And yet had the T-Mobile thing worked out, no one here would be *****ing about it being horribly bad of a decision. They made A decision - like most capitalist economy decisions - and indeed decisions with large quantities of anything involved - there was risk in said decision. **** happened, not one one front, but many. Re: the eggs-in-one-basked thing - now that IS America centric - they put eggs in one American basket - they also put eggs in a bunch of other baskets world-wide. The US one got dropped by T-Mobile - and yet they still could've kicked *** royally had other **** not happened elsewhere, internally or not.

Now, reading up on CDMA, I do agree that it's a better technology. I think it's irrelevant because I think modern phones can easily include either A: Both CDMA and GSM antennas, or B: just use the higher generation communications schemes (with 3G being essentially a mod on CDMA anyway...). That said, you have to keep in mind that one of the reasons GSM IS internationally standard is because the tower can negotiate no encryption with the handset, making all the data be sent in plainly readable form - there's nations that simply don't allow for any encryption by civilians. Now, my opinion on that is someone should go in there, off all their heads of state and military, and basically revolution the hell out of those places, but until that happens, you simply can't use an international standard unless it allows for insecure communication - which I suspect, far more than European arrogance or whatever, is why GSM was taken internationally while CDMA wasn't really integrated into anything.

But modularity - while I approve of modularity as a concept, and if I were to, say, invest in am open development cell phone manufacturing start-up, I would look into that - it's not like it's exactly easy. Nokia's handset builds are very much optimized for things like heat distribution, and probably other stuff like taking impacts and still working, etc. Last I heard they pride their phone engineering on that stuff. And the moment you provide replaceable/swappable hardware into an embedded system, you have size problems, you have issues with the aforementioned heat/whatever distribution, and you have issues with bus speed, as I understand it. I'm pretty sure that you can get far better data transfer speeds between built in, hardwired hardware, as opposed to something like an internal USB port. IDK about the PCIe or whatever. I'm sure it's doable, but it's also extra difficulty just to make it happen. Doesn't mean that difficulty shouldn't be faced, BUT it does mean that when you look at the issue in context, it's perfectly understandable why they didn't do it. Especially when you're dealing with large corporations.

Also, you can't really say that a company's decision to not do something was wrong, and then turn around and use the fact that they later did it as proof. Companies have people with the same kinds of thoughts changing in influence at the upper stages of the bureaucracy. Just because one set of people up above in the company thought the US market wasn't that urgent, doesn't mean that replacements coming in from below when the company falters are right in saying that the US market needs more focus. If anything, humans have a great propensity for failing to learn from all of their experiences, but instead over react to the latest events they're exposed to.

And finally, about tables vs. smartphone -ing of the Maemo device(s) - I resent the claim that they SHOULD have been tablets. I'm all for giving people choices and I think Nokia could've done very well to produce Maemo tablets too - but the N900 is a great phone, and there's thousands of people who love it for what it is. If you can understand what it's like to want one type of device and then have something else made instead, then you should be able to understand from that experience that it's not a very good idea to categorically think that a certain device should've not been made - especially when you're a daily poster on a forum where plenty of people regularly express how much they like their Maemo 5 smartphone. What Nokia "should" - ideally - have done, is done both, tablet and smartphone devices with Maemo, and should've put a lot more eggs into the proverbial Maemo basket, as that would've gotten results a lot sooner. They didn't, because of lack of vision and unity at the upper echelons, and too much bloat under that - and now we get to see people on forums *****ing about how X or Y were horrible decisions, even though they were ultimately just symptoms of earlier problems meshing with the circumstances of the time, all filtered through the fact that a company is made up of people, most of whom don't strive to refine themselves psychologically, and who are thus flawed and irrational and biased in much of their decision making.

Mentalist Traceur++

Whether I agree or not--Finally, somebody that responded intelligently to what I had been suggesting instead of dismissing it as bias or silly, thusly seeming so themselves.

Actually, I think you're right. I would probably agree with you there. Although, what you're suggesting is the OPPOSITE of putting your eggs in one basket and is instead diversifying your eggs into several baskets (phone, tablet, other form factors) instead of putting them into one basket (only just the N900). I digress, though, I prefer your idea and you're right.

I have to agree with Mentalist Traceur, you can never know if a decision will be a good one or bite you in the arse until after it becomes a good decision or bites you in the arse.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

But the singular path that Nokia went down was an all-in bet with the fourth largest US carrier, a smaller screen (I hated that decision on announcement) and then they make it to where you had to either go to their website to purchase, horrible experience or go to one of their two Nokia flagship stores - which got closed down, and they didn't even try to really improve their position in the market or get the word out that they had a phone that offered freedom.

All of that went on while I was basically protesting what Nokia was doing - and I got heckled, booed, pissed people off, whatnot.

But the end results are the same. Nokia is in a pickle. Let's see what decision they pick next and see how well it plays out.

Sidenote: The stocks lost 8 cents today, down to 8.54 USD.

Given the tags, can we just make this the Dan thread instead?

Dude... I totally feel the love they give you.

This might be mostly off-topic, but it was an interesting article in the (boo) NYTimes. Its basic claim is that we in the US get a better deal communucationswise than people overseas.

I'm just quoting part of it.

March 29, 2011
As Regulators Weigh AT&T Bid, a Look at Wireless Markets Abroad
By JENNA WORTHAM and KEVIN J. O’BRIEN

For Americans, complaining about big cellphone bills that seem to only get bigger is standard practice. But they may actually be getting a pretty good deal — globally speaking.

While cellphone customers in the United States tend to pay more every month than consumers in other developed countries, they get more for their money in terms of voice and data use.

For example, Americans pay an average of 4 cents for a minute of talk time, while Canadians and the British pay more than twice that, according to recent data from Merrill Lynch and Bank of America. In Japan, where the top three wireless carriers control 97 percent of the market, locals pay 22 cents a minute.

“Pricing is what sets the U.S. apart from the rest of the world,” said Sam Paltridge, an analyst at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “Americans spend less than average on communications.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/te...ref=technology

What? I put half of those Dan tags there. Dude.. I dig the "Negatron Dan" moniker. heheh

I HATE using the term "apologist", but this article SOLIDLY feels like it was written as an apologist's article on behalf of the TelCo's. It doesn't even consider the fact that while voice calls are dropping significantly, despite the price drop, all of the services which people are using (data and texting) are FAR more expensive than elsewhere in the world. He even pointed out that US customers are paying more per month. This, DESPITE the fact that texting is MOST expensive in the US--for a service that is FAR less taxing and expensive to run and transfer bit-for-bit than either voice or data.

I have half a mind to ask for the statistics he looked at and then write a responding article in opposition to this complete rubbish of an article and the position it's trying to make.

This article is a load of garbage. Even my T-Mobile USA "deal" costs me around $75 a month. Over in jolly England, Vodafone (the oldest and largest carrier there) charge £35 (around US $55) per month for 600 minutes, unlimited texts and 750mb of data. And a free Nokia N8. If T-Mobile gets swallowed by AT&T, then my monthly bill will inevitably go UP and the cost gap just gets inexplicably wider.