You the reader may think that Symbian was a dead OS, it was undesirable, it was failing in the market, it was obsolete etc. That all may have been true of the older versions of Symbian, up to September 2010. It is not true now. The facts are irrefutable. From October 2010, Nokia had an honest hit OS that powered increasing sales, increasing ASPs and most importantly for Nokia - dramatically increased profits! Only a complete fool would step on this incredible success, and kill it.
He thinks the Nokia N8 is a great phone. It isn't. I had it for 5 months until I gave up and switched to a Samsung device (after 10 years with Nokia).
Symbian^3 on the N8 didn't deliver half of what was promised. Horribly broken web browser, no portrait keyboard, unusable app store that spent two minutes downloading updates for itself whenever it was opened, outdated version of the Qt API on the device... The list goes on.
Nokia said last year that there would be quick updates to Symbian to fill in the missing functionality. Rumors said that a revamped browser would be available by the end of 2010. Then Nokia officially extended this deadline to Q1/11. Guess what? The new browser still isn't available for the N8. The update, now called Symbian Anna, may be available to N8 users next month, if they're lucky and their operator approves of the OS update...
This lethargic pace of development makes it clear that Symbian development was out of control and the whole OS is unsalvageable. They had thousands of engineers working on this system, but it had grown so complex that they apparently couldn't even update the browser without breaking everything, leaving the OS stuck with a 5-year old branch of WebKit.
Nokia never understood software. Giving it up and letting Microsoft have total control of the user-facing operating system is the best thing they could have done.
Nokia faced a similar platform hurdle to Apple in the mid-90's, they needed a modern OS, and brought one in from outside. It is a painful transition but I think they made the right decision.
How bad is it? He spends 12 paragraphs "justifying" 7% future growth alternative scenario based on the 7% observed growth from Q3 to holiday Q4.
Then he doesn't use this. He instead goes with a linear assumption of decreasing market share. Again ignores the holiday quarter and historical decline (-14% drop from Q4 09 to Q1 10 in a much better environment for Nokia). And spends the next 20-30 paragraphs fencing with straw men.
Haha, that's incredible. Lies, damned lies and statistics.
Come on, atleast try to pretend that you didn't have a predetermined idea of what you want your solution to look like before you make up your numbers.
This really causes the authors credibility to take a hit here.
I think there's enough evidence to call it a debatable fact.
Nokia needed to make that decision to kill off Symbian in the same way that Microsoft made the decision to kill off Windows Mobile in both cases there is only so much lipstick you can put on a pig.
The decision process then becomes what OS choices are available to you:
Maemo - Dead killed by Meego but I rather liked the N900 I have and in many ways it's a better OS for hackers than Android (On the N900 it came with a terminal, a copy of vi and getting root is a simple download from the repositories) .
Meego - Alive but unclear if it's ever going to be good enough and it's probably at least a year away from shipping commercially (note this is at decision time presumably around December last year) Judging by the progress on the back port to the N900 it's still not all there. http://wiki.meego.com/ARM/N900/Status (see the notes on receiving a call)
iOS4 - Good luck there
Android - Definite maybe here but then you're in a very me too space.
Windows Phone 7 - Plausible and possibly Nokia are able to push Microsoft into giving more customisation than other vendors.
If you're the Nokia board that leaves you with three options - Meego,Android and WP7. I think they've done the right thing by putting Meego on the back burner and going with WP7.
Toni seems to have a hard on that Elop is a trojan horse, sadly while I don't think announcing the death of Symbian was a great idea it's really hard to see why anyone with an iPhone or Android phone would buy a Symbian phone. The N8 burnt a lot of folks with it's poor firmware (and slow upgrades) So I think Nokia was ALWAYS going to fail hard this year.
I like the look of the N9 and N950 but after my N900 experience I wouldn't buy either of them as who (outside of the OSS folks) is going to develop for them commercially?
WP7 has it's problems the Mango update took too long and I don't believe that tethering is properly supported (some phones have a "modem" mode in their test menu) but when I've had a quick play with it I rather liked it (and I haven't heard many users complaining) The developer tools and APIs seem to be getting there.
Finally I would like to point out that when I buy a Nokia phones (9500 & N900) the OS seems to get killed so I'm not very trusting in Nokias long term plans.
But this whole thing looks suspicious to the point I can risk a couple predictions:
- Microsoft will become immune to lawsuits for violating Nokia patents (either by eventually acquiring whatever will be left a couple years down the road or by licensing them for peanuts as part of a WP7-related deal). This may be particularly relevant with W8's new interface.
- The patents will be sold to a fund that will then use those patents to extort Android phone makers (Apple is probably already immune), creating a pressure for manufacturers to endorse WP7 as a patent-safe alternative
- Elop will retire or be hired by a company where Microsoft holds a stake, either directly or indirectly.
Why was this stupid? The Android space is way too cluttered to really make an entrance. Nokia probably couldn't get much marketshare from Samsung or HTC in either the high-end or low-end Android markets at this point. They have years of experience in getting the software to work with their hardware, and are making great phones at this point. Nokia, as a newcomer, can't really compete with them.
Symbian is basically dead, so what would they put on their phones? Win 7 makes a lot of sense in that context, especially with the discounts that they're surely getting from MS. Google doesn't have much incentive to give anything to Nokia, considering the overall success of Android with everyone else.
It's a huge market and Nokia's handsets have always been very high-quality. I doubt they would have a problem competing on quality.
> Win 7 makes a lot of sense in that context
Why? Any other manufacturer has been able to make it sell? When the same manufacturers that sell Android well can't make an attractive WP7 phone you start suspecting the difference between the products may be the problem.
