Since when is optimization a bad thing? Symbian is said to run very well on it, regardless of what CPU they're using, so I really don't many customers think twice about the CPU.

Optimization is not bad - not entirely sure where you deduced that from my prior statement.

Anyway, the fact they had to optimize the OS in order to keep the performance acceptable is not exactly a good thing though. Read the boards, you got people talking about OMAP3 like it's the second-coming.

And for the record, the CPU for the non-mainstream crowd makes a difference.

correct.
of course i only refer to services i tried to use. sync (never worked at all, nokia customer care being unfriendly and not helpful at all, designed not to sync with anything but selected nokia phones, which means i can sync from my phone to my phone), share (incompatible file type error on my videos, didn't recognise meta tags on my images, page rendering issues), chat (incompatible location sharing mechanism, too restricted client). - i'm very much looking fwd to store. music, ngage etc are just not what i'm interested in atm. maybe they are ok. mail i just don't understand. too complicated for me obviously.

Yup, from yours and others anecdotes and my experience with the N800 part of me thinks Nokia doesn't have a clue regarding this whole new fangled internet thing.

Another part of me hopes that this is all a big mistake and that Nokia has some of the best and brightest minds working on something that will blow us all away.

...it seams though, hope is all I got.

The more things change...


On a side note. That dang Google AdSense is good!

I went back to re-read your journal entry and this is what they placed at the top of that page:

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you may even be right. Tero Ojanperä of nokia recently said that they must prevent the "internet culture" from entering the mobile market. their true enemy challenge, he continued, isn't one of apple or RIM, but a customer who doesn't pay for mobile services because he's used to free services on the net.

(i needn't say how this interview was received... after all, it was published on the internet. for free.)

they still don't get it. as a company, they work not only against their consumers (which every company has to do in one way or another), but against their own products (which they don't understand) and against the reality of our time.

EDIT: i quoted from my memory when i wrote this; now that i re-read the original german article, i notice he said "challenge", not enemy. well... makes you wonder why i thought he'd said enemy.

Man, I was hoping they were going the OTHER direction especially after having used the n810 and the included apps. It seemed as if it was going to be possible to just get a dumb mobile pipe and do everything necessary through internet services(third party or your own) like SIP, xmpp, etc.

Oh well.

I don't have any inside tracks with Nokia or the like, but my bet would be that they're one of the better placed ones to evolve as required into the future. Yes, on one side, you've always got the big corporate culture trying to stick to the existing profit models (they make money after all, why give up on them); on the other hand I think it's pretty obvious that there is a huge "think ahead to cool new possibilities" group/component that's also helping to keep Nokia in the right ball park going forwards. The NITs and even things like N97 are clear cut examples of this.

And while you can interpret that quote various ways I think it does actually show a very clear and modern understanding of the challenges of trying to be a profitable device creator in a changing market space. It's akin to Apple saying years ago "Okay guys, we fought the home computer battle, it was good and all, but we need to refocus on recurring revenue and alternative devices to continue to try and grow"; keep the same corporate "Apple will solve all of your problems as long as you only want to do what Apple deems possible" approach, and things work out. I think the Nokia guys have a very good point which is a lot of people do have that "internet = free" mentality, which especially from a mobile device vendor is the complete opposite of what they want; however I'd also point out that the fact that Nokia is recognizing the point and trying to work towards making a viable business plan around dealing with it is a very positive sign; there are a lot of big businesses out there that just try to ignore changing trends and "milk the existing markets" for as long as possible (thank you wireless carriers!) in my mind Nokia's proven that they have enough forward sight to be able to keep up.

jolouis: Of course Tero Ojanperä's statement can be interpreted in various ways. And, yes, there is all this business model, revenue,... stuff behind it. And he made it at an event that was full of developers who are eager to make money together with Nokia at Ovi.com.

But:

I believe the underlying truth is that they do not have a strategy to deal with the "internet=free" attitude a lot of consumers have. They're saying it's dangerous and must not enter their market. They're doing what the content industry has been trying for years now: fight reality.

Even more off topic:

I'm always suprised at how bad Nokia's PR is. Reader comments below the article about this interview cited Bochum, in another place I read about lex Nokia again in this context, and I bet that "We must prevent the 'internet culture' from entering the mobile market." will be another classic that'll show up in reader comments below future news about Nokia.

Recently, Nokia here in Vienna presented the Nokia E75 and a cooperation with my countries leading carrier concerning Nokia Messaging.
The only thing they got across was: "Nokia brings killer application: mail on cell phone" (that was a headline! Can you imagine the reactions?)

How on earth do they do that? Not even Microsoft is that bad at doing PR.

Well, we're doing our best to try to get the "internet culture" to the mobile device.

Then, a mobile market means something quite different. Mobile markets, let's say the Apple App. store - or whatever - are successful because there is some money involved, i.e. financial incentive for developers to create good applications and to compete against other developers by building better apps. It is not to say that open source wouldn't also work for some cases, but that supporting also the commercial route isn't a bad thing.

Anyway, taking that isolated comment from Tero further isn't imho particularly constructive.

Btw, for the original topic. The N97 is indeed shaping up to be a really nice device, I've had some chance to play around with it.