Nokia's Present & Future

[Mize]

I'm happy to hear, though, that your point of sales terminal (or whatever embedded project it is you're working on) doesn't stutter anymore.

LOL. Industrial controls for thermal processing running many loops of PID, real-time modeling of process, real time charting and a touch HMI. Not exactly POS.
Was able to drop from 1.6 GHz Atom to 1.0 GHz Atom and knock about $100 off the cost to manufacture the motherboard by switching to linux.

 

[Laurent06]

It's about convergence. iPod sales shrank with the rise of smartphones. iPods are better at storing/playing MP3's, but at a certain point you'd pass on that for the convenience of one device.

It'll probably take 5+ years before it becomes the norm, but I don't see how it doesn't happen. You install your apps once, and you have them everywhere without sync issues or dependency on a cloud connection. You save money because your hybrid device has only one CPU, storage drive, etc.

Android and iOS really haven't proven anything yet, because the Windows competition wasn't there and it still is pretty nascent. iPod sales didn't go down right away. Only when smartphones had enough storage capacity and reached high enough volume did it happen.

I really think netbooks are a great example about the power of Windows compatibility. By their very name they only need a browser to handle 95% of what they were meant to do. Still, people figured they may as well spring for the Windows version. Once the price premium becomes minimal, the same will happen with tablets, and finally smartphones.

I certainly understand and agree with some of your points, we're both geeks There's at least one point I disagree with: not even a powerful laptop would fit my needs as a dev or a gamer, so I don't expect any convergence of my devices for many years to come. And I'm perfectly satisfied with my desktop and my iPad. I strongly oppose the one size fits all paradigm, it doesn't work at all for me.

Making an analogy with netbook is not applicable: Wintel is in the position of the outsider, far behind not one but two big competitors, while for netbooks they had nothing to face them. Now we are talking of hundreds of millions of devices already sold. Will they take some marketshare? Most probably. Will they ever be predominant? Very unlikely as most people simply don't care.

All of this is of course a personal point of view

 

[tuna]

Single device for all kinds of computing doesn't mean it'll have an unified look for every type of interactivity.
With windows 8, a x86 tablet can have the metro UI when in tablet mode and the usual windows desktop with the start button when there's a mouse+keyboard present.

If that is the case then it might just be different OS's for what I care.

 

[Mize]

Wow. Nokia just released a new phone with the same hardware specs as the last two Lumia phones but now with aluminum instead of polycarbonate and with less internal storage and still no SD card or user replaceable battery. Now that's innovation!

 

[french toast]

Wow. Nokia just released a new phone with the same hardware specs as the last two Lumia phones but now with aluminum instead of polycarbonate and with less internal storage and still no SD card or user replaceable battery. Now that's innovation!

Mize you have missed something....they excluded the wireless charging also.

Still I can see it does make some sense, they have solved the main argument of the lumia 920=bulk.
Dissapointing theres plastic on the back instead of full aluminium unibody, but its got an high res oled display (if its rgb it will pretty much match the gs4 sub pixels) which better suits windows phone, also it should be better in direct sunlight thanks to clear black and if reports of lumia 928s identical screen ring true.... a mammoth 500nits of max brightness for an oled. (Crazy)

There is an extra lens (6th layer..made of glass) and some new camera software, the speaker might be slightly better as well as recording.

If this is just a midlife kicker till a couple of mega high end WP8.1/9 phones for the holidays then I think its pretty decent.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Actually, the fact that they formally announced the 925 today probably means they won't announce anything until the year's end, or even 2014.

Actually, this also makes me think there's no EOS at all. Pureview phase 1 started and ended with the 808.

The 925 would have been a good mid-2012 contender. It's over a year late, like everything released from Nokia in the last 6 years.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Care to share your crystal ball with me that shows it staying at 4%?

Yes I'm sorry, Windows Phone isn't at 4%, it's at less than 3%. Android now stands at over 74%:

And will you look at that, even the thought-to-be-defunct Blackberry sold more units than all WP7+WP8 combined.

Even ZTE which only has android solutions at the moment only sold 1.3 times more smartphones than WP combined.

Windows Phone 8 is not the third ecossystem. BB10 gave WP8 a headstart of over 3 months and it's already getting more sales and more attention.
Even if Nokia gets 100% of WP8 marketshare, it will not be enough to maintain its 80 000 employees, even after closing all its factories and most of its R&D centers.

Windows Phone is a dead end. Each day Nokia is exclusively dedicated to it is another step into bankruptcy, tens of thousands of jobs lost and a severe stab on Finnish/European patrimony.
I'm still dazzled to see how some people are convinced of something else.

Give me a break. Nobody cares about the UI tweaks between all the Android smartphones. The only reason I care at all is because the Note 2 has a stylus, so customizations matter. WP8 has a very distinct look from all other OSes.

All WP8 phones look exactly the same, as dictated by the OS itself. Android allows for deep UI customization (and so did MeeGo), where Nokia could have put its own expertize on user interface to practical use.
All the word acrobatics you make won't make these facts any less true.

 

[Helmore]

Do we even have any numbers on BB10 devices shipments. I haven't seen any at least.

 

[Mintmaster]

I strongly oppose the one size fits all paradigm, it doesn't work at all for me.

I'm not suggesting that. However, we have repeatedly seen the market embrace one-size-fits-most again and again.

Making an analogy with netbook is not applicable: Wintel is in the position of the outsider, far behind not one but two big competitors, while for netbooks they had nothing to face them. Now we are talking of hundreds of millions of devices already sold. Will they take some marketshare? Most probably. Will they ever be predominant? Very unlikely as most people simply don't care.

I agree that the analogy is not perfect for the reasons you mentioned, but I still feel like there is substance to it.

It'll start with tablets within a year. In the low-end, the only cost difference will be Intel vs ARM SOC (maybe $10?) and the Windows license ($30 for low end machines? Maybe less?). Spending $200 extra for a Win8 tablet over an Android one is a lot, but $50? Not so much.

 

[Mintmaster]

Windows Phone 8 is not the third ecossystem. BB10 gave WP8 a headstart of over 3 months and it's already getting more sales and more attention.

No they aren't. They only hit 1M sales in three months, and that's with a huge existing BB userbase to tap into.

I'm still dazzled to see how some people are convinced of something else.

Your charts hardly convinced me otherwise. LG doesn't even have twice WP8's sales, and they're the second largest Android maker. As I said, everyone but Samsung is fighting for scraps. WP8 is growing and pretty much all Nokia's.

All WP8 phones look exactly the same, as dictated by the OS itself.

My point competely flew over your head. WP8 is almost all Nokia. They're dominating other WP8 handsets, and don't care about lack of OS differentiation from them. What they need to differentiate from is Android and iOS, and it's working.

I just stumbled upon someone making similar points to me:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatsp...n-windows-phone-looks-like-a-good-one-so-far/

The report helps put to rest concerns about Nokia not benefiting much from going with Windows Phone since the handset maker isn’t Microsoft’s exclusive partner. Further, it backs Nokia’s reasoning that Windows Phone has given it a much better chance than Android – at differentiating itself from rivals and surviving in an industry that is dominated by the duopoly of Apple and Samsung. Nokia believes that developing Android phones would be a drain on its limited resources, which can be put to much better use if it remains focused on a single platform.

We find it hard to ignore the logic behind Nokia’s argument. Going with Android would have put Nokia in direct competition with not only Samsung and HTC, but also Sony, LG and a horde of handset manufacturers in the emerging markets. It would have entered the Android fray a little too late, struggling not only to differentiate itself from the crowd, but also against the marketing might of Samsung. We are already seeing the amount of control Samsung is exerting on the Android ecosystem, with rivals such as HTC struggling to compete despite bringing to market highly competent phones. It is important to remember that HTC’s decline followed its rise to the top of the U.S. smartphone market in Q3 2011. Considering that Nokia is coming from lows in the smartphone industry, it is tough to see how Nokia would have fared any better had it sided with Android.

 

[zed]

the best thing about going with wp for nokia was the billions they get from MS for doing so.
In hindsight it prolly was better going with android. as until now the WP strategy has not paid off at all (see sales for proof).
They went from easily the largest phone maker to just a minor player in a few short years. They could of easily as big as samsung, they had the mana but now thats mostly gone

 

[eastmen]

THeir phones are not very good. The new 925 is a step back in a lot of ways.


They should really have a 4 inch phone with the 928 specs , a 5 inch phone with them and then a quad core phablet at 5.5 inches. They also need to get on more carriers. The 925 being t mobile exclusive is just silly in this day and age.

They have nothing on sprint at all.

To give you an idea of the 925... it is very similar to the htc evo lte. Which is a year old.

 

[Laurent06]

a quad core phablet at 5.5 inches.

My understanding is that the current version of WP8 doesn't support quad core, and that this support won't be available until late 2013/early 2014.

 

[Mariner]

That would seem to be a rather lame argument. Surely adding support (or optimising) for quad-core CPUs would be a trivial matter for Microsoft/Nokia?

 

[eastmen]

My understanding is that the current version of WP8 doesn't support quad core, and that this support won't be available until late 2013/early 2014.

I was under the impression that they moved from windows phone 7/.5 to the new kernel in windows phone 8 just to avoid that situation.

 

[Laurent06]

I was under the impression that they moved from windows phone 7/.5 to the new kernel in windows phone 8 just to avoid that situation.

This article says quad-core support will come along with 1080p support.

 

[french toast]

I would like to see microsoft male wp8/9 the windows rt replacement, complete with all usual expected windows goodies.

Metro UI is perfect for a phone, it also looks nice and is very very slick, able to run faultlessly on low hardware, despite quite a number of tiles/widgets on the go.

The problem is lack of functionality, and behind the times specs in some areas, although to be honest in real world lumia 925 probably matches iphone 5 and galaxy s4 on most fronts.

I predict nokia will release 2-3 phones in the autumn time zone, the EOS, a proper lumia 920 flagship and maybe a note competitor.

A nokia tablet is surely on the way also, I would love another avant guarde qwerty flagship smartphone running windows

 

[zed]

That would seem to be a rather lame argument. Surely adding support (or optimising) for quad-core CPUs would be a trivial matter for Microsoft/Nokia?

yeah I dont buy it either
I can see going from 1->2 being a major headache.

Also
When more cores than 4 phones are released in the future (hint to MS -> this will happen) I betcha android will support them within the week. Its like ppl are implying
MS -> wow thats a shock, 6 cores who'ld of thought, well we need to rewrite the OS just give us a year we havent planned for this

MS are not that incompetent

 

[Helmore]

I was under the impression that they moved from windows phone 7/.5 to the new kernel in windows phone 8 just to avoid that situation.

Windows Phone 8 supports a maximum of 64 cores. I believe the problem is driver related, not that the OS doesn't support the hardware.

 

[Jubei]

Brian from Anandtech seems fairly confident that the next batch of WP8 devices will run on S800