In the wake of Q4 2010 earnings, Reuters reports hints on Nokia picking up a competitors operating system aka “ecosystem”.  Nokia has been adamant on not joining the Android gang and pretty much any other outside OS. Though when Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia VP Design, was asked about WP7 he said it was different to Android (in terms of UI pattern), though too early to tell

“We’re interest in using platforms where we can add value and if that were the case – then. But it isn’t right now.”

Platforms where they could add value. They felt they couldn’t add to Android but could for WP7?

See also: http://mynokiablog.com/2010/12/20/nokia-and-microsoft-discussing-wp7-on-nokia

From Reuters: (Cheers Oli)

“Nokia must compete on ecosystem to ecosystem basis. In addition to great device experiences we must build, catalyse or join a competitive ecosystem. And the ecosystem approach we select must be comprehensive and cover a wide range of utilities and services that customers expect today and anticipate in the future.”

“Whatever the strategy is we outline on Feb. 11, we very clearly ensuring that it will give us the opportunity to reopen markets such as the U.S. and some others, where we have not recently been present.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE70Q1PF20110127

Andre’s take.

Nokia’s Elop in an interview published on Nokia Conversations went on to embellish the importance of a GOOD ecosystem citing the growth of the Ovi store to seeing 4+ million downloads a day as testament to their ability to produce something consumers want.

In addition, he included some sales figures for what he calls their “new Symbian devices” which according to him, Nokia sold 5 million of.  5 Million S^3 devices is not something to scoff at but pales in comparison to the 16 million iPhones sold in the similar period at a significantly higher pricetag. Obviously no other manufacturer can compete with Apple but the fact that Nokia grew LESS than every other manufacturer bar RIM (bodes terribly for them) is a terrible thing from what was such a vast and profitable company.

In my honest opinion two things have happened to Nokia, they’ve been slow to execute and have taken too long to produce  a product that people want, much less market it. Had the N8 been released on time in Q2 2010 these figures could have and would have been significantly better.  Secondly their devices are NOT desired by the general to the same extent that other successful devices are. Examples being the high-end Motorola’s and HTC’s. In the same breath they refuse to market them well. Refuses to embellish the relative merits and strengths of their devices in spite of their shortcomings. A saleman like Steve Jobs is a necessity at this point because there is little to no hype around their products sorry to say.

Anywho, on a more cheery note. I just received my trial N8 in the mail. Will be posting my initial thoughts sometime today.

As mentioned before in the press release Jay posted, and has been rumored in the blogosphere for quite a while, it seems that Nokia and the Symbian board have taken a decisive step towards improving the Symbian OS, speeding up time to market, improving developer and OEM relations and at the same time cut out some of the bureaucracy that has held Symbian development up for so long. This move was hinted at when Lee Williams stepped down from the Symbian Foundation as executive director and was replaced by Tim Holbrow (former CFO) with rumors circling that winding down operations would commence imminently.  It seems that such a guess was not far off the mark.

I’m certain that a large percentage of people in the blogosphere are now shouting at the top of their voices that Symbian is dead, Nokia is down the toilet and are doomed and that Symbian has no place in the smartphone market (Engadget commenters are truly  remarkable no?). But I’d have to respectfully say that they are patently wrong. Below I’ll outline a few of the reasons why this change has happened and what the future may/may not hold for Symbian development in light of current news.

One of the most telling statements concerning Symbian development were the announcements of Sony Ericsson (SE) and Samsung, that they were discontinuing Symbian development and had no plans for the continued support and/or production of Symbian devices. Looking at those two announcements in a vacuum one might be inclined to think that two of the three major OEM  supporters and Foundation contributors (not dissing Fujitsu here) had withdrawn from an OS that was seemingly about to fail miserably.

Looking at the situation in context however, yields a starkly different story. Having tracked code package submissions to the Symbian Foundation from the fledgling days of S^2 & S^3, I’d yet to see any significant contributions of code by either company. While that’s not to say they didn’t provide any monetary support, the fact that the entire idea of the foundation was to distribute work amongst large companies with significant resources in the hope of faster iterating the OS than any single company could possibly achieve. Unfortunately for the Symbian Foundation, this was not to be, and Nokia has and will continue to contribute the VAST majority of the code.

Worse still, Android came along whereby OEM’s could get a free ride in essence, contributing little if any code, little if any monetary support while getting an OS that they could basically flash onto the base hardware provided by Qualcomm and run with it. While that’s not to say that this is a “bad” approach, in some ways it leaves the OEM’s at the mercy of Google’s whim and provides no real benefit, in the long term at least, for OEM’s looking to differentiate, grow profits significantly and control their own fates.

Android also had the benefit of provided an app store that integrated directly into the OS in the form of Android Marketplace, something that Symbian had categorically lacked before 2008. When Nokia came out with the Ovi Store in 2009, it became clearer still to all OEM’s involved with Symbian that not only could they not compete with Nokia in terms of hardware costs, reliability and scale, but they also couldn’t compete in terms of value added services to Symbian OS.  Worse still, Symbian Horizon, which would have been the go-to application repository for Symbian applications for all OEM’s, failed spectacularly leaving Samsung and SE high and dry with regards to added services, through no fault of the Symbian Foundation of course.

NB. Symbian in it’s base implementation comes without mapping applications and application stores

Having realized that there would be no financial benefit in sticking around, both companies decided to jump ship to an OS where all the work was done for them and they simply needed to toss an OS on some hardware and meet some nebulous requirements concerning the use of Google services and market and they’d be just peachy.

The second most telling statement made was by Nokia where they said that they had no intentions of sticking to the large-scale generational changes to the Symbian platform formerly known as S^3, S^4.x , S^5 etc and that they would be sticking to continuous, smaller scale improvements to what they would call “Symbian” with most recent devices getting the changes initially slated for the generational S^4 release. Furthermore, they publicly stated that Symbian development would give way to Qt development, in essence both dog-fooding and relegation of Symbian C++ to legacy status.

In hindsight, these events in addition to the rapid pace of development of both software and hardware in the mobile sphere has led to the predicament the Foundation has faced, and thusly the decision made in the conference call and board meetings today.

On the bright side of course, SEE2010 begins tomorrow with the MeeGo conference slated for the following week. Here’s to hoping for at least SOME positive news and seeing positive strides being taken in both domains.  Keep your browsers pointed here for more news on both Expos in coming days.

While I’m currently in the middle of an all-nighter study/HW/project session, (it’s 2 AM where I’m at right now), some interesting news just filtered into our tips section (Thanks Jim).

Over at the MeeGo blog, Harri Hakulinen let out that a Maemo 5 PR 1.3 release was incoming!! Jay will be pleased.

Also mentioned was the great work and headway they were making with regards towards better support for MeeGo 1.1 on the N900. As it stands now, the 3G voice and telephony stacks are all up and running, albeit not perfectly and should better allow developers, hackers and the curious among us to more confidently dual-boot Maemo and MeeGo.

MeeGo 1.1 is also entering a rather final stage of hardening before a release/announcement, likely to happen at the MeeGo conference in a few weeks’ time. That said it was also let slip that work on MeeGo 1.2 has begun with recent contributions by Nokia towards  this version. It’s been said time and again that Nokia’s version of MeeGo is likely ahead of where the MeeGo community at large was and this only serves to prove this. Three of the key contributions by Nokia, SGX drivers, camera stack, and accelerated video decoders. Three very important aspects in today’s smartphone.

The SGX drivers are interesting and hint towards either an OMAP 3 or 4 powered MeeGo device from Nokia that could be well into the bug-smashing phase.

Here’s to hoping!!

via

Well that’s something none of us expected. Given Nokia’s push for MeeGo as their singular high-end solution to compete with (read: crush) iOS and Android and the amount of buzz that has been generated both within and external to the company about this coming OS, it’s rather surprising that one of the most important men in charge of bringing these much-vaunted devices to the public is stepping down. This after 12 years at Nokia both on mobile browser development as well with Maemo/MeeGo and associated open source initiatives. I’m sure that the loss will be strongly felt within the company when he does indeed depart but we can rest assured that most of the work surrounding the upcoming MeeGo devices was probably finished in advance of the tendering of his resignation.

NB It takes around 12-24 months to create and productise any mobile device from concept to shipping.

Here’s to hoping that political and/or bureaucratic issues didn’t force Ari out and that he’s simply making use of the current period of transition in order to pursue new opportunities.

This news does make you wonder though, with 3 senior Finns leaving the company in relatively quick succession, does this signal a marked change in the type of thinking, management and communication that we can expect to see from the company in the future. Or is this a case of rats fleeing a sinking ship? Leave your opinions in the comments section

(via and via) via

Ewan MacLeod over at Mobile Industry Review in his weekly newsletter (something I think everyone with mobile technology inclinations should find an interesting  read) put together a very long winded, though rather valid argument as to what mobile operators in their attempts to avoid becoming “dumb pipes” have done wrong and what HE believes they could focus on bringing to the table. Can’t say I always agree with his musings but this post definitely deserved to be mirrored here and inevitably discussed by our quite vocal readers.

One choice quote from the newsletter,

“There is perhaps one more thing that’s worse than a mobile operator trying to innovate in unfamiliar markets: It’s another utility provider, such as your local electricity provider, trying to sell you entertainment services.”

I’m sure you guys can’t wait to read the rest so here’s a link to the rest of it. Leave your views in the comments section!

The following blog post was dropped into our comments section not long ago and having read it from end to end, I can sincerely empathize with the author and agree almost whole-heartedly with his views.

I think the key takeaway from this article is that Nokia has an image problem and seems not to realize the severity of said image and the possible repercussions of such a problem. Let’s hope that Nokia World 2010 is the beginning of a change in direction for Nokia.

Give it a read and leave your comments both here and @ texrat’s blog.

http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com/2010/06/27/an-open-letter-to-nokia-for-2010/

Thanks a lot Randall. Great post.

Currently available for the Nokia N97, N97mini, X6, 5800, and 5230

Video of Swype in action below.

via

Give it a look!

P.S. No information on the size of the files that can be uploaded using pixel pipe.

Could one upload full HD videos to youtube this way?!

[Vimeo =vimeo.com/14137018">]

The Nokia C7 has been leaked again in an what looks like a genuine feature in a Hong Kong IT magazine called “Hi-Tech Weekly” issue 615:

Looks like the Nokia C7 is very close to launch since they are already making ads for it. As you can see it runs Symbian 3 it has a 3.3 inch multitouch display.

Key features:

• Symbian 3 OS
• 3.3 inch multitouch display
• Resolution of 640 x 360
• 3.5mm head jack
• microUSB
• 8 Megapixel autofocus camera with HD video recording
• Wi-Fi and GPS will probably be included

According to Fonearena it already has been handled by people and they say the device is easy to use and quite fast which is nice to hear.

My opinion on this is if this is so close to release which it is considering that they are already making ads for, that means the N8 should be available in August now thats just my speculation.

My personal opinion on this phone is that there are a ton of features that would make most high end smartphones cringe and considering this is a mid range smartphone is should be solid device for the average consumer

What do you think are you looking forward to this phone, let us know in the comments

Thanks to Amanda for the heads up

via unwiredview.com

via Fonearena

Over in the mobile-review forums I stumbled across a post by a user named quagmire (giggity! ) who posted a few links to photos on flickr that were shot with the Nokia N8 (supposedly).

Although I’ll remain a skeptic ( ’til I have the N8 in my own hands!!) , the pictures that were linked are from the same user who posted a number of other N8 sample pictures a few weeks back. Below is a small gallery of the pictures taken and a link to the flickr user’s page.

[Update by Jay. These are Nokia N8 photos as marked by flickr. We've previously covered apyykko's photos in another post a couple of weeks ago.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/88916251@N00/

Sound off in the comments!