
Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious - shawndumas
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/22/editorial-dear-nokia-you-cannot-be-serious/
======
jdietrich
MeeGo has a good chance of making Nokia a _lot_ of money and they really don't
want to talk about why.

Nokia has been losing wealthy customers for years, but they dominate the
market in Africa and Asia. Symbian seems hopelessly out of date, but it's also
very frugal, which allows Nokia to cram a lot of functionality onto very cheap
hardware.

If you look at the market from the bottom up rather than the top down, you see
what MeeGo is for. It's not there to take on the likes of Android and iOS,
that's why Nokia have gone WP7 for that market. It's designed as an
aspirational upgrade for S60 users. That's prime territory, for a number of
reasons.

Nokia are the only non-Shanzai manufacturer to really understand developing
markets. The Nokia 1100 isn't just the biggest selling mobile phone ever, it's
the biggest selling consumer electronics device, having sold over 250m units.
The killer features of that handset are a really bright torch, a dustproof
keypad and 400 hours of battery life.

The N9 hardware is outdated by design. The Cortex A8 that powers it is a
relatively very cheap part. The N9 is a high-end handset in other respects,
but that is entirely consistent with Nokia's model. Expect to see a feature-
stripped version of the N9 shortly, with a plastic chassis, cheap LCD, basic
camera and so on. The early adopters pay for the R&D, allowing Nokia to launch
the cheap version at a killer price. Look at the E71 and E63 for an example of
this in action.

Nokia are playing a much cleverer long game than anyone gives them credit for.
They have more brand equity than all other handset manufacturers combined,
albeit mainly amongst very poor customers. Nokia's future success won't be
found by beating Apple, it will be found by beating the Shanzai boys.

~~~
buyx
I often read on HN that Nokia has an edge in developing markets.

But guess what was voted the "coolest brand" in a May 2011 survey of South
African youth? Blackberry[1]! Any self respecting geek could have/should have
bought an Android handset, or an iPhone. But the vast majority of my friends
family are on BBM, so I got one. It is the new Facebook, or Mxit[2]. After
getting BBM, I was amazed by how many people have Blackberrys. My sister
traded her new iPhone for a BB, after realising how isolated she was. My
granny, and my maid[3] both have Blackberrys. If Nokia had a special insight
into developing markets, they would have realised that they are vulnerable in
the messaging space and launched a messaging app long ago.

[1][http://www.newstime.co.za/ScienceandTech/Generation_Next_Nam...](http://www.newstime.co.za/ScienceandTech/Generation_Next_Names_BlackBerry_South_Africa%E2%80%99s_Coolest_Brand/26027/)

[2][http://thenextweb.com/africa/2011/06/14/why-mobile-social-
ne...](http://thenextweb.com/africa/2011/06/14/why-mobile-social-network-mxit-
is-twice-as-big-as-facebook-in-south-africa/)

[3]The average middle class South African family can indeed afford a full-time
domestic servant

~~~
jdietrich
Nokia isn't trying to win you over - they're going after your maid.

~~~
buyx
Which is why I pointed out that my maid has a Blackberry as well. And the kids
who voted for Blackberry as the coolest brand are probably largely in a
similar demographic to my maid.

------
nextparadigms
I've always thought that Meego would be a much better 3rd platform than WP7.
Meego is a much better competitor to Android than WP7 is. Meego can go in the
same places Android can go because of its opensource and free nature. It can
be on everything and built by "anyone" just like Android. WP7 on the other
hand can only be used on mobile phones, and even then only by manufacturers
that either want to pay the license fee, or are "allowed" by Microsoft to use
it (see the case of Microsoft allowing only certain manufacturers to use
Windows 8).

It's a shame that Nokia won't give their best to make Meego succeed, because
that would mean it could hurt WP7's adoption. Also, I'd rather see 2 of the
top 3 platforms being open source, than 2 proprietary ones. I think it would
be for the best for all of us.

~~~
kenjackson
Actually I think just the opposite. Meego is a poor competitor to Android,
because of how similar they are. In fact Meego today looks too much like the
Samsung skin on Android (it would be funny if Samsung sued Nokia over trade
dress).

There's no reason to get a Meego device over an Android device. But plenty of
reason to get Android over Meego, at least today.

Whereas with Windows Phone, it is fundamentally different than Android.
There's a lot of reason to pick WP over Android (and vice-versa). Nokia can
exploit that space for at least a few years -- at which point Meego might be
ready to really differentiate itself.

~~~
kwantam

        There's no reason to get a Meego device over an Android 
        device. But plenty of reason to get Android over Meego, 
        at least today.
    

I'll be the first to admit I'm a highly atypical case, but this certainly
isn't true for me. I want a UNIX userland on my phone, and for that
Maemo/MeeGo is pretty much the only game in town.

~~~
deadcyclo
I'm with you all the way, though I'm neither your typical user. I'm most
definitely getting the N9 as soon as I can, and I really hope Meego survives.
If nothing else I hope the community steps up and keeps it alive, while Nokia
(or somebody else) if nothing else continues to provide hardware.I had nothing
but Nokia phones from 1997-2010, but my last phone was an HTC, and unless
Nokia keeps Meego alive, I'm pretty sure the N9 when I get it will be my last
Nokia. It's been some enjoyable 13 years...

------
Ryanmf
As they transition into their first act as handset hired guns, Nokia produce a
sexy piece of industrial design featuring _the OS which caused them to finally
throw in the towel_ , in a form so simple they couldn't screw it up.

And they didn't.

And they may have accidentally produced the second most interesting phone of
the year? ...which also happens to be a dead end.

The N9 would be underpowered if it were released today; the trick where videos
continue playing as they're swiped into the multitasking ether is cute, but
time will tell how well it can perform those tricks when it's been piloted for
a few days (or months) by a careless human without so much as a reboot,
especially as compared to the dual-core, spec'd-out superphones it will have
to compete against this Fall/Holiday.

Also, something something apps. Even if you _only need 10 of them_. I'm in the
"you need the ecosystem to draw the developers to make the two or more third-
party apps you give a damn about" camp.

All that notwithstanding, aesthetically and (to the extent that I can infer
anything of value from the video demos up now) in terms of ui/ux execution,
this thing looks really good.

Physically, it somehow looks as just I would expect of an object which, when
slid across the surface of another, would cause music (or anything else) to
come out of the second object. Even if it's an unexpected hit, in 5 years
it'll still probably look like a 3303. But for now I think it looks more like
the future than any computer we've carried in our pockets to date.

Regardless of the quality of the software experience, the hardware execution
makes me feel like Nokia is positioned well in the role they're assuming. It
actually makes me wish they'd compete directly against HTC/Samsung on Android
as well, although admittedly I have no idea when, if ever, their agreement
with msft would allow them to do such a thing.

If I could ignore the part of me which is fairly confident they'll release a
slight variation on this running WP7 within the same general timescale that
the N9 is on the market and shift most of their resources/support in that
direction, I may actually have considered purchasing a Nokia in 2011 or 2012,
something I would not have assumed at any point in the last 3 or 4 years.

------
andreasjansson
In February, Tomi Ahonen compared dropping MeeGo for WP7 to Microsoft in the
80s dropping the first version of Windows a few months before release, and
going for Mac OS. Now I think he was right. I guess I'll just hold on to my
2330.

[http://communities-
dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/02/first-a...](http://communities-
dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/02/first-analysis-of-nokia-microsoft-alliance-
wow-this-is-good-for-microsoft.html)

~~~
Steko
This is nothing like Microsoft dropping Windows. This is like IBM dropping
OS/2.

------
contextfree
Have Nokia actually committed to dumping MeeGo? It seems like if it achieves
unexpected success there should be room to course correct.

For example, OS/2 was supposed to be Microsoft's future in the late 80s, and
Windows was a stopgap. It wasn't even clear there would be a Windows 3.0 at
all, until a couple of developers secretly took on the task of getting Windows
running in protected mode
([http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/02/02/365...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/02/02/365635.aspx))
.

~~~
Geee
No, they never said they would dump MeeGo. They said they would be dumping
Symbian, and left MeeGo as a research project for "future disruption". Of
course, they have stated to fully commit to Windows Phone.

Recently they have been backtracking a bit and promised to keep
updating/supporting Symbian until 2016, but the plans for MeeGo are unclear.
However, they have stated that they will continue providing OTA updates for
the N9, but that doesn't really mean anything.

I'm sure they don't really know the place for MeeGo right now, especially with
the pressure from MS and the current success of N9.

~~~
contextfree
I don't think it's necessarily incoherent to keep both around as this might
give them a way to more easily try out ideas without whatever overhead of
having to fit into the MS platform. In the future there might be some degree
of convergence, e.g. Microsoft will probably eventually open up the
marketplace to native code (maybe at the same time they move to an NT Windows
kernel) and Nokia could port Qt.

------
StavrosK
Except the N9 doesn't use MeeGo, it uses Maemo. Harmattan is just the release
that begins the transition to MeeGo.

~~~
sciurus
You're right [0], but I think it's too much to expect the tech press to make
this distinction. Does it really matter if the N9 uses MeeGo or a version of
Maemo that is compatible with the MeeGo APIs? The bottom line is that Nokia
has a compelling smartphone platform other than WP7.

[0] [http://sf2011.meego.com/program/sessions/harmattan-meego-
com...](http://sf2011.meego.com/program/sessions/harmattan-meego-community)

~~~
StavrosK
Ah, I agree with that,but there are people lambasting nokia for not sticking
with meego since it appears so good, when it's actually maemo.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It's also relevant because there's people lambasting Nokia for abandoning
Maemo and wasting a couple of years on Meego with little to show for it.

------
hollerith
How much of the software on the N9 is open source?

~~~
dave1010uk
The MeeGo platform is pretty open source. You can see the components the N9
uses here: [http://harmattan-
dev.nokia.com/unstable/beta/Fremantle_Updat...](http://harmattan-
dev.nokia.com/unstable/beta/Fremantle_Update7_vs_Harmattan_Beta_content_comparison.html)
(lots of cool stuff if you're a Linux geek).

Nokia's "UX" and built in apps, however, are not open source.

------
biafra
They even have a version with a keyboard: The N950

But they refuse to sell it. This looks like Stephen Elop tries to ruin it for
us to help Microsoft.

------
atomicdog
Isn't the fact that they're using Meego for this phone and instant admission
of the inferiority of the WP7 platform?

------
herval
Does anyone really believe Nokia's actual product will look like that demo? I
kinda recall this not happening quite a few times in the past.. (n97 anyone?)

~~~
Geee
Are you serious? How could they fake this?
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LphiRFvd40I>

------
Apocryphon
Isn't Samsung still holding on to Meego?

~~~
mbrubeck
Samsung has their own Linux-based mobile OS: <http://bada.com/>

