Why Did Ballmer Throw Nokia Now Under the Bus?
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Small data point: went to the AT&T store yesterday and, while waiting for a rep, played with a Nokia Windows Phone on the wall. I was meeting someone for beers in town and wanted to map out how long it would take to walk there. I looked and looked for a Maps choice in the home UI and I couldn't find it. I stood there for 3 minutes, scrolling up and down and nothing. Instead, there was AT&T Navigation (I didn't need navigation.. I just wanted some walking directions as an overview). There was also some app store showcase thing, which looked like something I would never want to use. It also displayed confusing messages in the square now and again, e.g. I think it said "Show Your Maps", which must've been an app they were promoting in the app showcase.
So if I, an experienced geek (and an iPhone user), can't figure out how to bring up Maps on your AT&T Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone, then you have failed BIG TIME. I moved on to the Android phone next to it and got the job done.
So long as you can say to corporates: you want your staff to have access to your MS email system on their phones? Then they just need Windows Phone with Windows Phone corporate Email Server - just sign here.
Exactly what RIM did with Blackberry and BES
The question now is - is it too late? Are companies happy enough with connecting to corporate email from Android and iPhone to just let their users use what they want - or are they going to buy Windows Phone handsets for everyone?
Both Nokia Maps and Bing Maps are pinned by default on the start screen. It's possible for users to unpin them, and since it's a display phone it's likely people have been playing with it. If you couldn't figure out how to get to the full list of installed apps (same way you do on an iPhone, swipe to the side), that's not poor control over the experience, that's not Microsoft's failure: that's all on you.
Windows Phone has poor control over the OS compared to the iPhone, so you point out Android as better. I'm beginning to think this story never happened.
What did Ballmer/MS do to "throw Nokia under the bus"?
As for updating the phones, the ARM embedded platform has a bewildering array of SOCs and doesn't have platform commonality like there is for x86. You can see how in the Linux world they keep trying to reduce the number of kernels needed (last I read was around 5) and then GPU support also has issues (binary blobs). I suspect it is far too much development effort to add the platform and driver support for existing WP7 phones. The best thing Microsoft could do is provide an upgrade program for the early adopters, but not announce details in advance.
One important bit of the initial iPhone was realising that there was no need for a constrained software platform, and instead using a Unix kernel and user space. Platforms like RIM's, Windows CE, Symbian, PalmOS etc were all focussed on being in a very constrained environment (memory, CPU). They jumped through hoops in the name of efficiency and made application developers do the same.
iOS is profligate, with kernel commonality with MacOS, wasting huge amounts of CPU and memory by comparison. But that doesn't really matter because there are hundreds of megahertz and megabytes of memory then and gigas of both now. You can take advantage of them to provide a far superior user experience and developer experience. And that is what matters these days.
I thought only Qualcomm SoCs (or just a particular SoC?) was certified for running WP7? That doesn't sound like a bewildering array.
From http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2011/05/20/nokia-to-use-st-er...
As you already know Qualcomm is the only certified SoC manufacturer for Windows Phone 7
But I believe Windows 8 hasn't been ported to that SOC, and making each ARM port is significantly more effort (especially logistical) than x86. Windows CE drivers won't work, so they'd essentially have to do most drivers from scratch. And such a port would only be pertinent to the "legacy" installed base of WP7, and not to the shiny tablets Microsoft is obsessed with today.
More accurately this is what I think Microsoft would have to do in order to provide a WP7 upgrade:
* Reimplement drivers for the SOCs and other hardware used
* Provide a compatible system initialization mechanism (aka boot loader). Note "secure" UEFI being used for Windows 8 but not WP7.
* Provide an upgrader program that downloads your data, wipes the device and puts the new operating system back on with a close to zero chance of bricking should anything go wrong during the process. (This is very hard.)
* Put your data back onto the device, including conversion of file formats where the app implementation is different between WP7 and WP8.
* Ensure reasonable continuity of system apps between WP7 and WP8
* Refund all app purchases since WP7 apps won't work on WP8 (or store credit)
* Implement a DRM mechanism compatible with WP7 content
* Do lots of testing to make sure the OS and apps don't break in the more constrained hardware of WP7 devices which predate WP8 hardware specs by about two years.
This is a huge amount of work for little reward. In their shoes once WP8 is released and devices available then I'd go to existing WP7 owners and provide a simple upgrade path (eg trade in your device and get $200 credit to a WP8 device). But I wouldn't announce this in advance otherwise people would take advantage of it.
As I see it, MS has only two choices to save their WP platform: priperly port WP8 to WP7 hardware, or give WP7 users free WP8 phones.
Nokia didn't get thrown under a bus any more than RIM did by their own platform. No, both RIM and Nokia could have seen the iOS/Android writing on the wall 2 or 3 years ago for sure, or even 5 years ago when the iPhone launched.
Instead, they buried their heads in the sand and hoped that iOS and Android would be a fad that would pass. Instead RIM and Nokia might have just been a fad for a few years. Already happened to Palm. Already happened to Windows Mobile.
The only reason Nokia went with Windows Phone was the billions of dollars in platform payments that Microsoft made to keep Nokia alive long enough to make the transition work. That might not have been enough money and MSFT might need to outright buy Nokia to keep it afloat, but the good news is that by the time they do that Nokia should be cheaper than Skype was when Microsoft bought them.
I'm not sure what alternatives people see for Nokia. Symbian clearly couldn't compete, and their "next-gen" OS was deeply troubled. They could have gone with Android, and been competing directly against Samsung (who is, honestly, better at manufacturing) or tried to be the dominant player in a new market.
Clearly, they've had issues. I continue to hold out hope that they'll pull off a pivot, though.
http://www.google.com/finance?q=nok
Mkt cap 7.04B
Or you might say, 1 + 1 > 2.