What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

As a continuing part of my community presentation development, I am asking for more feedback. Please take the time to respond to this poll. If you don't find your response in the list, please select Other and explain in this thread. Thanks! Your input is a valuable part of continual improvement.

Note: the first two and next two options could be seen as mutually exclusive, but are not necessarily so. Feel free to vote either way.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

On "other": facilitate community distribution-level development. That includes the Mer wishlist, enabling Diablo community updates, and hopefully giving Kalle Valo some resources for putting N8x0 support into the mainline kernel.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

In Nokia's defense - they are actually forthcoming with this. It's just us who's a bit slow to get a proof of concept running :)

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Good responses so far, thanks!

EDIT: it's occurred to me that this thread and the other one about the presentation really belong in the Community section. Could a moderator move them both? Thanks in advance.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

On "other", something that has been said a lot in other threads: the SDK must be perfected somehow.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I voted for Improved Maemo Content Management, though I'm not sure you meant what I meant. What I'm referring to (and I'm strictly a user, not a developer) is the Software section of maemo.org. It's not easy to find apps and it's very hard to figure out what many of them do by the descriptions provided. Also, and this may be a totally different matter, looking through App Manager to find worthy apps is hard now and will become impossible once there are more applications.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I hope it didn't come across as an accusation, it was just my "hope to see" :-)

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I didn't mean anything in particular, which is why I kept it vague-- thanks for filling in some blanks. That's what I'm hoping for!

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Top 2:

Interesting, and not surprising...

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I see that 3 people selected detailed hardware roadmap, but there are no explanations offered on how to make such a thing work (for both major parties). Come on gang... no ideas from the voters at least? :p

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I didn't vote for this but.. can you elaborate on what you mean by that? (You mean using more Linux-friendly chipsets?)

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Well, I think I voted for the detailed hardware roadmap. Basically looking to see what their plans are for hardware that are more community shared, but not completely publicly shared so as to tip off competitors. It's nice, for us tablet users, to know where Nokia is going with their hardware and to gauge a reaction from their users about the type of hardware they are looking to put into the next device(s).

The initial idea is probably not feasible during development, but would be nice to detail during the final stages where things can be changed after initial prototyping.

Jesse~

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Let me take this approach:

-high level hardware roadmap: very broad, very loose, little more than "we [Nokia] will continue to produce internet tablets in various form factors for the next few years at least, typically releasing 1 or 2 per year"

-detailed hardware roadmap: "in 2010 we wil release a slate form April 1, a phone form with keyboard December 25, with the following features..."

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I get where you're going with that, and must say it would be extremely difficult to manage... highly desireable, very useful... but risky for Nokia. It could also fragment the community since there's just no way to pull every member inside a "need to know" circle. That said, it would be great if the logistics could be worked out...

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

This whole poll seems developer-oriented. Why are you polling us users? I just want some products I'd like to buy, which I'm not getting. I guess that's an Other response. All those "roadmap" questions -- I hope they work better than Bush's Israel/Palestine roadmap did.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Geneven-- I'm polling everyone. Sure the poll is more relevant to developers than, say, casual users, but that doesn't mean I'm going to rule out the opinions of anyone. I don't care where a thought comes from in this regard. So your "Other" response is as valuable as anyone's. Thank you.

EDIT: although I would think that even everyday users would be interested in a roadmap of any kind. Continual release of product and updating of operating system tends to indicate a future for the product line, which as a user I would find assuring.

Everyday users could also benefit from "Official channel to Nokia for product improvement ideas" (if they are so inclined) and certainly "Improved product awareness (advertisements, public relations, user groups, other outreach)"

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

As a user I'd like both a general hardware and software(including support) roadmap(s). As a consumer, I'd like to know what is upcoming, so I can make a decision to wait or move on. I'm sure that developers would benefit as well. Something along these lines:

Phone device, Fremantle, no supported upgrade path to Harmatten.(potential community support)
Tablet device, Fremantle, same as phone
1yr+, upgraded phone, Fremantle, Harmatten compatible.
Upgraded tablet, Harmatten
Lower end phone, Harmatten

As a user/consumer, I'd like to see what formats wiil be available and what I can expect in terms of official support. I expect my $ phone to have limited/no support, and get a new one every couple years. If a company wants me to buy a $$$ phone, I expect good support for at least two years, as I will likely keep it longer than that.

Given the confusion here concerning how well Nokia supported the tablets, I'd hesitate to buy a Nokia product (phone-tablet) without a clearer idea of what/how Nokia expects to support it.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

And there's no one that can give you any of that information right now since Nokia hasn't even officially announced their Fremantle device yet. All anyone can give you right now is wild conjecture, sorry.

EDIT: I misunderstood what lemmy was saying... my bad.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I'm just ticked that more people have taken this poll than the one I made for Summit merchandise! Blah! :p

Tim

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

You're ticked, I'm surprised. :p

Seriously, maybe it's a sign that they trust your judgment more than mine. :D

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I would hope that once the next device is announced, Nokia will shed some light on their future plans. Much as I might like too see them now, I know that isn't going to happen. But after the rx-51 is official, there shouldn't be too many surprises left. Particularly support and possible upgrade paths. The rx-71 will either be a phone or not.

Something like a 5 yr plan with expected os releases and an idea of what type of platform is expected to be available on the different os (phones/tablets/netbooks).

If Nokia wants to bring developers on board (and customers too), it would be nice to let all of us know if the future is phones only, or if more robust(keys/keyboards, usb, video, etc) hardware (tablet/netbook) is in the works.

Nothing too basic , but not necessarily very detailed either.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I would like to see documentation for programs -- how tos, help files, game rules, and so on. It's very frustrating to try to use a program, have it not work, and you have no idea what's wrong.

Why include a program like Mah-jongg and not give instructions?

Oh, and a way to delete pre-loaded apps that the user doesn't want. I've tried using 'apt-get remove', but since the darn package names aren't the names of the programs, can't do it that way.

All in all, I have to say that after 2 years of trying to make my tablet useful, it's not. I really want this to be a great platform, but........

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

So... a hardware roadmap listing products and family products, introduction of new device features and approximate shipping dates - to be shared only within the community and out of the sight of competitors.

Right. :)

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

In this iteration at least the pre-release SDKs have revealed most of what there is to know about the hardware internals (CPU, camera, HSPA, FM, accelerometers, touchscreen technology etc) often even down to the specific chips used. I find it hard to believe that competitors (whoever they may be) were really hindered by keeping relatively trivial details (like the keyboard layout or the presence of a d-pad) secret.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Ah, yes, support roadmaps! We could have avoided so much friction here, in bugzilla and in the mailing lists if the OS end-of-life was known in advance instead of slowly realising there would be no more updates.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I think there is more potential in enhancing the status with Maemo OS roadmaps than with any HW related roadmaps. Nokia has a solid strategy on how to handle HW launches, and I at least would be somewhat pessimistic about seeing major changes with it. (Then again, I also would see much more disadvantages than advantages with publishing HW roadmaps.)

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I have to agree with the doubt, and that's why I was asking anyone who voted for the detailed roadmap option to offer a way to make it work.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Even though it was in parentheses (:D) can you elaborate?

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Well, it's a long-winded question. I won't say too much, but...

... Quoting for instance Peter, it's about managing and presenting the first impression the way we want to do it. (I hope nobody is fooling themselves in thinking that any possible product leaks would be done from Nokia on purpose.) You cannot do launches too soon, otherwise you would be like ... launching the Chevy Volt.

Second of all it's about avoiding copycats and knock-offs: also a very valid concern in the current marketplace.

Peter's third point I think many people are perhaps missing: "And lastly, you always need to balance early excitement versus influencing your existing sales." You don't want to publish the next greatest thing since sliced bread too early, because then people will start to wait for it and not want to buy current devices. The next thing is usually always better. That's why we do next things.

It's a bit like the Osborne effect, I think.

If Apple would announce the iPhone 3G+++ with ... rocket launchers and multitasking and what not, coming in 12 months, many would start to wait for that. And nobody would be really happy: not those people that are waiting, not those that feel already that their current device is outdated (even though it's not!).

Nokia is larger than just Maemo. If Maemo would be a separate company, the considerations might be different.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

While I can certainly see your points, they dwell on worst case extremes to the exclusion of a reasonable middle. Proper management can mitigate the risks.

On a somewhat side note, I have a difficult time understanding why, in this forum, honest and objective questions are commonly met with extreme scenarios in answer, particularly worst-case extremes. This creates a culture of pessimism. Where is the "can-do" spirit? Where is the motivation to defy negative prospects and exceed expectations? Why the acceptance of defeat? :(

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I kind of fail to see how those risks would be mitigated by "proper management". Could you elaborate on that a bit?

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Perhaps programmers have a tendency, by nature or nurture, to immediately look for the corner cases that will break an algorithm. I blame big O.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

If people know what *may* be coming in general terms, some will hold off and buy later some will buy now. Rumors do the same thing. Lack of information does the same thing. I personally don't want to get caught in the situation of just having bought a device only to find out that days later a new better (for me) device from the same manufacturer just launched.

There are examples of manufacturers releasing hardware roadmaps to give both developers and consumers some idea of what is coming (this despite competitors)

Intel including 2010
Intel
AMD info including 2011
AMD

Article about Samsung releasing 3 phones this year with LG comments
Samsung

So obviously, some companies are willing to entice customers and developers alike with some information about the future. It doesn't have to be detailed.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

For part of the answer I'll defer to lemmyslander's post above. I think he gets what I'm talking about.

"Proper management" is a broad term but again, if it's examined objectively (pretend you're not a Nokia employee for a moment ;)) then one can start to see specific solutions. As has been mentioned numerous times and driven home by one poster very recently, consumer retention is the single biggest part of it. If a company can cultivate rabid consumer loyalty, it need not fear the negative aspects of revealing any sort of high-level hardware roadmap. As lemmy pointed out, some companies are doing it and succeeding. A general roadmap need not be a risk. I do suspect though that when one becomes so, odds are it's part of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

I only wish to know what is the rx-71. Sigh.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

:eek:You blame orgasms??? :eek:

Well... I think I can see that. :D

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Texrat, I think we understand each other on this.

If for instance I am a Samsung fan, and I am looking for a new phone, based on the fact they are releasing android phones this year, I am apt to wait to see their offerings. If that information isn't public, I start looking at other options and Samsung looses a sale.

With Nokia, I don't think that the RX-51 is what I'm looking for, so I am looking at alternatives. If I buy an alternative and the RX-51 would have been OK, I'll be upset, but I won't rush out to buy one. I also have no idea if the RX-71 would be what I'm looking for, IF it ever makes it to production. If I knew it was going to be a tablet form factor, I would probably wait for more details before making a purchase. With no info available on the RX-71 it currently isn't a consideration.

A high level roadmap, even if vague, has value as a marketing/advertising tool in addition to (or in lieu of) traditional advertising.

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Book publishers love to do this. They mail out preview copies to reviewers 8 months before the street date, people come flooding in to buy it when they read the review in the paper and then completely forget about it when the book is finally released.

Of course, the flip side is waiting 2 years between hardware releases and forcing your users to go elsewhere. . . .

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

Well, Nokia has managed to very effectively beat any and all optimism out of me, so, I have my reason. ;)

Re: What do community members hope to see from Nokia?
 

And your example may well be indicative of the general trend (if one truly exists; I have no quantification).

But it gets to root of my goal here. I have challenged myself to package and present to Nokia what has gone wrong and what can/should be done to effect tangible and productive community engagement. I get the feeling that many see such dialog as futile but I am a very stubborn pragmaticist and facilitator. :D