Thread: Everyone else has caught up and Nokia has been left behind
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Crashdamage is offline Crashdamage
2010-04-24 , 12:19
Posts: 670 | Thanked: 747 times | Joined on Aug 2009 @ Kansas City, Missouri, USA
#307
Originally Posted by Laughing Man View Post
I think probably to the heads of Nokia, they think that given Maemo and Symbian, one which has the proven userbase (Symbian) that they should invest more of their time into Symbian rather than Maemo.
Not being a longtime Nokia user I'm not up on company history. Continuing to invest more in Symbian than Maemo/MeeGo would clearly be a serious mistake given the way mobile devices are evolving. But I think their actions lately show they realize MeeGo is the future for high-end devices now, will work down into the midrange later and Symbian will eventually be on low-end 'dumbphone' devices only. So even the suits upstairs apparently are catching on.

As for why they don't (release Android phones). I don't know. I don't even think there is a stringent licensing requirement from Google (unlike Microsoft's Windows 7 Phone series). Unless you have to pay Google to use their app store? Or maybe they're just afraid they will wind up as an Android hardware maker.
Both. And other reasons.

Android is not really a very open system, especially if you want to include any of the Google stuff that makes it attractive to many users. This gives a decent overview of what I mean:
http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/201...-android-evil/

If Nokia went Android, they'd be just another Motorola or HTC. MeeGo gives them a chance to go beyond Android's capabilities and re-establish themselves as tech leaders, not just another Samsung, and to add value to the Nokia brand.

Android also has some serious technical limitations, mostly related to the Davlik VM.

There's the Big Brother is Watching factor, which makes Android an automatic FAIL for me.


Maybe if you consider Maemo as a smartphone OS.
It's not, it's much more. It's a mobile computing OS. And that's largely where its real value is, what sets it apart (along with being relatively open).

I think Maemo could supplement Android by providing the mobile computer side of things.

For example, need your device in smartphone mode (e.g. your not doing anything that needs the mobile computer aspect) then just use Android. Then boot into Maemo when you need to edit a document, give a presentation, or whatever the heck you do (or not do necessarily since my use case is probably not prevelant). And you still retain phone call functionality in case someone calls you. Of course the boot switching has to be fast.
Even if you consider the phone functions of Maemo to be a kludge (I don't) isn't dual-booting to change functions much worse?

I have an Android phone, I'll never buy another. Been there, done that, won't get fooled again.
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Last edited by Crashdamage; 2010-04-24 at 13:02.