Changes in Nokia

Mimikyu

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elderlemon

For me its down to one thing - the OS. Years ago you could have lots of different OS's on handsets, Nokia,SE, Samsung, Moto all had different ones. Today its very different - its all about the ecosystem that's built around the phone in terms of apps, cloud services etc. To me Symbian never had this - yes there were apps but few off them and way to expensive, and add to that the OS stood still for too long.

Nokia make (usually) great hardware. They should offer Android on their handsets and would almost instantly become the number 1 Android handset maker in the World. Meego wont save them either - again its down to the ecosystem (developers, apps etc) and meego doesn't and wont have them in sufficient numbers to make a difference.

Venom

elderlemon wrote: »

For me its down to one thing - the OS. Years ago you could have lots of different OS's on handsets, Nokia,SE, Samsung, Moto all had different ones. Today its very different - its all about the ecosystem that's built around the phone in terms of apps, cloud services etc. To me Symbian never had this - yes there were apps but few off them and way to expensive, and add to that the OS stood still for too long.

Nokia make (usually) great hardware. They should offer Android on their handsets and would almost instantly become the number 1 Android handset maker in the World. Meego wont save them either - again its down to the ecosystem (developers, apps etc) and meego doesn't and wont have them in sufficient numbers to make a difference.

+1

Nokia need to go Android if they want to stay in the Smartphone market otherwise they risk going the way of the Dodo.

evolutionqy7

Follow all the analyst suggestion and jump onto WP7.

Better design. All their designs are simple but they look outdated beside other phones.

Better build quality

KrisW

You need only look at the margins being made by Android licencees to see why Nokia's decision should be obvious.

... and against Android.

I'm a bit tired of the "Android would be great on Nokia hardware" argument - what hardware exactly? Nokia have precisely one handset on the market that comes close to a typical Android handset, and that's the N900. (I have not counted the sub-Desire handsets, because their user experience is not particularly smooth).

So, if you want Android on Nokia hardware, go buy an N900 - someone has done this port already, and you should be fine.

On an N8, Android would be even slower than it is on a HTC Desire or Galaxy S, because the N8 runs a relatively slow CPU, and Android needs something a lot faster. You would also lose the GPU acceleration of the OS, and the camera support will go away until someone writes a decent camera driver for the N8. Now, if Nokia were to adopt Android, who do you think would have to do this dev work? I can tell you now it ain't going to be Google, but guess what would happen once Nokia did it? Yep, it becomes part of Android, and thus available to Nokia's competitors.

So, to produce a handset experience only marginally better, and in some ways worse, than what they've got now, you ask Nokia to spend more R&D money to improve their competitors products, and risk losing the customers who actually don't want another Android phone. As a side effect, this grand plan also removes the ability to differentiate between themselves and LG, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, SE, and also subjects them to an independent company's release schedule. Until you've tried to do it, you cannot comprehend the organisational pain of trying to get your product release cycle to work with a partner's when you've no control over their schedule.

Strange as it may seem, phonemakers are not in the business of making nerds happy - they choose whatever components make business sense, and whatever will sell the most devices at the highest margins. Android was adopted by those with nothing to lose, and it has been a mixed success (LG and SonyEricsson certainly haven't done so well as HTC or Samsung, and the jury is still out on Motorola).

Mimikyu

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evolutionqy7

lol nokia is loosing customers to HTC, Samsung, Apple, LG every day. They got nothing to loose? Maybe more customers if they dont innovate faster.

The only thing i miss from the N97 is the FM transmitter. Everything else was just a pile of useless plastic. Even the N8 suffers from extensive lag issues once you start putting apps and crap on the phone

AntiVirus

There's been talk over the past couple of months of Nokia using WP7 or Android in there next gen mobile phones. Share's and profits are dropping. Nokia will announce a major smartphone strategy shift in a conference for investors on Feb 11th. So you don't have to long to wait.

kirving

I always quite like Symbian, and I still do, although I'm starting to notice some shortcomings. The coming Symbian update has got to be a serious one. I dont have long to write, (college work!), but I'd rather see Nokia move to WP7. I dont like Android really at all.

KrisW

You say that only those with nothing to lose adopt Android? Well what exactly has Nokia got to lose getting rid of Symbian? From reading many different blogs and forums a lot of people are not happy with Symbian.

People may not be happy with parts of Symbian now, but that doesn't mean they want to lose all the good parts of it too. It's like someone saying that the weather is sh't in Ireland. Well, how about you tell them they have to move somewhere else, and you'll hear a differnt story. People like to bitch. Only Apple owners come on the internet and tell everyone how great their latest purchases are.

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

lol nokia is loosing customers to HTC, Samsung, Apple, LG every day. They got nothing to loose? Maybe more customers if they dont innovate faster.

"nothing to lose" was a serious comment. SE or Motorola were both screwed, and are still not making money out of their Android adventures. LG and Samsung had no smartphone business. HTC had falling sales of an outdated WinMo 6. And it's not exactly a pot of gold: you can't charge more for having Android, 'cos all your competitors have it, and all that higher spec that you need for proper performance gets sliced out of your margins.

Nokia do have something to lose. They have a large userbase, who would not take too kindly to buying a "new Nokia" and finding every single thing different on it. You can't abandon a couple of hundred million customers just because some guy on the internet says they're not cool anymore.

Structurally, Nokia are in the same position as Apple - they have control of hardware and software (actually, Apple outsourced most of their phone work, but they are nonetheless a hardware manufacturer) and this gives them an advantage in the market. One they're not using now, but it's an advantage.

Nokia's problems aren't talent or creativity. Their big issue was that for a long time, their only serious competitor was Nokia. This stopped them pushing through the ground-breaking research work they had done, because "our current range is selling well enough". They became the General Motors of the mobile business.

The ironic thing about this is that of all the current mobile operating systems, Symbian still has the best performance by a long way. The UI is dated, but the core operating system is very efficient, and can do good work with hardware that just wouldn't be acceptable for iOS, let alone Android.

Efficient software means lower component costs, which means higher margins, which mean profit. No company is in business to make nerds happy. They're in business to make money.

Even the N8 suffers from extensive lag issues once you start putting apps and crap on the phone

I haven't noticed any slowdown on my own N8 - had it since November, and it's as quick now as when I bought it. I have to say that your past experience of the N97 isn't really relevant to the N8: Symbian 3 is nothing like S60 5th edition in performance, and the N8's hardware is much better than the N97's.

Qt applications also launch fast and run fast on the N8, and Qt will be the basis for all of the new UI work to come later this year. I don't see Android in this picture at all, it isn't needed, and it really isn't beneficial.

masker

i dont know people still defending symbian, i was big fan of symbian but its lacking far far behind. no where even close to wp7

masker

a person moved to ios or android will never ever return

kirving

Thats a ridiculous statement tbh. I have used Both iOS and Android, and neither appealed to me. I bought an N8. When the iPhone came out it didn't even have copy and paste, and still lagged(lags) behind Symbian functionality wise.

evolutionqy7

i wasnt talking about the N97. Lmao N97 was just one big lag. N8 is an improvement but still suffers from it badly. I know this cause my housemate has one and has to do a reset once in a while to speed things up.

Symbian is a dying breed. It will die soon just as WinMo did if Nokia doesnt do something about it.
Id never go back to Symbian. Wouldnt bother with MeeGo either.

Im not being bad about it, but most peoples experience with Android or iOS or even WP7 has been far better than with Symbian.

Mimikyu

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ongarite

masker wrote: »

a person moved to ios or android will never ever return

This is the key point. The public perception (correctly IMO) is that iOS and Android deliver the best user experience now and in the future is what is driving these platforms on and their huge sales growth year on year.

The quality of the hardware is largely irrelevant, the hardware features and specs are virtually the same for all smartphones; you could argue that until iPhone 4 that Apple hardware wasn't as good as its competitors but did that matter?
Not one bit, its the user experience that sold them in the millions.

This is the big problem for Nokia. The UI and user experience of Symbian ^3 is nowhere as good as its competitors.

AlmightyCushion

Keep symbian for the lower end devices. I know that is meant to be their plan but somehow it made it on to the n8.
Get meego out the door and do a good job of it.
Increase developer support massively.
Steal some cool features from your competitors e.g. being able to install apps from your pc like in android, being able to trace and control the phone when it's stolen like in WP7, IOS, Sense for android.
Like someone said above, sort out the naming convention. I don't mind as much but less tech minded people will appreciate it.

srsly78

Nokia are ****ed because they have lost Developer support. Symbian was always a massive pain to develop for, and their Ovi thing uses javascript apps WTF. No thanks. All this is on top of their UI being rubbish and out of date.

To the people moaning about Android margins: Android is FREE. You have to pay multi million dollar licence to use Winmo for example. So please explain again how Android doesn't help them make money? How much did Nokia spend on their latest software (which is ****)?

AlmightyCushion

srsly78 wrote: »

Nokia are ****ed because they have lost Developer support. Symbian was always a massive pain to develop for, and their Ovi thing uses javascript apps WTF. No thanks. All this is on top of their UI being rubbish and out of date.

To the people moaning about Android margins: Android is FREE. You have to pay multi million dollar licence to use Winmo for example. So please explain again how Android doesn't help them make money? How much did Nokia spend on their latest software (which is ****)?

I thought the license fee was pretty cheap on WP7, $10 or $15. And while android is free you have to pay google a license fee to use things like gmail, the market etc.
Also, WP7 has patent protection, android doesn't. So if WP7 infringes on another companies patents then it doesn't matter to the handset maker, whereas with android it could cost them dearly. This is the reason that HTC are paying microsoft money so that they can use android.

So android isn't exactly free and could end up costing a handset manufacturer more per handset than WP7.

srsly78

You see that's what we call Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD). This is Microsoft's preferred weapon against opensource, and one of the reasons why we can't have nice things. Stop repeating such nonsense. Android is free, I can download it right now and do whatever the hell I want with it.

Look at the Android / Java hullabuloo. The "infringing" files so far turned out of be some test scripts that aren't even part of android.

KrisW

Captain Morgan wrote: »

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Security and Voice/MMS/SMS.

Who said they should charge more for having Android? Android overtook Symbian as the OS most shipped on a phone in Q4 2010. And that's saying something seeing as Nokia's Symbian ^3 headsets where released in this time.

It will cost money to port it. How should they recoup that money? No business invests in something that won't increase profits. Android carries a penalty of needing more expensive hardware, but doesn't allow you to charge more. You can only charge more when you offer something different to your competition.

Hang on a minute. It's more than one guy on the internet saying Symbian is outdated. I'd say you're a minority, in that you think Symbian is great. From forums, blogs and articles I've read over the past while I'd say I'm far from being alone in thinking Nokia need to do something with their OS.

I think adopting Android would be a poor decision for Nokia. This has nothing to do with what I think of Symbian's UI, which I will agree with you needs work. I'm not claiming the UI is good enough, I'm arguing against the position that Android will be a good path to take to resolve this.

Well lets say for a minute they would be making lower margins (I don't see why you're saying Android isn't efficient?)

Android's Dalvik is an interpreted runtime. It cannot be as efficient as native compiled code. This is basic computer science. Java also uses a deferred garbage collector which leads to uneven performance - at random times, the runtime will stop what it's doing and go on a cleanup. Add this to Linux's non-realtime kernel, and you get the requirement to run on faster CPUs to keep latency down. That is why I say Android is less efficient.

Against this, Android is easier for less-trained developers to put software on, because everyone learns Java these days, and the runtime demands less rigour from developers. This is why they did it. Engineering is a series of tradeoffs - here it's resource use versus bring-up time for higher-level software.

it could make more sense to sell more phones at a lower margin than less phones at higher margin no?

They've been savaged by the financial analysts for doing precisely this on the previous generation of touch phones. Plus, you have assumed that they will automatically sell more phones by using Android. This is not necessarily true, because it will place them in direct competition with the likes of ZTE and Huawei who are churning out dirt-cheap Android phones, with no way to differentiate except hardware cosmetics, which cost more and reduce margins further.

Have you noticed no bugs with your N8? I have noticed lag/performance issues with my C7 and just bugs in general. Random bugs too.

Please don't stretch the argument after the fact. He said the N8 gets slower with use. Mine has not. There are bugs, but the core functions are solid - at least my SMS messages go to their intended recipient.

Incidentally, your C7 has the PR1.1 software update available now.

There's always something new coming with Symbian that's going to fix everything. They shouldn't release an OS until it's ready. Symbian ^3 wasn;t ready or else there wouldn't be so many people waiting on the software updates.

There's always something coming - it's the nature of the tech busines, or are you not looking forward to Android 3.0? iOS 5? WP 7.1? Everyone wants what's coming next. Well, everyone on internet forums. Others don't care so much.

To the people moaning about Android margins: Android is FREE. You have to pay multi million dollar licence to use Winmo for example. So please explain again how Android doesn't help them make money? How much did Nokia spend on their latest software (which is ****)?

Read up on what a "sunk cost" is, and the software is not as bad as you believe - in many areas (GPU acceleration for one) it beats Android. And Android is absolutely not free - there is a development effort required in porting and qualification. Also, bugfix is slower and not guaranteed, because not everyone has access to the code between releases. You also pay in the form of the risk that your OS provider will move the OS in a direction that doesn't benefit your business (tablets and home automation), and neglect the parts that do (phones).
Okay, if this happens, it's not the end of the world, because its "open source", right? You can just add the features you need to the public sources. Well, now you're paying for software dev on an OS just like you used to, but with the added cost that you've got to give it away to your competitors too. Big win.

Android doesn't help you make money because EVERYONE ELSE is using it too. You can only ask more for a product if it's demonstrably better, different or more desirable than its competitors. The UI is a major part of this (hardware quality, features and reputation are others). Adopting Android means you can't differentiate on software features anymore, and are limited by the OS support when differentiating on hardware features. That's a high price to pay for something that's "free".

In a market of uniform, interchangeable goods, the price falls, as competitors begin to compete on manufacturing cost, not innovation. The PC market got this way thanks to Windows, and we ended up with cheap junk sold on razor-thin margin, and Apple cherry-pickng the high-margin sales because they were able to differentiate their products and charge more for it.

Look, none of my arguments against Android are technical (except the efficiency, which will become less of an issue). Technology isn't the problem with Android, which is why the tech press love it. As a business case, though, it's not so rosy.

masker

n8 feels good, the built but symbian , its like, i dont know how to explain in appropriate words, it feels cheap, UI seriously lacks behind. it might be more powerful but user experience is not good

AlmightyCushion

What are the problems with the symbian interface? This is a genuine question as I haven't used a nokia symbian phone in many a year.

mrs aol

Despite the N8 camera hype - I think what Nokia could do with is an excellent camera on their latest phones.

I have my N8 over a month now and the only problem I still have outstanding is that the camera is not as good as the one on my old SE C905!

Stevek101

OP dream answered?

Nokia, Microsoft announcing partnership next week, possibly involving Windows Phone 7?

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/04/nokia-microsoft-announcing-partnership-next-week-possibly-invo/

Alanstrainor

My last 2 phones were Nokias, a 5800 and a N900.

The 5800 was plagued with issues, and people were forever waiting for updates, granted the updates came and continued to come out despite how old the hardware was.
The N900, which runs Maemo was/is a bit buggy at times, but Nokia have completely given up on it, i don't expect to get any more updates for it from Nokia. That is unacceptable for a Top of the range devise released a year and a half or so ago.
My next phone will not be a nokia.

KrisW

Stevek101 wrote: »

OP dream answered?



http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/04/nokia-microsoft-announcing-partnership-next-week-possibly-invo/

Speculation is fun, especially when you know nothing about one of the parties (that'd be Engadget, then).

You've got to love the way they discount the most obvious partnership straight away (and any partnership at all is only a rumour), preferring to dive into the realms of fantasy straight away. Got to keep those clicks coming, I suppose.

evolutionqy7

I wouldnt read into those too much. I would love to see the alliance but i dont think it will happen but guess we will see in MWC or not

Mimikyu

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BostonB

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

What are the problems with the symbian interface? This is a genuine question as I haven't used a nokia symbian phone in many a year.

Imagine someone whos never seen an iPhone. Thats symbian.

Alanstrainor

BostonB wrote: »

Imagine someone whos never seen an iPhone. Thats symbian.

Exactly this.

Symbian works. But it ain't pretty!

BostonB

I dunno if it does work. On my E71 if I ring someone back from last call list instead of the missed call list, it doesn't clear the later. One list doesn't talk to the other list. Its full of glitches like that. I can cut and past in one part of the OS, but not in another. The E51 menus, are all slightly different. Even after years of using them, most users couldn't tell you where features are in the menus. They move features around on different phones, and even on the same phone they move around between firmware updates. If I buy an updated E71, the E72, I find they've move everything around again, even down to the character keys on the keyboard. The E71 and E72 have perfect keys on the side for playback controls. But they don't use them.

Then you have the camera's. They seem to scatter decent phone features, like a decent sensor, flash, and autofocus, at random. Many high end phones have brutal cameras on them.

Its staggering how inconsistent Nokia are, across every part of their business.

Mimikyu

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srsly78

Nokia really dropped the ball in the last few years, I read an interesting "insider view" on why, sorry don't have link to hand.

The camera is an interesting example, we all know Nokia have the best cameras right? But wait.... They reorganised in 2003 I think to have multiple departments competing internally for resources. There was a "multimedia device" department and a "consumer device" department. Multimedia made an AWESOME camera, and consumer device dept made awesome software. However, they were competing against each other, so the 2 features never got put together in a device. Instead you had one device with good camera but lousy software, and vice versa. Madness!