That's pretty much my take on it. I've said it before when someone asked me why I wanted to see Nokia fail: I want to see any manufacturer fail if it's consumer-hostile, prefers not to listen to its customers and does a terrible job of simply serving the us what we want to buy. Why should I want to see a company fail when it does a bad job or taking care of the customers? I didn't get into Nokia devices at the beginning because I had planned to hate them all along, you know. They did something right at one time, so I bought it--then they proceeded to execute one bad decision after another. If they ever come back around to doing something right, I'll reconsider--but in the meantime, they SHOULD do badly. If they want to treat customers badly and claim nothing personal--it's just business, then they need to understand that that's how customers will treat them when they turn around and give their money to another platform that treats them better. It's just business.

Hi Dan

Nokia could easily succeed if they opened their hardware specification to allow a true opensource implementation with no binary blobs.

At that point market forces would answer the question of whether the Windows platform had a future as there would then be ample opportunity for 3rd party software vendors to implement whatever they believe customers want.

Jolla, Maemo, Firefox ... YukBuntu whatever

Nokia could easily regain the top player spot almost over night.

Clearly following a closed source mentality will not play catchup to the more open Android, even Apple is struggling to stay relevant and it is only the weight of the Appstore ecosystem Apple built earlier that keeps them floating which is something the Windows platform just doesn't have.

Now Apple have broken the ease of use of the Appstore they are starting to lose headway.

Open will always win in the end.

rgds

This hasn't been true yet on mobile devices.

http://source.android.com/

Android has roughly 50% market share of all smartphones worldwide on all charts I can find, more if you count tablets and is gaining ground on ALL competitors.

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=android+worldwide+market+share

Fairly clear you must agree and this can only be as a direct result of its openness as a platform allowing such easy take up.

It looks pretty conclusive to me.

The only way to compete against this tide is to be "More Open" (tm) and since this is only break even in the opensource software arena Nokias only chance now is to be "More Open" (tm) in the hardware arena.

This much is bleedingly obvious to anyone with half a brain cell outside of Elop fans.

rgds

ps. Simply put Microsoft can't win, tactics like blocking 3rd party software with stuff like secure boot on PC's for instance etc only work if you are in the dominant position which in smartphones they are not and without a clear value proposition which they do not have they are just yesterdays news.

pps. Their adverts are also really really lame, I cringe everytime I see one. click click look silly click. ooo I can take photos with the brightness turned up ooo. oh dear.

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/0...s-torvalds-won

Just saying

rgds

Nearly 80% last quarter.

Although iPhone's sales grew year over year their marketshare was at its lowest since 2010. If Elop was in charge he'd undoubtedly advocate dropping the 'burning platform' (iOS) and partnering with the smallest, most insignificant player he could find (which is probably still Microsoft).

Most people around here will start a frothing mad tirade against claiming that Android is fully open and is full-on Linux.

That argument has been raised here enough to the point I rarely denote Android as anything but Linux based, but not entirely open due to being beaten on the head from the GPL/Linux pundits around here.

Not saying I agree/disagree; I think the true definition of Android is that it's Linux based, but not full-blown Linux.

Or on desktop.
Or on server (the major providers use Linux, but their proprietary versions of it).
Or in national politics (communism?)

@GerbicK

Indeed not mentioning anything to do with full-on Linux.

I agree opensource does not only mean Linux or a Linux distribution.

Although last time I checked which was admittedly a year or so back

http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.3

Android Kernel code was being merged back into the Linux Kernel tree around version 3.3 so it could easily be a true Linux by now.

The Android component on top is not a distribution but a single opensource stack so you are correct.

"Android is an open-source software stack"

http://source.android.com/source/index.html

@Kangal

Indeed more devices run Linux today than any other OS.

Don't forget other categories for instance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Op...rcomputers.svg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_s...rating_systems

Servers: 64% unix variants including Linux - W3Techs
Mobile: 74% Android, ie Linux - Gartner

the ability to customise Linux or more to the point opensource is exactly why proprietary stacks are falling behind, they have no compelling argument and should just be seen as legacy dinosaurs.

rgds

@Switch-hitter

Indeed.

It is even worse for Windows OSes than I thought.

Soon it will reach a tipping point and Windows OSes will just fizzle away.

Every Chrome book esk device is one more stab in the flesh of Windows.

Death by 1.8billion cuts has to hurt.

rgds