make any sense. It might be because of regulation or whatnot, but very confusing.
If Microsoft offering is confusing, you should check Nokia's.
Currently, they have nothing other than cheap cellphone to be sold to Asian markets. I happen to be born in another part of the world. Back at my home country, Nokia is still strong because they sell cheap unlocked cellphone (coincidentally, the providers aren't operating like N.A. providers). Having said that, the mid-to-upper level economy population are full of BB users (weird isn't it, not Android, not iPhone, but BB).
BB at least has this "PIN" thing (I don't have a BB so I don't know much about it) where I noticed that most of my high-school friends are exchanging PIN, or exchanging stuff within BB. So I'm assuming there's some sort of ability for BB to have a "soft" vendor lock-in. Nokia has nothing other than cheap price.
I think they're almost done.