That remains to be seen.

I'm sure Kallasvuo thought Nokia would/could hold on to the Symbian developers (prior to smart touchphones a noticeable force) while they are still relevant and rebuild Symbian into a competitive or even cutting-edge system/UI/tool set...

Yet economies of scale are moving down the food chain (ie. sometimes larger displays become cheaper than smaller legacy versions etc.), users' (and developers') expectations grow, aggressive bet-the-house roadmaps see "unexpected" delays and so forth.

In a years or two years time when the supposed New Symbian is expected to start shipping, what will the value of Kallasvuo's bet into the Old Symbian be?

Did Nokia really need to buy them? Was totally redesigning clunky Old Symbian (and maintaining great deal of compatibility??) better than simply using it and fixing it around the edges while putting the real development muscle behind something that is ideal for today (and the future too)?

Is even the brand still worth anything? To us mindless consumers, or to developers?

Does everything have to be "invented in-house"? (see NIH syndrome).

Did Kallasvuo have a fixation with legacy software (SYMBIAN!) and legacy hardware over more innovative approaches? (PHONES, and the clunkier the better ;-)

Did Kallasvuo ever communicate with anyone? Deities know that he wasn't reaching out - or being reachable - to our little neglected community. We had nothing to offer him apparently, at least in terms of ideas or opinions.

He's probably a very decent bloke (and now rather wealthy too, for some reason), but he may always have been better suited to remaining a middle manager in some more boring field. What was Ollila thinking in the first place??


But back to the new topic at hand... Reggie's link to Elop's interview was quite informative, both in scary and encouraging ways.

For better or worse, Elop(er)'s no Kallasvuo.