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Comment by gacba | Hacker News Reader

I give Nokia Plan B a solid D- for too little too late. MeeGo got a horrible reception today by Intel (http://www.slashgear.com/meego-preview-at-mwc-2011-disappoin...) and it's obvious why Nokia abandoned it at this point, even for a bad choice like Win Mobile 7...what other choice did they have? Symbian? Bleeding market share like gutted cow. Android? Can't differentiate in that space.

So to hear these 9 disgruntled folks say they're going to stick with a bad plan and make it happen sounds like lunacy to me.

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"Android? Can't differentiate in that space."

I've yet to see an explanation for any way in which they can differentiate on WP7, that they couldn't do better and more easily on Android.

Say what you will about Open Source development, but when it comes to differentiation, there's simply no way to beat it...look at the variety of Linux distributions, for an example of differentiation gone wild.

Out of the gate WM7 is quite different from Android or iOS so there's that. I think maybe the bigger implied message here is that Nokia was not confident in their own software development teams to handle this transition. Look at what they built on top of MeeGo -- it's not very impressive. Would having Android underneath there make any real difference? I doubt it. They basically want to outsource their OS development.

"Out of the gate WM7 is quite different from Android or iOS so there's that."

That's only really a differentiator because no one wants Windows phones, so there aren't as many in the hands of users. I'm not sure that's the kind of difference Nokia needs right now. That's just lack of familiarity...not really a positive differentiation.

Yes, but that's not the question. The question is, "how different is a Nokia WP7 phone from, say, one from Samsung or HTC?"

If WP7 is a success, then by the time Nokia ships (late 2011 at the earliest), they will be entrants in a crowded field --- and so far, Microsoft is requiring most WP7 phones to be near-lookalikes, to get consistency of user experience across the platform.

(Of course, part of the deal here may be that Nokia gets to differentiate their products in a way that nobody else does --- but if it is, then the other vendors may be ticked in a way that causes long-term problems for the platform as a whole. Contrast to Android, where vendors have complete freedom to reskin it right now.)

The difference may be who does the differentiation. I think part of Mokia's problem is their developer talent isn't super strong. Them doing significantly dev on Android is a problem. If MS adds support for Nokia functionality on WP7, Nokia can focus on HW quality and drive requirements for MS to build the SW that exploits it.

From what I can tell the negotiations with Google and Nokia went really poorly.

"They basically want to outsource their OS development."

So ship stock Android, thus outsourcing OS development to Google. I agree with what SwellJoe says, haven't heard any credible explanation of how WP7 allows differentiation that Android wouldn't.

Apart from the fact that Android is the most popular smart phone OS and WP7 is thus far not a success.

The first WP7 devices were released on October 21, 2010. Exactly how large of a success was Android in February 2008?

You should see how badly Android users react to not being given the latest Android updates (e.g. XPeria X10). In the end, when people buy smartphones they care more about the OS than hardware alone.

It's not so much about differentiation, it is the fact the Nokia alone can be the only manufacturer of low-end WP7 devices because the WP7 has rigid hardware requirements that Nokia won't have to follow.

> Can't differentiate in that space.

That's complete BS.

Android phones offer very different experiences, from fairly standard Android, to the completely alien Sony-Ericsson:

http://www.expansys.com/zoompic.aspx?i=207496 http://www.expansys.com/zoompic.aspx?i=207852 http://www.expansys.com/zoompic.aspx?i=203457 http://www.expansys.com/zoompic.aspx?i=204827 http://www.expansys.com/zoompic.aspx?i=185317

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