
Nokia Releasing First Android Phone  - tomh-
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304104504579374893734151208
======
JVIDEL
I'll never understand why Nokia thought that going with WP was a better
strategy than forking android like amazon did.

Think about it: it would have the openness and stability of Linux with the
single hardware configuration and quality of the iPhone, total win-win.

Now they are going to android as the cheap option which means only crappy
hardware that only "looks" like a lumia.

Had Nokia gone the other way it would be in an even better position than
Samsung Mobile is in now, mostly thanks to it's vastly superior software
resources.

Then again the exact same thing could be said about RIM.

~~~
nextos
Or going full steam ahead with their Maemo / MeeGo which Elop killed. It was
an excellent product:
[http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review](http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review).

In fact, N9s still retail for pretty high amounts despite being unsupported
and outdated hardware.

~~~
hbharadwaj
Thank god none of you are in charge. Just kidding or am I?

Elop played the game straight forward. Forking is a half baked option and when
you are leveraging your company, forking is not an option. You need full scale
OS support and that means, Nokia could have either gone with MS or Google.
Google apparently refused to make space for Nokia's competing service suite
(Read-Business Week) and as such, the option was only MS. I know the hate is
strong for MS in this community but it's way too illogical to think one man
alone could have played his tactics and strategies to influence Nokia to
switch to a MS OS for his career progression.

Meego was ruled out as an option as well. A tech-pretty thing may not always
work out. WebOS taught us that lesson. So conspiracy theories are pretty
meaningless.

~~~
nextos
MeeGo works fine. I use it everyday. It would have given Nokia independence.
The Windows choice was simply a trojan horse strategy.

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dserban
Linus Torvalds once said: "If Microsoft ever starts developing apps for Linux,
it means I won."

Is this close enough?

~~~
_random_
Won what? Besides Nokia is not really Microsoft and Android is not really a
Linux, so the answer is probably "not really".

~~~
leobelle
How is Android "not really a Linux ? It runs the Linux kernel. That means it's
Linux. No, it's not a distribution of GNU/Linux, but it's a Linux kernel. It's
really using Linux. It's as Linux as Ubuntu, as Ubuntu also runs on a Linux
kernel.

~~~
pessimizer
Why would anybody have cared about Linux except as an academic exercise if not
for GNU? If there had been another properly licensed kernel before Linux, we
would all be using GNU bolted on top of that.

Linux has been great and Linus is a great steward, but Linux without GNU is a
base for creating an OS, not an OS.

~~~
RyanZAG
I really like GNU, but are you sure that it is GNU that has succeeded and not
Linux?

Linux + GNU = small marketshare

Linux + Android = big marketshare

So maybe without GNU, Linux would have gotten some other userland quicker and
taken off faster? I don't think it's entirely fair to credit Linux's success
to GNU at this point.

~~~
sesqu
What other userland? Without GNU, Linux might never have even gotten written.

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Zigurd
I predict this will last 5 minutes after the Nokia deal closes. This is a
thumb in the eye to Microsoft by people who will also leave that part of Nokia
immediately after the deal closes. They will leave with the knowledge and
experience of how to integrate an Android based product with Nokia (maps,
multimedia, app store) and Microsoft (Bing search, Skype) ecosystem elements.

I would bet they know at least 5 OEMs in China who would like a similar
product.

~~~
untog
Honestly, it sounds like a bad proposition overall. What is Windows Phone
lacking? Apps. What will the Nokia Android phone lack? The Google Play store.
Hmm.

~~~
jbigelow76

        >What is Windows Phone lacking? Apps.
    

What is the current perceived gap in the Windows Phone app store?

~~~
rayiner
Quality is very low. Apps are there, but features are usually lacking and
incomplete, and curation is awful. NB: I have a Lumia.

~~~
bsilvereagle
Microsoft aggressively targeted college students offering $100 for every app
published. It's really easy to crank out an RSS app and pocket $100.

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skc
It's pretty odd.

I think it's fair to say that the only handset makers profiting off of Android
today are...Samsung...and...that's about it really. Meager pickings for the
rest of them.

I don't see this succeeding at all. And in any case it's dead in the water
once the Microsoft deal goes through because it just muddies the waters. A
person that buys one of these cheap Nokia/Android phones would reasonably
expect that "upgrading" to Nokias "premium" Lumia handsets will mean his
apps/features carry over too.

Oops.

~~~
RyanZAG
Samsung, Xiamo, Huawei, Lenovo all appear to be making good profits off of
Android. There are a few other smaller players also making good profits,
although note that Huawei and Lenovo are pretty big players, easily bigger
than RIM/Nokia/etc.

So I don't think that argument holds much water - if Nokia made an Android
phone that people wanted, they could very easily charge a premium (Sony does
after all, but they just barely break even on massive staffing costs) and
potentially make profits too.

~~~
rayiner
Lenovo made less than $500m net profit across the entire company last year, on
$30b in revenue. These are margins you can sustain only if you're a Chinese
ODM or a company like Samsung that makes money from all the parts in everyone
else's phones too. It's certainly not the kind of money that supports
expensive R&D. Apple can throw a billion at developing sapphire glass or a new
tooling method, and beat their competitors over the head with it with phones
that are lighter, stronger, etc. You can't play that game being a low-margin
company like Lenovo.

~~~
Danieru
Ah, so that's where we've moved the goal post.

Sorry it might take me a little while to get there, it's looking like I better
grab a golf cart.

~~~
tptacek
Confusing. How is gross margin a shift of goalposts in a thread about profits?

~~~
Danieru
Fair, but this discussion is a continuation of the Android vs iOS debate which
has been raging for half a decade.

My memory is horrible but I remember it going: 1\. Android has no apps 2\.
Android has no market share 3\. Apple's market share is larger 4\. iPhone is
always the best selling phone 5\. iPhone has the only responsive interface 6\.
No single manufacturer is making big profits 7\. Only Samsung is making large
profits.

Now I should admit my bias, I never considered iOS comptetitve since it is not
open source. With that said it is nice to see Android becoming competitive
even if you don't exclude the proprietary systems. In the end I just find the
idea that we should be happy Apple is making profits as silly.

~~~
rayiner
We should be happy Apple is making profits. Because companies like Lenovo and
Acer that eke out an existence playing in competitive markets where prices are
driven to marginal cost don't have the money to pour into R&D. Look at what
Apple is doing with Cyclone: the first mass market CPU to challenge Intel in
IPC since Opteron a decade ago. Its a game they can only play because the
generate a ton of cash to throw around.

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aceperry
"Another reason for the Nokia Android phone is Microsoft's Windows
Phone—currently the only operating system on Nokia's higher-end Lumia
smartphones—doesn't work on low-cost phones because of the software's
technical requirements."

I have to wonder about that statement, because WP created a smaller memory
requirement version that was supposed to be run on lesser hardware phones.

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mnglkhn2
Nokia has the hardware chops to produce good Android phones (in the same
league as Samsung). At the same time, Nokia also has the software development
chops to polish the Android platform to its liking. I doubt the phone will be
a simple AOSP fork. Nokia will most likely try and play the same game Samsung
is playing. Google will have to decide to what extent it will license Android
to Nokia. Imagine that it cannot say no, since it will look really bad then.

From my perspective, this is a very good move by Nokia. Good hardware and nice
software polish will make for nice phones. Don't forget, Nokia knows how to
bring the phone at a good price point. They will actually put quite a bit of
pressure on Samsung and Google. This is why Lenovo will take over Motorola.
Lenovo also has solid hardware chops.

It will be very interesting and good for consumers.

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cek
This has nothing to do with Microsoft.

Due to anti-trust law, Microsoft can't have any influence over decisions Nokia
makes before the acquisition[1]. Even if Microsoft hated the idea of Nokia
building and Android phone (likely) it could do nothing about it. And, even
more importantly, Nokia could NOT change its plans even if Microsoft wanted
them to.

[1] [http://hal2020.com/2013/10/16/how-much-influence-is-
microsof...](http://hal2020.com/2013/10/16/how-much-influence-is-microsoft-
having-on-nokia-right-now/)

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jemeshsu
I hope one day Nokia will release Windows Phone Bootcamp for those Nokia
Android phone. Similar to how one bootcamp to Windows from Mac OS X. If MS has
its own Android stores/platform, its a win-win.

~~~
wmf
Supposedly Nokia is only building Android phones because Windows Phone 8 won't
fit on low-end hardware.

~~~
sgloutnikov
Are you kidding? WP8 fits much better on low-end hardware. Just look at the
Lumia 520.

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rubiquity
Paywall :/

~~~
gcb0
the verge has a write up of the paywalled report... it seems to be the same
shell/hardware as the current windows phones.

which is a huge let down. it will be yet another candy bar phone.

if you had hopes of a n900 successor as well, it may be the time to give up
already :(

~~~
dman
For all those who dream of running emacs on their phone, the work goes on, the
cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

~~~
icebraining
Hum, an emacs native port for Android has been out for quite a while now [1].
Android is just a Linux system with a weird libc and windowing system.

[1]
[http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsOnAndroid](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsOnAndroid)

~~~
catern
Unfortunately, this "port" is just running ordinary terminal Emacs inside of
an Android terminal application. So it's pretty buggy and annoying to use; and
you might as well just run it in a chroot.

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kremlin
I'd read all those 'Microsoft should fork Android' discussions that have been
appearing on HN lately, but I never remotely saw it coming to fruition.
Interesting development...

~~~
ben336
this isn't Microsoft. This was Nokia's thing and started before Microsoft
bought them.

~~~
kremlin
"The coming Nokia Android phone won't promote Google's Play application store,
from which Google takes a percentage of profits. Instead, the phone will come
installed with a suite of services created by Nokia and Microsoft"

It may have started before Microsoft bought them, but it looks like it's not
the complete truth to say 'This isn't Microsoft.' It's a little bit Microsoft,
at least.

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kyrra
alternate post: [http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-android-phone-tipped-
without-...](http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-android-phone-tipped-without-
google-10316317/)

Possible WSJ link that works:
[http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304...](http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304104504579374893734151208-lMyQjAxMTA0MDAwNjEwNDYyWj)

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oscargrouch
I wonder if this fork would be open-source?

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blktiger
Also, "Last Android Phone" :P

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tosseraccount
iOS Android.

We actually do need a third choice.

