

Nokia buys Smarterphone, developer of feature phone operating system - jannes
http://www.theverge.com/mobile/2012/1/7/2690366/nokia-buys-smarterphone-developer-of-feature-phone-operating-system

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pavlov
It seems that Smarterphone has the unique and HN-worthy feature of being the
only mobile OS written in... Lisp!

So sayeth Wikipedia, at least: _"The user interface of Smarterphone OS is
programmed in a scripting language, which is a variant of Scheme with object-
oriented extensions."_ [1]

It's hard to imagine that Nokia will use this OS unless it's extremely
lightweight and can fit on their supercheap 40 USD dumbphones (in which case
it would be a replacement for the ancient Series 30). A talent acquisition, I
think.

(Edit -- Smarterphone's news page claims that their software is for the 25-75
USD price segment [2]. So maybe this actually has a shot of becoming Nokia's
lowest-range OS to replace Series 30.)

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarterphone> [2]
<http://www.smarterphone.com/news.php>

~~~
stcredzero
_It's hard to imagine that Nokia will use this OS unless it's extremely
lightweight and can fit on their supercheap 40 USD dumbphones_

If you know a little about Lisp/Scheme, it's easy to believe that it could be
lightweight and fit on such devices. Properly structured, I wouldn't be
surprised by 2 or 3 times more compact code than another OS written in C.

~~~
pavlov
I wasn't putting down Scheme's efficiency, but pointing out that there's not
much room for another new OS in Nokia's software lineup.

Nokia is known to be already working on a new cheap Linux-based featurephone
platform, "Meltemi". If Smarterphone is to live on at Nokia, it needs to be so
simple that everyone can be convinced that it has no overlap with Meltemi;
otherwise Nokia's corporate immune reactions will destroy Smarterphone soon
enough.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Why can't Nokia just kill off Meltemi and adopt Smarterphone's system? It's
not like Nokia's previous smartphone OS efforts have gone anywhere (Maemo,
Meego, Symbian^3, etc).

I honestly thought, when Nokia and Microsoft announced their deal, that Nokia
would finally give up on making OS software. I guess they'll have sink a
little lower still.

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teyc
Could it possibly be a talent acquisition? After all, they have demonstrated
ability to put FB and Twitter on a feature phone. Furthermore, one of the
problems with Symbian is entrenched management issues. By getting rid of the
entire Symbian team, they get another shot at getting feature phones right. In
any case, running a Lisp allows rapid iteration. This is great news for
developers.

Have a look at their video channel.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPjjU_Ftd2Y&feature=mfu_i...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPjjU_Ftd2Y&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL)
Its scrolling is silky smooth. Better than my android.

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martincmartin
So what's the deal with Nokia these days? Android, iOS, Samsung, etc. are the
new hotness, is Nokia a dinosaur who doesn't get that the world has changed?
Or do they have a potential to be an A player? Or are they an A player that
just doesn't get as much mindshare?

~~~
nuttendorfer
I think Nokia will once come out as the winner in this. Instead of putting all
their eggs in one basket they try to diversify their lineup. While a lot of
other companies focus on Android they work on the next thing. Sooner or later
consumers will shy away from Android because "everybody has one" or whatever
reason they might have - Nokia will then step in and cater to these people.

Nokia, especially in Europe, has a lot of satisfied customers(The dumbphone
market). If they manage to create a good blend of smart and dumbphones they
will have the market.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_"Nokia, especially in Europe, has a lot of satisfied customers(The dumbphone
market)."_

In a couple of years, there won't really be a dumbphone market in Europe,
except for drug dealers and the poorest of consumers. Already, more than half
of all cellphones sold in Europe are smartphones, and it increases by 10
percentage points a year.

Nokia's future lies in selling dumb phones to third world countries, and
that's already where it makes its money. Nokia was smart to have Microsoft
fill their coffers, but in the end, smartphones will never be Nokia's core
business.

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colinm
"Some of the wilder speculation we've heard has the company buying
Smarterphone in preparation to sell its smart phone line-up to Microsoft, then
focusing entirely on feature phones."

Now THAT would surely be business suicide.

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pagehub
Looks to me like they have made this acquisition to give them a talent pool
and OS for the new featurephone strategy once they have offloaded the
Smartphone biz to Microsoft?

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shareme
Signs of Nokia idiot strategies...

Android devices selling for under $50..check check MS attempting to buy Nokia
check check Nokia attempting another separate OS strategy check check

Nokia fast heading towards webOS fate..

