Google takes a pop at Nokia – Android for Next Billion, and only ‘modern’ OS for under $200

Nokia as you know tries to cater for various price points. Whilst the high end is now in ‘transition’, the mid particularly low s40 focuses on bringing features to those without deep pockets. That’s part of Nokia’s strategy in connecting the Next Billion.  Symbian brought a lot of features for not a lot but Android is beginning to creep in. Now, to continue with the Google-Android whining, A post by John Lagerling appearing on several blogs titled “We can protect the values of Android”. The core value of Android is to be yet another channel by which to grab your information to shove you more ads. Everything else comes secondary.

This all spawned of course from google’s initial cries that Apple, MS and Oracle are strangling them because of course google should be allowed to have infringing code in their phones.

At the post, there’s an dig at Nokia’s Symbian as Lagerling calls Android “The ONLY operating system, modern smart-phone operating system, that exists on devices that costs 200USD or less”.

Knowing that Symbian delivers at lower price points than Android, Largerling makes a differentiation of “modern”, calling Symbian out there again for being old or dead.

Next, he says THIS is what is enabling the next Billion to get on mobile internet (not just a Nokia thing, though something Nokia keeps mentioning. BTW, Nokia sells nearly half a million ‘dumbphones’ per year on their own, so next billion can be quick to achieve).

Without going into too much detail, I do think that we have very strong paths that we can take to protect the values of Android that we have built through the open-source Apache 2 license with our partners. Obviously, Google doesn’t build — we don’t build phones and devices, but we had a vested interest in protecting the values of the Android ecosystem.

So when our partners are being attacked by aggressors, which we see as materially unfounded, it’s something that we join up together with our partners to resolve. And we have, I think, several options that we can take that will help protect the values of Android.

So again, we want to protect innovation. Patents were supposed to be there to enable innovation and monetization of innovation. When it’s being used in a prospective which is more to, as we see it, stifle innovation, it’s not something that is good for consumers.

Android is the only operating system, modern smart-phone operating system, that exists on devices that cost $200 or less. That is what is enabling the next billion of users of the Internet on mobile in the world.

Nokia can’t survive simply on lower prices alone. Android is getting stronger and stronger in the high end, but more importantly eating away at the mid and lows. I’ve even commented that sometimes on price, the Android gives a better overall experience. It’s one of the main reasons UnwiredView’s Staska attributes to Q2 earnings.

Sources: znet

Category: Android, Nokia