"I am excited about this partnership with Nokia," said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. "Ecosystems thrive when fueled by speed, innovation and scale. The partnership announced today provides incredible scale, vast expertise in hardware and software innovation and a proven ability to execute."
"Ecosystems thrive"?
> W T F does that mean to 99% of phone Users? Enough already, with 'Ecosystem'. Can't we just use the term "integrated services"?
"Fuelled by speed, innovation and scale"
> trite verbal diarrhoea.
"proven ability to execute"
> WTF does that mean - could it be that they "sell lots of units"? For goodness sake. And how is it proven? How well are WP7 and Nokia units selling these days?
When any CEO starts talking platitudinous business-speak that only underscores the weakness of the point trying to be made - and the weakness of the CEO.
First of all, MS isn?t in decline. They are still growing their revenue and profits at a rate that outpaces the market each quarter.
Second, the strategy of two less successful companies combining to compete better against others in a market segment isn?t uncommon, isn?t a bad move in and of itself, and has proven to be hugely successful in the past.
Overall, I think WebOS would have been a better option, just as I think Android would have been a better option (but with a unique but steady UI that allowed for Nokia to differentiate itself, have it?s one Nokia Android app store that it approved and vetted, but not disallow other Android apps). The problem with these for Nokia is the problem they?ve had with Symbian, Meego, Ovi and every other piece of code? they suck at it. At least with WP7 they are paying MS for making an OS. And because of the WP7 sales being lower than expected MS needs them, too. This could work.
I was referring to Win mobile in that sentence, When you consider the Windows Mobile Market share even last year to today then they are a declining giant.
You are right that MS is making more money now that before, more computers are shipping each year and so sales of Windows naturally grows as well. Having said that the iPad has already made a big splash and everyone is following suit, MS has been broadsided and is not likely to have competing software out within the next 2 years leaving the field open to others such as Apple, Rim, Google, HP...... If these devices start replacing home computers then their profits and grip on the industry will begin to fade.
I hope WM7 is not the OS in new Nokia devices. It would be best to get a WM8 out with the missing features from WM7 implemented along with Nokia's feedback. WM7 goes to the extent of specifying screen resolution (only one) that is supports. Silverlight integrated with WM7 only has a small subset of Silverlight for the Web & .Net elimination a lot of easy portability. WM7 is a experiment after the failure of the previous version.
It was nice knowing you Nokia. I guess you haven't noticed what happens to companies who 'partner' with M$.
There was nothing wrong with Symbian. What you failed to do was improve it, and build a touch-UI on the OS, and an ecosystem of software and services. All of which could have been done on Symbian.
It was nice knowing you Nokia. I guess you haven't noticed what happens to companies who 'partner' with M$.
There was nothing wrong with Symbian. What you failed to do was improve it, and build a touch-UI on the OS, and an ecosystem of software and services. All of which could have been done on Symbian.
Good luck with that Microsoft thing....
?Improving? isn?t enough. We can use Symbian as an example of that. It was doomed like Mac OS was doomed, like WinMo was doomed, like BB OS was doomed, etc. You can?t just pop on a touchscreen system and call it a day. Something you have to scrape what you are doing and start from scratch. With Nokia unable to program their way out of the first test in Project Euler going with WP7 made sense.
It was nice knowing you Nokia. I guess you haven't noticed what happens to companies who 'partner' with M$.
There was nothing wrong with Symbian. What you failed to do was improve it, and build a touch-UI on the OS, and an ecosystem of software and services. All of which could have been done on Symbian.
Good luck with that Microsoft thing....
I tend to agree with this assessment. I'm not sure why everyone else is being so positive about it.
This feels like a takeover to me, even at this distance. I think that "up close" in Helsinki they are probably not going to react very well at all. We are talking about *the* national company here, I don't think the majority of the folks that use Nokia products, let alone the huge portion of the population that works there, is going to see this as good news.
It seems likely that vast numbers of Nokia smartphone users will jump ship. It seems likely also that the clash of cultures and what appears to be an outside hostile takeover of the beloved national company is going to cause some major waves as well.
By the time they get it all sorted out it will be too late and too many people will have left. At the very least we are going to see a years worth of "integration" while Windows Phone 7 is re-done so it works internationally.
This is horrible news for Nokia. They are going to be eviscerated because they bought into a crazy pipe dream of Win Phone 7 dominance that was sold to them by the oldest group of snake-oil salesmen in the business.
Hope Nokia does better than every other company Microsoft has ever partnered with...
you mean like Apple?
i do not know much on this topic, so i won't say more- but MS and Apple did partner... at multiple points (some good for Apple, some bad, very very bad)
anyways, i think this is good news, as Android doesn't need more confusion- if Nokia does fairly well, i wouldn't be supprised if MS decided to only let Nokia use Windows Moblie, creating 5 large groups
A- RIM... dying as of know... lets see with the new OS
B- Apple... very successful staying that way for all the foreseeable future and beyond
C- HP... provided they understand that having a phone with no keyboard will probably sell better, i could see that taking off + having the OS work on windows PC's, making something like the App store.
D- android... i do agree that it will cost money sooner or later, and that googles regulation policies (or should i say lack of) to power of phones, and the android (idk what its called) store will bring it down
E- Nokia/Window Mobile... from all the friends that i know who have gotten a windows mobile phone, including one who switched from an IPhone to note, they all like it, aside from from the much smaller selection of Apps as of know. So it seems like it has a good user interface (i haven't used it myself, so i won't comment personally, that is my exp with friends) and other things like that. I think it will become a major player.
I personally think that if RIM doesn't get its buissness market back up, it will cease to be a player, if it can keep it back up, and hold it, i think that the mainstream market will turn into 3 (4) major camps
1- Apple/HP- control both the phones hardware, and the software, allowing them to bargain with the companies they want to sell them through. i would estimate this would be 40-50% of the market. unless Apple makes a cheaper IPhone, and HP making a phone without a keyboard.
2- Android- confusion, confusion, confusion, but cheapest still, running on cheap hardware well costing the phone companies/mfrs a small amount (less than WM, which would be with Nokia in this scenario) of money as possible. As well as apps that run on some phones but not others etc. probably controlling a 20-30% of the market.
3- WM+Nokia. like Apple/HP in a way, but the software is developed however MS wants it, and the hardware however Nokia wants it, with minimum specs universal. This would not be as good as an enviroment as Apple/HP but would probably have a price advantage (over Apple, not sure of HP) thanks to lower margin. controlling 20-40% of the market
It?s like an episode of House M.D. where a parasite has been inadvertantly keeping you alive when you should have been dead a long time ago, yet at the same time the parasite is adsorbing so much of your resources that you are now at its mercy and can no longer survive without it. See where I?m going with this?
That is the best news I got out of this article. You can not image how I hated Symbian when I developed on that platform. Symbian OS is the worst OS I have ever seen. It is designed by arrogant, conceited fools who have absolutely no regard and no clue for application development. You need to jump hoops to simply FORMAT A STRING.
I am so glad the stint was short because it was a huge waste of time. To do a same application on Symbian requires at least 4 times more efforts than on iOS or Android, if possible at all. Those dead woods(Symbian platform designers) not only waste the R&D money of Nokia(remember it was started more than 14 years ago), they also waste all the lives of the application developers. For all Symbian developers, have a life and get something that are real and deliver some products instead of wasting all your time manipulating TDesC, TPtr, HBuffC to simply display a message.
Exactly. It's going to be minimum 18 months before Nokia can start shipping tablets.
And what OS will they use? Windows Phone 7 Series Tablet edition? I think not. MS are simply not going to tread on Windows toes by upscaling the mobile OS into form factors that they want to put Windows on instead. So it's no tablets for Nokia, unless they put a different OS on it to their phones. Meego? Old Symbian? Something new?
They haven't just missed the boat, they're still lost on the way to the port. Smartphone wars was 2 years ago. iOS and Android are firmly entrenched. The current battle is for tablets, it's the emerging market, and the one in which most people think the money is going to be. That's why *every* major phone manufacturer of say 3/4 years ago (Palm, Samsung, Rim, Motorola, HTC etc) are moving out of being phone companies and into mobile computing. They are bring out familys, or suites of products to leverage their brand, phones and tablets the lot of them, they are all at it. And what do Nokia have? Someone else's hardware spec with someone else's OS that they cannot modify and throw onto a tablet instead, and the inability to even BRAND the products they will sell as their own, and USP which will boil down to "our phone peripherals and bundled crapware are better than someone else's on the same platform".
ah, now we know why elop left microsoft for nokia.. just like how the ministry of defense's staff always seem to move on to BAE :P
Sure I hated symbian, but is this going to be their only OS going forwards? I liked that nokia seemed willing to install whatever software was available and ideal for each specific device...
I tend to agree with this assessment. I'm not sure why everyone else is being so positive about it.
If you don’t think this is positive then you must think it’s negative or neutral. Do you really think that Nokia not admitting they have a problem and sticking with Symbian is a more positive solution? I certainly don’t. That isn’t to say that partnering with MS isn’t without its downfalls, but it’s a more positive option than they had going for them and it’s not like we have evidence that WebOS or Android would have been better. In fact we have plenty of evidence to sugest that they would have completely destroyed any internal attempt at making an OS there own. So why is this whole arrangement without any positives for Nokia? I see two things that are failing that trying to combine forces to be strong on some level. IOW, exchanging Symbian for a symbiotic.
PS: I like Elop. Not many CEOs can through in “subject to the completion of a definitive aggreement” into a speech and make it sound natural.
Symbian was about on par with PalmOS. They were good OSes in their heyday but died a slow painful death. If Palm hung onto PalmOS too long, then Nokia really held onto Symbian too long.
I am surprised Nokia went with Microsoft and not Google. Windows Phone 7 offers all the disadvantages of Android but at a cost.
One advantage - Microsoft will pay Nokia several hundred millions dollars to use Windows Phone 7.
Exactly. It's going to be minimum 18 months before Nokia can start shipping tablets.
They killed Symbian not Meego so they could ship their Meego tablet whenever they want. Elop indicated that there would be a 2011 MeeGo product and it wouldn't be a smartphone.
The next tablet is likely ARM based like the N900 with a 7" display running MeeGo sometime in mid 2011. Not 18 months from now.
The next platform to die will probably be RIM's. My guess is RIM will go with Android.
I'm surprised by the level of commitment HP is showing to WebOS, but I suspect that no matter how well they execute, WebOS will lose due to what is essentially a very late start from scratch.
So we will end up with three platforms, iOS, Windows, and Android. My guess is that in the long run Apple and MS will have roughly equal shares of the market (maybe 25-30 percent each) while Android will take the rest (40-50 percent). Apple will be the most profitable, MS the second, and Android will be a failure from the perspective of a Google shareholder as I think Google will lose control of the platform. Android will become the "generic" platform embraced by no-name producers, and those producers may frequently choose to eschew Google services, particularly in the emerging markets.
i do not know much on this topic, so i won't say more- but MS and Apple did partner... at multiple points (some good for Apple, some bad, very very bad)
anyways, i think this is good news, as Android doesn't need more confusion- if Nokia does fairly well, i wouldn't be supprised if MS decided to only let Nokia use Windows Moblie, creating 5 large groups
A- RIM... dying as of know... lets see with the new OS
B- Apple... very successful staying that way for all the foreseeable future and beyond
C- HP... provided they understand that having a phone with no keyboard will probably sell better, i could see that taking off + having the OS work on windows PC's, making something like the App store.
D- android... i do agree that it will cost money sooner or later, and that googles regulation policies (or should i say lack of) to power of phones, and the android (idk what its called) store will bring it down
E- Nokia/Window Mobile... from all the friends that i know who have gotten a windows mobile phone, including one who switched from an IPhone to note, they all like it, aside from from the much smaller selection of Apps as of know. So it seems like it has a good user interface (i haven't used it myself, so i won't comment personally, that is my exp with friends) and other things like that. I think it will become a major player.
I personally think that if RIM doesn't get its buissness market back up, it will cease to be a player, if it can keep it back up, and hold it, i think that the mainstream market will turn into 3 (4) major camps
1- Apple/HP- control both the phones hardware, and the software, allowing them to bargain with the companies they want to sell them through. i would estimate this would be 40-50% of the market. unless Apple makes a cheaper IPhone, and HP making a phone without a keyboard.
2- Android- confusion, confusion, confusion, but cheapest still, running on cheap hardware well costing the phone companies/mfrs a small amount (less than WM, which would be with Nokia in this scenario) of money as possible. As well as apps that run on some phones but not others etc. probably controlling a 20-30% of the market.
3- WM+Nokia. like Apple/HP in a way, but the software is developed however MS wants it, and the hardware however Nokia wants it, with minimum specs universal. This would not be as good as an enviroment as Apple/HP but would probably have a price advantage (over Apple, not sure of HP) thanks to lower margin. controlling 20-40% of the market
Comments
"I am excited about this partnership with Nokia," said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. "Ecosystems thrive when fueled by speed, innovation and scale. The partnership announced today provides incredible scale, vast expertise in hardware and software innovation and a proven ability to execute."
"Ecosystems thrive"?
> W T F does that mean to 99% of phone Users? Enough already, with 'Ecosystem'. Can't we just use the term "integrated services"?
"Fuelled by speed, innovation and scale"
> trite verbal diarrhoea.
"proven ability to execute"
> WTF does that mean - could it be that they "sell lots of units"? For goodness sake. And how is it proven? How well are WP7 and Nokia units selling these days?
When any CEO starts talking platitudinous business-speak that only underscores the weakness of the point trying to be made - and the weakness of the CEO.
I enjoy being angry, btw
Ouch! Nokia isn?t doing so hot in the stock market: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ANOK
First of all, MS isn?t in decline. They are still growing their revenue and profits at a rate that outpaces the market each quarter.
Second, the strategy of two less successful companies combining to compete better against others in a market segment isn?t uncommon, isn?t a bad move in and of itself, and has proven to be hugely successful in the past.
Overall, I think WebOS would have been a better option, just as I think Android would have been a better option (but with a unique but steady UI that allowed for Nokia to differentiate itself, have it?s one Nokia Android app store that it approved and vetted, but not disallow other Android apps). The problem with these for Nokia is the problem they?ve had with Symbian, Meego, Ovi and every other piece of code? they suck at it. At least with WP7 they are paying MS for making an OS. And because of the WP7 sales being lower than expected MS needs them, too. This could work.
I was referring to Win mobile in that sentence, When you consider the Windows Mobile Market share even last year to today then they are a declining giant.
You are right that MS is making more money now that before, more computers are shipping each year and so sales of Windows naturally grows as well. Having said that the iPad has already made a big splash and everyone is following suit, MS has been broadsided and is not likely to have competing software out within the next 2 years leaving the field open to others such as Apple, Rim, Google, HP...... If these devices start replacing home computers then their profits and grip on the industry will begin to fade.
Sales Channels are provided by carriers not phone manufacturers. Apple is an exception because they also sell in their own stores.
The carriers specifically told Nokia that they didn't want another Android manufacturer. They don't want to see a duopoly between Apple and Google.
There was nothing wrong with Symbian. What you failed to do was improve it, and build a touch-UI on the OS, and an ecosystem of software and services. All of which could have been done on Symbian.
Good luck with that Microsoft thing....
So you are saying the WP7 is the best mobile phone OS if you don't consider any of the features of the competing phones?
Not exactly. I'm saying there is more to a mobile phone OS than a list of check box features.
I actually see how a device brings all it's features together as being just as important as the features themselves.
Sales Channels are provided by carriers not phone manufacturers. Apple is an exception because they also sell in their own stores.
I was referring more to the relationships. I've edited to make more sense.
It also keeps Nokia firmly OUT of the tablet market
Exactly. It's going to be minimum 18 months before Nokia can start shipping tablets.
It was nice knowing you Nokia. I guess you haven't noticed what happens to companies who 'partner' with M$.
There was nothing wrong with Symbian. What you failed to do was improve it, and build a touch-UI on the OS, and an ecosystem of software and services. All of which could have been done on Symbian.
Good luck with that Microsoft thing....
?Improving? isn?t enough. We can use Symbian as an example of that. It was doomed like Mac OS was doomed, like WinMo was doomed, like BB OS was doomed, etc. You can?t just pop on a touchscreen system and call it a day. Something you have to scrape what you are doing and start from scratch. With Nokia unable to program their way out of the first test in Project Euler going with WP7 made sense.
It was nice knowing you Nokia. I guess you haven't noticed what happens to companies who 'partner' with M$.
There was nothing wrong with Symbian. What you failed to do was improve it, and build a touch-UI on the OS, and an ecosystem of software and services. All of which could have been done on Symbian.
Good luck with that Microsoft thing....
I tend to agree with this assessment. I'm not sure why everyone else is being so positive about it.
This feels like a takeover to me, even at this distance. I think that "up close" in Helsinki they are probably not going to react very well at all. We are talking about *the* national company here, I don't think the majority of the folks that use Nokia products, let alone the huge portion of the population that works there, is going to see this as good news.
It seems likely that vast numbers of Nokia smartphone users will jump ship. It seems likely also that the clash of cultures and what appears to be an outside hostile takeover of the beloved national company is going to cause some major waves as well.
By the time they get it all sorted out it will be too late and too many people will have left. At the very least we are going to see a years worth of "integration" while Windows Phone 7 is re-done so it works internationally.
This is horrible news for Nokia. They are going to be eviscerated because they bought into a crazy pipe dream of Win Phone 7 dominance that was sold to them by the oldest group of snake-oil salesmen in the business.
Hope Nokia does better than every other company Microsoft has ever partnered with...
you mean like Apple?
i do not know much on this topic, so i won't say more- but MS and Apple did partner... at multiple points (some good for Apple, some bad, very very bad)
anyways, i think this is good news, as Android doesn't need more confusion- if Nokia does fairly well, i wouldn't be supprised if MS decided to only let Nokia use Windows Moblie, creating 5 large groups
A- RIM... dying as of know... lets see with the new OS
B- Apple... very successful staying that way for all the foreseeable future and beyond
C- HP... provided they understand that having a phone with no keyboard will probably sell better, i could see that taking off + having the OS work on windows PC's, making something like the App store.
D- android... i do agree that it will cost money sooner or later, and that googles regulation policies (or should i say lack of) to power of phones, and the android (idk what its called) store will bring it down
E- Nokia/Window Mobile... from all the friends that i know who have gotten a windows mobile phone, including one who switched from an IPhone to note, they all like it, aside from from the much smaller selection of Apps as of know. So it seems like it has a good user interface (i haven't used it myself, so i won't comment personally, that is my exp with friends) and other things like that. I think it will become a major player.
I personally think that if RIM doesn't get its buissness market back up, it will cease to be a player, if it can keep it back up, and hold it, i think that the mainstream market will turn into 3 (4) major camps
1- Apple/HP- control both the phones hardware, and the software, allowing them to bargain with the companies they want to sell them through. i would estimate this would be 40-50% of the market. unless Apple makes a cheaper IPhone, and HP making a phone without a keyboard.
2- Android- confusion, confusion, confusion, but cheapest still, running on cheap hardware well costing the phone companies/mfrs a small amount (less than WM, which would be with Nokia in this scenario) of money as possible. As well as apps that run on some phones but not others etc. probably controlling a 20-30% of the market.
3- WM+Nokia. like Apple/HP in a way, but the software is developed however MS wants it, and the hardware however Nokia wants it, with minimum specs universal. This would not be as good as an enviroment as Apple/HP but would probably have a price advantage (over Apple, not sure of HP) thanks to lower margin. controlling 20-40% of the market
It?s like an episode of House M.D. where a parasite has been inadvertantly keeping you alive when you should have been dead a long time ago, yet at the same time the parasite is adsorbing so much of your resources that you are now at its mercy and can no longer survive without it. See where I?m going with this?
Stargate?
I am so glad the stint was short because it was a huge waste of time. To do a same application on Symbian requires at least 4 times more efforts than on iOS or Android, if possible at all. Those dead woods(Symbian platform designers) not only waste the R&D money of Nokia(remember it was started more than 14 years ago), they also waste all the lives of the application developers. For all Symbian developers, have a life and get something that are real and deliver some products instead of wasting all your time manipulating TDesC, TPtr, HBuffC to simply display a message.
Exactly. It's going to be minimum 18 months before Nokia can start shipping tablets.
And what OS will they use? Windows Phone 7 Series Tablet edition? I think not. MS are simply not going to tread on Windows toes by upscaling the mobile OS into form factors that they want to put Windows on instead. So it's no tablets for Nokia, unless they put a different OS on it to their phones. Meego? Old Symbian? Something new?
They haven't just missed the boat, they're still lost on the way to the port. Smartphone wars was 2 years ago. iOS and Android are firmly entrenched. The current battle is for tablets, it's the emerging market, and the one in which most people think the money is going to be. That's why *every* major phone manufacturer of say 3/4 years ago (Palm, Samsung, Rim, Motorola, HTC etc) are moving out of being phone companies and into mobile computing. They are bring out familys, or suites of products to leverage their brand, phones and tablets the lot of them, they are all at it. And what do Nokia have? Someone else's hardware spec with someone else's OS that they cannot modify and throw onto a tablet instead, and the inability to even BRAND the products they will sell as their own, and USP which will boil down to "our phone peripherals and bundled crapware are better than someone else's on the same platform".
Suicide!
Sure I hated symbian, but is this going to be their only OS going forwards? I liked that nokia seemed willing to install whatever software was available and ideal for each specific device...
I tend to agree with this assessment. I'm not sure why everyone else is being so positive about it.
If you don’t think this is positive then you must think it’s negative or neutral. Do you really think that Nokia not admitting they have a problem and sticking with Symbian is a more positive solution? I certainly don’t. That isn’t to say that partnering with MS isn’t without its downfalls, but it’s a more positive option than they had going for them and it’s not like we have evidence that WebOS or Android would have been better. In fact we have plenty of evidence to sugest that they would have completely destroyed any internal attempt at making an OS there own. So why is this whole arrangement without any positives for Nokia? I see two things that are failing that trying to combine forces to be strong on some level. IOW, exchanging Symbian for a symbiotic.
PS: I like Elop. Not many CEOs can through in “subject to the completion of a definitive aggreement” into a speech and make it sound natural.
Symbian was about on par with PalmOS. They were good OSes in their heyday but died a slow painful death. If Palm hung onto PalmOS too long, then Nokia really held onto Symbian too long.
I am surprised Nokia went with Microsoft and not Google. Windows Phone 7 offers all the disadvantages of Android but at a cost.
One advantage - Microsoft will pay Nokia several hundred millions dollars to use Windows Phone 7.
This feels like a takeover to me, even at this distance. I think that "up close" in Helsinki they are probably not going to react very well at all.
To me it seems like the balance of power swings more toward Nokia.
I wonder how they would react if it becomes obvious Microsoft are working on features at Nokia's request, and not the other way around?
It will be interesting to watch as more information comes out.
Exactly. It's going to be minimum 18 months before Nokia can start shipping tablets.
They killed Symbian not Meego so they could ship their Meego tablet whenever they want. Elop indicated that there would be a 2011 MeeGo product and it wouldn't be a smartphone.
The next tablet is likely ARM based like the N900 with a 7" display running MeeGo sometime in mid 2011. Not 18 months from now.
smart move for Nokia, and great news for MS.
The next platform to die will probably be RIM's. My guess is RIM will go with Android.
I'm surprised by the level of commitment HP is showing to WebOS, but I suspect that no matter how well they execute, WebOS will lose due to what is essentially a very late start from scratch.
So we will end up with three platforms, iOS, Windows, and Android. My guess is that in the long run Apple and MS will have roughly equal shares of the market (maybe 25-30 percent each) while Android will take the rest (40-50 percent). Apple will be the most profitable, MS the second, and Android will be a failure from the perspective of a Google shareholder as I think Google will lose control of the platform. Android will become the "generic" platform embraced by no-name producers, and those producers may frequently choose to eschew Google services, particularly in the emerging markets.
4 platforms if you include webOS.
you mean like Apple?
i do not know much on this topic, so i won't say more- but MS and Apple did partner... at multiple points (some good for Apple, some bad, very very bad)
anyways, i think this is good news, as Android doesn't need more confusion- if Nokia does fairly well, i wouldn't be supprised if MS decided to only let Nokia use Windows Moblie, creating 5 large groups
A- RIM... dying as of know... lets see with the new OS
B- Apple... very successful staying that way for all the foreseeable future and beyond
C- HP... provided they understand that having a phone with no keyboard will probably sell better, i could see that taking off + having the OS work on windows PC's, making something like the App store.
D- android... i do agree that it will cost money sooner or later, and that googles regulation policies (or should i say lack of) to power of phones, and the android (idk what its called) store will bring it down
E- Nokia/Window Mobile... from all the friends that i know who have gotten a windows mobile phone, including one who switched from an IPhone to note, they all like it, aside from from the much smaller selection of Apps as of know. So it seems like it has a good user interface (i haven't used it myself, so i won't comment personally, that is my exp with friends) and other things like that. I think it will become a major player.
I personally think that if RIM doesn't get its buissness market back up, it will cease to be a player, if it can keep it back up, and hold it, i think that the mainstream market will turn into 3 (4) major camps
1- Apple/HP- control both the phones hardware, and the software, allowing them to bargain with the companies they want to sell them through. i would estimate this would be 40-50% of the market. unless Apple makes a cheaper IPhone, and HP making a phone without a keyboard.
2- Android- confusion, confusion, confusion, but cheapest still, running on cheap hardware well costing the phone companies/mfrs a small amount (less than WM, which would be with Nokia in this scenario) of money as possible. As well as apps that run on some phones but not others etc. probably controlling a 20-30% of the market.
3- WM+Nokia. like Apple/HP in a way, but the software is developed however MS wants it, and the hardware however Nokia wants it, with minimum specs universal. This would not be as good as an enviroment as Apple/HP but would probably have a price advantage (over Apple, not sure of HP) thanks to lower margin. controlling 20-40% of the market
Yes, like 1990's Apple.