So Microsoft has a Linux distro. Interesting. Anybody care to hazard a guess what the future holds? My take is that this was well in development before the MS/Nokia deal went through (it has gone through, hasn't it?) and Microsoft were not (have not been) able to get it canned. Or, shock, horror, maybe Microsoft are testing the waters - they already make a bunch from Linux patents, maybe they want to see how much they'll make from App Store revenue if these gain a decent market share. When you think about it, Apple doesn't charge for iOS so if Microsoft start doing decent hardware sales maybe Microsoft will start considering its mobile operating system division this way. Given recent news that Microsoft has to discount Windows licences on lower cost hardware to compete with Chromebooks we're starting to see that Microsoft even though it is making money hand over fist is in an untenable position.
A few questions.
How will Microsoft not be able to develop Mobile Office for Android?
How are Microsoft going to be able to maintain two mobile OSs?
Are Nokia going to see this through? I think it is a smart play, if they go after it whole-heartedly like Amazon and provide a decent amount of differentiation. One could easily see Samsung going this route.
Microsoft (and their staff individually) actually contribute to the Linux kernel so this isn't that crazy.
You can already get office 365 for iOS. Not sure about android but it's logical.
This appears to be the budget/developing world side of things. I'd prefer to see WinPhone on low end devices to be honest - it's really good even on low spec handsets.
I see this as that much marketed "devices and services offering" they are always going on about. They're making a killing from Azure etc and Windows Live/outlook.com is the most mature and featureful cloud thing. They're actually shit hot these days.
I still prefer my old fashioned Unix way of life though as I don't want to become a paid up ecosystem slave.
Nobody I know uses Microsoft's lockin. Some prefer google's or apple's, but increasing numbers are trying to escape from being a data source for advertising and the NSA and ditching google, apple, and MS.
I agree that this is the next hurdle. To just from Microsoft's desktop embrace to Google's cloud embrace is to switch one master for another even though Google has shown itself to be an excellent open-source champion in terms of their Summer of Code effort and the amount of client (and server?) software they develop in the open. But lock-in is lock-in no matter how comfy the handcuffs.
How will Microsoft not be able to develop Mobile Office for Android?
By most reporting[1], the office team has already had versions of office for iOS (and presumably Android) ready for quite some time. Their lack of release has been an internal political battle at Microsoft based on whether to postpone them until after the equivalent office apps are ready for RT. This is one of the biggest examples of decision making that people have been criticizing Microsoft for (handicapping their non-Windows business units to provide Windows a competitive advantage; which is a sensible strategy, but that seems ill-suited longterm, as those other business units like Office now eclipse Windows in revenue).
It's entirely possible that part of Nokia releasing this phone is related to that recent shift in strategy.
How are Microsoft going to be able to maintain two mobile OSs?
Nokia already has experience in managing operating systems. I don't know how much work "porting" over all the Nokia apps was to Android, but it seems like they've done it. They already went through the experience of porting many of them over from Symbian (and alas, Maemo didn't really have much in the way of Nokia apps). I don't think this is a serious issue for their engineering organization (even aside from Microsoft's much larger engineering organization that presumably could be made available).
Are Nokia going to see this through? I think it is a smart play, if they go after it whole-heartedly like Amazon and provide a decent amount of differentiation. One could easily see Samsung going this route.
I think this is a logical play from a risk perspective. The low-end is currently where all their sales are (as the mid and high end have dried up faster than their increasing Windows Phone sales have grown); and even though the low-end isn't the desirable part of the market (see every phone manufacturer other than Apple and Samsung as examples), the effort required isn't much greater than they're already doing for the Asha lines.
I think they'll have a better chance at building an ecosystem that's piggy-backed off of Android than in building their own. I still don't know that this is a great long-term play, but it could be.
Samsung has been alleged to be heading in this direction for ages (first reported as the reasons for them releasing Bada, and later, Tizen). The new Gear 2 watch-thing runs Tizen instead of Android (which considering it's not really a stand-alone device, is probably a good place to test the waters).
It seems like the issue with Samsung taking the plunge is how much they attribute their recent success to their own products, vs. the Google ecosystem. Once they cross that threshold, they'll ship their own OS with TouchWiz on top of it. Maybe they'll similarly have an environment that can run Android apps (it's all Linux underneath).
Office has a huge amount of legacy. I get that porting it to iOS had to be done. Microsoft provides Office for the Mac desktop. But porting to Android is a whole other story. Porting it to Android validates Android as a platform like nothing else. It'd be equivalent to Oracle releasing their DB server for Linux way back in the day, it gave the platform instant enterprise-cred whereas before it really only had hacker-cred and FOSS evangelist support despite the knowledge that IBM was spending a whole bunch of money on it internally.
You're right that Nokia has a track record of supporting and developing across multiple OSs but how has this turned out for them in the long run?
Samsung are right to keep their options open but I think they should go the Amazon/Nokia route and differentiate on top of Android. Having said that Samsung is probably more than large enough and has a large enough R&D budget to pursue multiple strategies.
It's really hard to see how this plays out. I thought we'd never ever see the day when Microsoft developed for Linux or Android unless as a bridge to their own world. I thought past history, pride, lack of trust, wrong momentum, or whatever would stymie them from making the transition. If I were a beige box manufacturer I would be extremely concerned that the Microsoft may move on from phones and tablets to laptops or even PCs, now that hell has frozen over you never know what they might do.
> But porting to Android is a whole other story. Porting it to Android validates Android as a platform like nothing else.
I feel like the hundreds of millions of devices that ship each quarter is enough of a validation. They're not waiting around saying "I wonder if this Android thing takes off".
>It'd be equivalent to Oracle releasing their DB server for Linux way back in the day
I think Microsoft should look less to Apple and Google for inspiration and more to Oracle. There are a lot of similarities between the two companies: enterprise focus, pure software company, lots of legacy applications to support, etc...
Currently, not being on iOS is invalidating Micrsosoft Office. It's miraculous how many things in stodgy IT Departments had to change shortly after the CEO got an iPad and iPhone. Probably a lot of those people felt they were secure with their Windows desktop only solutions, turns out they were wrong.
It'd be equivalent to Oracle releasing their DB server for Linux way back in the day
I'm hesitant about that comparison - server software and desktop software have little in common. Oracle could demand what OS it ran on because the server was likely doing little else - a desktop machine needs to run a wide variety of programs.
As far as I know they get licensing payments for use of the FAT file system. Since they do own patents for that and Android handset manufacturers can't exactly tell users to use ext\d on SD cards there are licensing contracts in place.
> How will Microsoft not be able to develop Mobile Office for Android?
Easily. My first thought on seeing the specs on those devices is that they are trying to position the Android offering as the cheap option: something for peopel who can't afford a proper phone. Want Office and the other big boy's toys? Then buy one of our Windows based devices instead.
> How are Microsoft going to be able to maintain two mobile OSs?
They already do: while it looks like the Symbian based OS is officially dead, as are other alternatives like meego, "feature phones" from Nokia (such as the Asha range) are still being released based around the old S40 OS. Perhaps they are looking to retire this and see Android as an inexpensive way forward, that way someone else is developing the core OS and they just need to provide drivers and device specific tweaks (and an app store & such if not licensing Google's parts). There is certainly a project out there working on smoothly running apps targeting the S40 on Linux based devices (IIRC not funcded by Nokia, but the existence of the project indicatesit is possible) which would smooth the replacement.
They have to have a cheaper alternative to the WP devices unless they can release a WP device that can compete price-wise in those markets without diminishing the appearance of the more expensive kit or they lose the "chep-nokia-to-expensive-nokia upgrade path: people with another cheap Andoird device won't have any Nokia brand loyalty so they would be competing entirely directly with high-end Android and iOS devices in that instance and they need something to try make the move to WP more attractive than a move to iOS at that point because the public perception of WP8 is far behind that of Apple (and depending on who you talk to, high-end Android).
> Are Nokia going to see this through?
That is the big question, though the answer probably doesn't really matter to smartphone users. If my guesses about the positioning thing and S40 replacement are right then they'll need to keep it going a while at least, but with the other competition around in the Android market it'll only ever fool the stupid anyway. And from the point of view of "feature phones", that is business as usual.
MS/Nokia deal hasn't gone through yet. Nokia handset divison is still part of Nokia and not part of MS yet. I believe they are waiting for approval from some governments such as China before they can complete the acquisition.
Microsoft had a Unix distro for a long time - Xenix. It was built as Microsoft's next generation OS, originally Microsoft thought they were going to migrate to it as their dominant platform as computers got faster. It was the most widespread version of Unix around in the late 1980s in terms of machine installs. Microsoft sold it to SCO in 1987.
This is the most confused device ever. A bastard child of Android and Windows: basterdised verion of Windows Phone UI on top of a forked Android that's integrated with Microsoft Cloud. The marketing has a distinct "feature phone" feel.
Seriously, Asha or X device from Nokia with Firefox OS would make more sense than this.
The "featurephone" OS is S40 and it's in both "classic" phones (e.g. 515) and Ashas.... unless there is something I've missed completely. And come to think of it, I haven't heard any confirmation of closing the production of S40 phones, so I guess that'd make it 3.
The OS in the most basic of Nokia phones is commonly referred to as S30. It doesn't really need much active maintenance, though, because they mostly only change graphics and included games (and utilities) between those phones.
The classic feature phones is an older Symbian variant and Asha Platform OS is S40 from what I can tell. Symbian is still king in a lot of countries so Nokia will have to support it for a long time.
Struggle to see how this helps Nokia. Nokia Xs are smart phones at a price of a feature phone. Great! Welcome to an already very crowded low-margin market of cheap Androids in India, Brazil, China and Africa, the same market MS will enter with cheap 8.1 devices and where Firefox OS devices are heading. Yet, Nokia Xs have little extra to offer to the consumers that would significantly differentiate themselves from the competition.
Asha did well in developing markets, and Nokia has an attractive app/ecosystem suite for low-end phones. But Series 40 OS is not competitive with Android. Nokia X goes straight at that problem. If you are careful about the apps, especially the browser, Android will run well on VERY cheap hardware.
Symbian isn't supported any more even today and Ovi Store has been frozen. And Symbian is much more of a "smart" phone OS than WP8. Also S40 isn't really Symbian. :)
The Lumia 820 was 800x480 on a 4.3" screen, and I found it perfectly pleasant to use. 5" would be adequate for that end of the market.
It was less pleasant when I dropped it a foot and a half onto a carpeted floor and the screen cracked irreparably.
Maybe the idea is to recapture that market they used to dominate, of low-cost, robust phones with the very basics. (And snake.) Nowadays, of course, the 'very basics' includes web, email and suchlike. But not everybody wants the latest fad phone-game; they want their phones to, shock horror, communicate with people. Maybe they'll find a market that would otherwise go to the most rock-bottom terrible android handsets; pretty sure it'll be a better product than those.
Maybe they'll fail. Given it's where they excelled in the past, though, you can't blame them for trying.
Without Play Store and the ability to sideload Android apps (via .APK), you can expect a proliferation of pirated Android applications for the Nokia phones. Once again, Microsoft will enable the creation of a thriving anti-virus industry.
Ars Technica [1] put it best. These phones are dead on arrival.
This is not the first time Nokia has done something like this. It released a
Meego version of the N9, its long-in-development Symbian successor, before
immediately abandoning the platform and switching to Windows Phone.
This isn't a sign of some deep strategy. It's just standard Nokia platform craziness.
"burning platform" not "burning bridges" (although the number of bridges burned between Nokia leadership and employees, suppliers, developers, distributors/retailers and carriers was nothing short of astonishing. And catastrophic).
Well the idea was good the implementation sucks as usual. Android without the play store is not as useful or flexible and you can't compete with other budget phones which do have the play store so you're shooting yourself in the foot.
As log as there's an easy way for end users to put it on it shouldn't be such a big deal though.
What I suspect they are attempting to do is get back into the low budget phone market which they used to rule before they stupidly gave it up voluntarily and the only reason they are using Android is because it's the only one suitable for that hardware however this is not the old low end market they used to know.
Before it used to be acceptable to have only a few crap apps for phones but now even the low budget phones have access to the play store. I wonder if they will make it with this self inflicted handicap.
They have no option here - using Google's app store comes with severe attachments that Microsoft is not likely to accept.
My guess is that they are aiming at lower end of market where the price is important, and betting on developers to port their apps. Which could actually happen if porting is not a big issue.
OTOH, Google is putting more and more stuff in closed source part of OS, so the platforms will inevitably diverge. It might be a bit late for Nokia to do this... we'll see.
Nokia is clearly aiming the low end market in emerging country. I am not sure that market needs the play store as much as you seem to insinuate. Most of the services offered by the play store apps dont even work in a lot of developping countries.
I wouldn't be so quick to discount this move. It could be a classic Microsoft embrace/extend/extinguish move. They lost the first round on mobile phone platforms, but this would allow them to very quickly create a platform that has developer support - after all, porting your apps from standard Android to an AOSP fork is easier than than porting it to Windows Phone. Especially as Microsoft/Nokia is pretty much the only organisation on the planet at the moment apart from Google and Apple that is capable of offering all of the same services that stock Android provides, making porting even easier for app developers.
The latest Android look and feel is not so different from Windows Phone either, once you actually get into the app. You could imagine a "Windows Phone" homescreen skin with Android Apps behind it, and it would be really quite a decent merger of the two environments, graphically speaking.
If they throw a bit of money around to encourage developers to undertake the (hopefully) relatively simple task of porting from stock Android, it's not impossible that they manage to get a pretty decent App Store together, which would solve the app problem for the otherwise fantastic Nokia hardware that they have been making these last few years.
Anyway, there's a lot of conditionals in the stuff that I've just written, none of it may come to pass, I'm just saying that it would be unwise to dismiss this effort without at least waiting a bit to see how it pans out.
It's not just about the quantity, but quality as well. Many of the major apps such as Uber, Lyft and Venmo are still missing, and the app store is still largely a joke with the hottest apps arriving significantly late - if ever.
As a Finn and a Nokia phone owner, I'd love the company to succeed. I'm just puzzled about the level of arrogance they still showcase, as if they know best what customers "should" want. For example, I visited Nokia offices past spring and a very senior level executive told to a group of developers and I how he doesn't understand why people even need apps like Instagram and "Chat Snap App" [sic] when the Nokia apps work just as fine or better.
While I don't care much about "app counts", the Windows Store is ... laughably bad. Common searches return tons of trademark violations, and obvious crap apps. Ugly junk.
The "number" was never a problem, and by optimizing for that metric, MS made their store into a gross place. A joke, as another comment puts it.
> after all, porting your apps from standard Android to an AOSP fork is easier than than porting it to Windows Phone
So is this REALLY Android if you need to port your applications to run on it? How much of what makes an Android phone Android is AOSP and how much is the Google services that sit on top of it?
This isn't necessarily Google services vs. AOSP. Since they aren't going through certification there's no guarantee they've gone through CTS tests (so they APIs may differ from stock Android, either in signature or functionality).
No, there's one Android: the one certified by CTS and conforming to the CDD. You aren't allowed to use the name Android to describe your device without being certified as "Android-compatible".
From the FAQ on source.android.com:
"Is compatibility mandatory?
No. The Android Compatibility Program is optional. Since the Android source code is open, anyone can use it to build any kind of device. However, if manufacturers wish to use the Android name with their products, or want access to Google Play, they must first demonstrate their devices are compatible."
This is more about going after volume with Android and leaving Windows Phone to compete with iOS for the high-end market. But I guess that is exactly embrace/extend/extinguish except applied directly to the Android brand, which makes more sense than turning the screws on devs with constant platform headaches.
So Nokia kills one platform/smartphone in the recent past and that means that this new line of phones is doomed? How are the two events linked? I don't see a connection. Products are born and killed everyday, just because company X has killed product Y in the past, doesn't mean that every future product will be killed in the same manor.
Also, N9 was an internally developed OS that was late, and Nokia was suffering. Axing something that is eating massive resources for an external vendor isn't in any way similar to Nokia introducing a low-cost alternative to their existing high end offerings.
Was this initiative started before or after the MS acquisition was planned and announced? While technically MS might not own them yet, it seems they have already built their product offerings around this partnership (and for some time now). Which would make the comparison to the internal N9 project being killed in favor of a new platform not as relevant.
This seems to me as a plan hatched after Nokia got into bed with MS as a plan to diversify.
They kind of have to say that though, the same author wrote this:
"While Android is open, it's more of a "look but don't touch" kind of open. You're allowed to contribute to Android and allowed to use it for little hobbies, but in nearly every area, the deck is stacked against anyone trying to use Android without Google's blessing. The second you try to take Android and do something that Google doesn't approve of, it will bring the world crashing down upon you."
And his colleague wrote an article titled: "Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork Android. It’s unforkable."
So they'd look a bit silly writing about this in any other way.
Maybe it will get canned, but then before today I would have said that it was only for internal purposes, so scare Microsoft into buying them. Turns out I was wrong, and they went public with it.
They are kind of right. These phones are worthless in the US market or any high end market due to lack of Google Play. And that's where the profit margins are. Samsung is really the only player with enough vertical integration and scale to profit on the low end devices. Nokia is one of the very few vendors who can provide a competent maps app without Google Maps, but they are still producing a failure here due to not kissing Google's ring.
Such a pointless release that will only lead to customer confusion. I bet those will be cancelled as soon as the MSFT purchase (finally) closes. Just goes to show why Nokia has been sold off. Sad.
Weak specs, no physical buttons, and one of the two missing an SD card. I predict these will not do well.
Edit: Oh, and the interface is awful. The sensible thing would have been to use Android as inspiration to redesign Metro to be less ugly and nonfunctional, not to try and port Metro to Android...
Microsoft intended to handle Android as a non-primary platform. I'm curious if those apps are going to be available on the Google Play Store as well (i hope so).
With this move, they should have update apps on the Android platform.
Also, i'm curious if developers have to change their Android APP UI to fit the new UI from Nokia (could be dangerous for Nokia).
Next, Android users all have a gmail account, now they need to switch to Outlook ? Not exactly user-friendly. Most developers have to change their Authentication also on their app.
pixels without sensor size are meaningless. a 3 megapixel camera that has good dynamic range and can shoot reasonable shutter speed at low isos in low light would be much better in a phone than a 15 mpix.
By making any success with its Android phones, Microsoft can achieve two goals:
- further fragment the Android platform making it more difficult for users to buy devices and for developers to support the various devices and
- benefit from Android's strong market position instead of only trying to create market for Windows phones in places where it doesn't fit
They've identified the greatest flaw in Android ecosystem and they're exploiting it in an attempt to make their own offering more attractive in the long run.
From business point of view i am bit curious to know why microsoft is started using Android OS?
Android owned by Google and the biggest competitor of Microsoft. Despite of having nice operating system like Windows mobile, they are trying Android ! This gives good sign of co-operation between giants.
The Nokia/Microsoft deal hasn't completely gone through yet. Until it does, Microsoft is not legally allowed to have any say in Nokia's product decisions
Microsoft has been known to do a lot of things that they aren't legally allowed. In this case, I doubt they would not interfere if they didn't want to.
512MB ram? My year old android handset has 1GB and is slow as all hell. It hangs, reboots itself, shows weird errors ("Activity Phone is not responding" when somebody is calling) and takes 30 seconds to open firefox. I don't know what Nokia is thinking.
I have been there too. Then I installed cyanogenmod on my Nexus S. It's like night and day. Can't recommend enough. In the future I'm going after phones compatible with it.
I agree that 1 Gb would be ideal, but I have a 278 mb phone (Galaxy Ace from 2011), and it "works".
They're thinking that they'll probably bundle them for free with carriers in the 3rd world. I live in the 3rd world and the only "free" Android phones I can get with my U$ 20 contract are a Huawei crapphone, or Samsung Mini (the awful 1st version), both with Android 2.3. The non-Android alternatives are Nokia Ashas or other featurephones.
I'm pretty sure Nokia will be able to compete with the likes of the Huawei Ascend.
That may not be true. Look at the low end Lumia, they are moderately spec'd. Even Lumia 720 which is Nexus 4 level device has a quarter of the RAM & works great.
For others like me, the press release says: "a family of smartphones that run Android(TM) apps". Yes, other app stores can be sideloaded, and they even mention a few, but not Google's Play Store.
Personally, I doubt getting Play Store on it would be as simple as sideloading (sideloading itself isn't much different from what other app stores do) because of Google's Play Services.
Hopefully root (or a ROM, if necessary) could help with that.
To the extent that Linux is technically just the kernel and fundamental services, Android uses Linux but is not itself "Linux".
To the extent that Linux implies "GNU Linux", i.e. a whole operating system and a broadly interoperable and source compatible set of *nix services, Android is not Linux any more than iOS is FreeBSD.
Then you could argue that any embedded device that runs the Linux kernel is not Linux because it doesn't use the GNU userland. I think its splitting hairs, anything that runs the Linux kernel is by definition, Linux. You can replace the GNU userland with anything you want, it doesn't suddenly make it a completely new operating system.
Sounds like the argument is a question of definitions - does "operating system" mean kernel, userland, or both? You argue that changing the userland doesn't change the OS. I could counterargue that Debian/kFreeBSD is the "same operating system" with a different kernel.
RMS believes that userland makes an OS, because he wrote a userland. Linus believes that kernel makes an OS, because he wrote a kernel. Calling Android "Linux" is like calling Windows 8 "Windows NT", i.e. correct if you're talking about kernels and wrong otherwise.
Microsoft's contribution to the Linux kernel, is, AFAIK, limited to device drivers that make Linux run better under Hyper-V. So, they are not really improving Linux - they are using it as a bait for you to run your Linux workloads on your Windows servers, using Microsoft's virtualization technology.
Intel's contribution to the Linux kernel, is, AFAIK, limited to device drivers that make Linux run better with Intel hardware. So, they are not really improving Linux - they are using it as a bait for you to run your Linux workloads on your Intel servers, using Intel's hardware technology.
Qualcomm's contribution to the Linux kernel, is, AFAIK, limited to software that make Linux run better with Qualcomm SoC. So, they are not really improving Linux - they are using it as a bait for you to run your Linux workloads on your Qualcomm phones, using Qualcomm's hardware technology.
189 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 254 ms ] threadA few questions.
How will Microsoft not be able to develop Mobile Office for Android?
How are Microsoft going to be able to maintain two mobile OSs?
Are Nokia going to see this through? I think it is a smart play, if they go after it whole-heartedly like Amazon and provide a decent amount of differentiation. One could easily see Samsung going this route.
You can already get office 365 for iOS. Not sure about android but it's logical.
This appears to be the budget/developing world side of things. I'd prefer to see WinPhone on low end devices to be honest - it's really good even on low spec handsets.
I see this as that much marketed "devices and services offering" they are always going on about. They're making a killing from Azure etc and Windows Live/outlook.com is the most mature and featureful cloud thing. They're actually shit hot these days.
I still prefer my old fashioned Unix way of life though as I don't want to become a paid up ecosystem slave.
I must at least cursorily proofread my comments.
I must at least cursorily proofread my comments.
...
By most reporting[1], the office team has already had versions of office for iOS (and presumably Android) ready for quite some time. Their lack of release has been an internal political battle at Microsoft based on whether to postpone them until after the equivalent office apps are ready for RT. This is one of the biggest examples of decision making that people have been criticizing Microsoft for (handicapping their non-Windows business units to provide Windows a competitive advantage; which is a sensible strategy, but that seems ill-suited longterm, as those other business units like Office now eclipse Windows in revenue).
It's entirely possible that part of Nokia releasing this phone is related to that recent shift in strategy.
How are Microsoft going to be able to maintain two mobile OSs?
Nokia already has experience in managing operating systems. I don't know how much work "porting" over all the Nokia apps was to Android, but it seems like they've done it. They already went through the experience of porting many of them over from Symbian (and alas, Maemo didn't really have much in the way of Nokia apps). I don't think this is a serious issue for their engineering organization (even aside from Microsoft's much larger engineering organization that presumably could be made available).
Are Nokia going to see this through? I think it is a smart play, if they go after it whole-heartedly like Amazon and provide a decent amount of differentiation. One could easily see Samsung going this route.
I think this is a logical play from a risk perspective. The low-end is currently where all their sales are (as the mid and high end have dried up faster than their increasing Windows Phone sales have grown); and even though the low-end isn't the desirable part of the market (see every phone manufacturer other than Apple and Samsung as examples), the effort required isn't much greater than they're already doing for the Asha lines.
I think they'll have a better chance at building an ecosystem that's piggy-backed off of Android than in building their own. I still don't know that this is a great long-term play, but it could be.
Samsung has been alleged to be heading in this direction for ages (first reported as the reasons for them releasing Bada, and later, Tizen). The new Gear 2 watch-thing runs Tizen instead of Android (which considering it's not really a stand-alone device, is probably a good place to test the waters).
It seems like the issue with Samsung taking the plunge is how much they attribute their recent success to their own products, vs. the Google ecosystem. Once they cross that threshold, they'll ship their own OS with TouchWiz on top of it. Maybe they'll similarly have an environment that can run Android apps (it's all Linux underneath).
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-office-on-ipad-its-alive-and-...
You're right that Nokia has a track record of supporting and developing across multiple OSs but how has this turned out for them in the long run?
Samsung are right to keep their options open but I think they should go the Amazon/Nokia route and differentiate on top of Android. Having said that Samsung is probably more than large enough and has a large enough R&D budget to pursue multiple strategies.
It's really hard to see how this plays out. I thought we'd never ever see the day when Microsoft developed for Linux or Android unless as a bridge to their own world. I thought past history, pride, lack of trust, wrong momentum, or whatever would stymie them from making the transition. If I were a beige box manufacturer I would be extremely concerned that the Microsoft may move on from phones and tablets to laptops or even PCs, now that hell has frozen over you never know what they might do.
I feel like the hundreds of millions of devices that ship each quarter is enough of a validation. They're not waiting around saying "I wonder if this Android thing takes off".
I think Microsoft should look less to Apple and Google for inspiration and more to Oracle. There are a lot of similarities between the two companies: enterprise focus, pure software company, lots of legacy applications to support, etc...
I'm hesitant about that comparison - server software and desktop software have little in common. Oracle could demand what OS it ran on because the server was likely doing little else - a desktop machine needs to run a wide variety of programs.
I'm interested in how they apparently do this - especially as the Linux development process is open and MS' is secret.
As it was, if they decided to try patent trolling, chances are they'd get crushed by google, Red Hat, even Oracle...
Easily. My first thought on seeing the specs on those devices is that they are trying to position the Android offering as the cheap option: something for peopel who can't afford a proper phone. Want Office and the other big boy's toys? Then buy one of our Windows based devices instead.
> How are Microsoft going to be able to maintain two mobile OSs?
They already do: while it looks like the Symbian based OS is officially dead, as are other alternatives like meego, "feature phones" from Nokia (such as the Asha range) are still being released based around the old S40 OS. Perhaps they are looking to retire this and see Android as an inexpensive way forward, that way someone else is developing the core OS and they just need to provide drivers and device specific tweaks (and an app store & such if not licensing Google's parts). There is certainly a project out there working on smoothly running apps targeting the S40 on Linux based devices (IIRC not funcded by Nokia, but the existence of the project indicatesit is possible) which would smooth the replacement.
They have to have a cheaper alternative to the WP devices unless they can release a WP device that can compete price-wise in those markets without diminishing the appearance of the more expensive kit or they lose the "chep-nokia-to-expensive-nokia upgrade path: people with another cheap Andoird device won't have any Nokia brand loyalty so they would be competing entirely directly with high-end Android and iOS devices in that instance and they need something to try make the move to WP more attractive than a move to iOS at that point because the public perception of WP8 is far behind that of Apple (and depending on who you talk to, high-end Android).
> Are Nokia going to see this through?
That is the big question, though the answer probably doesn't really matter to smartphone users. If my guesses about the positioning thing and S40 replacement are right then they'll need to keep it going a while at least, but with the other competition around in the Android market it'll only ever fool the stupid anyway. And from the point of view of "feature phones", that is business as usual.
If it's the former, I will guffaw loudly in the direction of Microsoft!
Seriously, Asha or X device from Nokia with Firefox OS would make more sense than this.
How many OSs does Nokia have now? 4 or 5?
Struggle to see how this helps Nokia. Nokia Xs are smart phones at a price of a feature phone. Great! Welcome to an already very crowded low-margin market of cheap Androids in India, Brazil, China and Africa, the same market MS will enter with cheap 8.1 devices and where Firefox OS devices are heading. Yet, Nokia Xs have little extra to offer to the consumers that would significantly differentiate themselves from the competition.
Looks rather poor. 800x480px on a 5-inch screen would be painful.
Only Samsung and chinese companies are cornering that market, which was formerly Nokias'.
It was less pleasant when I dropped it a foot and a half onto a carpeted floor and the screen cracked irreparably.
Maybe the idea is to recapture that market they used to dominate, of low-cost, robust phones with the very basics. (And snake.) Nowadays, of course, the 'very basics' includes web, email and suchlike. But not everybody wants the latest fad phone-game; they want their phones to, shock horror, communicate with people. Maybe they'll find a market that would otherwise go to the most rock-bottom terrible android handsets; pretty sure it'll be a better product than those.
Maybe they'll fail. Given it's where they excelled in the past, though, you can't blame them for trying.
1: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/02/nokia-to-release-an-a...
As log as there's an easy way for end users to put it on it shouldn't be such a big deal though.
What I suspect they are attempting to do is get back into the low budget phone market which they used to rule before they stupidly gave it up voluntarily and the only reason they are using Android is because it's the only one suitable for that hardware however this is not the old low end market they used to know.
Before it used to be acceptable to have only a few crap apps for phones but now even the low budget phones have access to the play store. I wonder if they will make it with this self inflicted handicap.
My guess is that they are aiming at lower end of market where the price is important, and betting on developers to port their apps. Which could actually happen if porting is not a big issue.
OTOH, Google is putting more and more stuff in closed source part of OS, so the platforms will inevitably diverge. It might be a bit late for Nokia to do this... we'll see.
The latest Android look and feel is not so different from Windows Phone either, once you actually get into the app. You could imagine a "Windows Phone" homescreen skin with Android Apps behind it, and it would be really quite a decent merger of the two environments, graphically speaking.
If they throw a bit of money around to encourage developers to undertake the (hopefully) relatively simple task of porting from stock Android, it's not impossible that they manage to get a pretty decent App Store together, which would solve the app problem for the otherwise fantastic Nokia hardware that they have been making these last few years.
Anyway, there's a lot of conditionals in the stuff that I've just written, none of it may come to pass, I'm just saying that it would be unwise to dismiss this effort without at least waiting a bit to see how it pans out.
http://developer.nokia.com/resources/library/nokia-x-ui/ux-c...
Me ego was downplayed as WP came along, part of the game.
That said, this seems like an evolution of the saga low end line rather than the high end devices... Simply look at the cameras.
Except, unless I'm mistaken, MS doesn't actually own Nokia yet.
"On 2 September 2013, Microsoft announced its intent to purchase Nokia's mobile phone business unit" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia
The number of app on Windows Phone is no longer a problem. There are more than 240,000 Windows Phone apps as we speak.
As a Finn and a Nokia phone owner, I'd love the company to succeed. I'm just puzzled about the level of arrogance they still showcase, as if they know best what customers "should" want. For example, I visited Nokia offices past spring and a very senior level executive told to a group of developers and I how he doesn't understand why people even need apps like Instagram and "Chat Snap App" [sic] when the Nokia apps work just as fine or better.
The "number" was never a problem, and by optimizing for that metric, MS made their store into a gross place. A joke, as another comment puts it.
So is this REALLY Android if you need to port your applications to run on it? How much of what makes an Android phone Android is AOSP and how much is the Google services that sit on top of it?
From the FAQ on source.android.com:
"Is compatibility mandatory?
No. The Android Compatibility Program is optional. Since the Android source code is open, anyone can use it to build any kind of device. However, if manufacturers wish to use the Android name with their products, or want access to Google Play, they must first demonstrate their devices are compatible."
The rules governing mergers actually prohibit Microsoft and Nokia from strategizing that kind of thing together until the merger is complete.
Also, N9 was an internally developed OS that was late, and Nokia was suffering. Axing something that is eating massive resources for an external vendor isn't in any way similar to Nokia introducing a low-cost alternative to their existing high end offerings.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/the-nokia-microsoft-deal-is...
This seems to me as a plan hatched after Nokia got into bed with MS as a plan to diversify.
"While Android is open, it's more of a "look but don't touch" kind of open. You're allowed to contribute to Android and allowed to use it for little hobbies, but in nearly every area, the deck is stacked against anyone trying to use Android without Google's blessing. The second you try to take Android and do something that Google doesn't approve of, it will bring the world crashing down upon you."
And his colleague wrote an article titled: "Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork Android. It’s unforkable."
So they'd look a bit silly writing about this in any other way.
Maybe it will get canned, but then before today I would have said that it was only for internal purposes, so scare Microsoft into buying them. Turns out I was wrong, and they went public with it.
Nokia announced they were abandoning Symbian/MeeGo for Windows Phone BEFORE announcing and releasing the N9.
I'm guessing Microsoft did not want to put their OS on a device that won't have top performance as well.
Edit: Oh, and the interface is awful. The sensible thing would have been to use Android as inspiration to redesign Metro to be less ugly and nonfunctional, not to try and port Metro to Android...
Microsoft intended to handle Android as a non-primary platform. I'm curious if those apps are going to be available on the Google Play Store as well (i hope so).
With this move, they should have update apps on the Android platform.
Also, i'm curious if developers have to change their Android APP UI to fit the new UI from Nokia (could be dangerous for Nokia).
Next, Android users all have a gmail account, now they need to switch to Outlook ? Not exactly user-friendly. Most developers have to change their Authentication also on their app.
:/
By making any success with its Android phones, Microsoft can achieve two goals:
- further fragment the Android platform making it more difficult for users to buy devices and for developers to support the various devices and
- benefit from Android's strong market position instead of only trying to create market for Windows phones in places where it doesn't fit
They've identified the greatest flaw in Android ecosystem and they're exploiting it in an attempt to make their own offering more attractive in the long run.
It seems to me that they might confuse themselves and their own customers more than anyone else with that convoluted strategy.
They identified Android's greatest flaw and swiftly added it to their own ecosystem.
Android owned by Google and the biggest competitor of Microsoft. Despite of having nice operating system like Windows mobile, they are trying Android ! This gives good sign of co-operation between giants.
Share your thoughts !
Without business motive, they hardly do anything :)
EDIT: Wikipedia initially said 4.4.1
They're thinking that they'll probably bundle them for free with carriers in the 3rd world. I live in the 3rd world and the only "free" Android phones I can get with my U$ 20 contract are a Huawei crapphone, or Samsung Mini (the awful 1st version), both with Android 2.3. The non-Android alternatives are Nokia Ashas or other featurephones.
I'm pretty sure Nokia will be able to compete with the likes of the Huawei Ascend.
http://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_ascend_y100-4839.php
Personally, I doubt getting Play Store on it would be as simple as sideloading (sideloading itself isn't much different from what other app stores do) because of Google's Play Services.
Hopefully root (or a ROM, if necessary) could help with that.
http://go.linuxfoundation.org/who-writes-linux-2012
To the extent that Linux implies "GNU Linux", i.e. a whole operating system and a broadly interoperable and source compatible set of *nix services, Android is not Linux any more than iOS is FreeBSD.
RMS believes that userland makes an OS, because he wrote a userland. Linus believes that kernel makes an OS, because he wrote a kernel. Calling Android "Linux" is like calling Windows 8 "Windows NT", i.e. correct if you're talking about kernels and wrong otherwise.
Qualcomm's contribution to the Linux kernel, is, AFAIK, limited to software that make Linux run better with Qualcomm SoC. So, they are not really improving Linux - they are using it as a bait for you to run your Linux workloads on your Qualcomm phones, using Qualcomm's hardware technology.
No, not really.
To make it easier though I can point you in direction of Alan Cox commits around 2010-2013 and his work on TTY subsystem in particular.
Do you see RMS's point now?