Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

[GreyGeek]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

Nokia lost 18% of their stock price on Feb 11 alone. When the markets open again we'll see if it continues it free fall.

[lmilano]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

Nokia lost 18% of their stock price on Feb 11 alone. When the markets open again we'll see if it continues it free fall.

It lost another 6% today
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:NOK

[lmilano]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

WTF! The fun never ends!
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3115656.0

[The Liquidator]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

If Mr Elop the CEO of Nokia, is a major Microsoft Shareholder, his conflict of interest is as big as Pinocchio's nose on a bad lying day. Someone in his position must be acting solely in the interests of the company by whom he is employed, and not in such a manner that can be perceived to have some other motive (eg propping up his MS Stock value).

The Nokia shareholders are right to take the action that they are contemplating - whether the institutional investors will go along with it is something else entirely. But wasn't this on the cards from the day he joined?

[MoonRise]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

WTF! The fun never ends!
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3115656.0

The guy sounds quite the idiot if you ask me. Sounds as though his programming abilities is one dimensional if all he can support and understand is C# which I never really liked to be honest.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

As I've stated several times before, de Icaza's history of involvement and fascination with MS, following his 1997 visit to Redmond, is well documented. So are the deaths of Microsoft "partners" in working in the FOSS arena. But, clueless or greedy CEOs, blinded by $$$ signs, ignorant of the GPL, FOSS and Microsoft's history, blunder into these agreements. Except that Elop wasn't clueless, the Nokia board was. I documented de Icaza's history in an LT post here, in which I call de Icaza an MS mole and outline the reasons for that accusation. However, all of the comments to that story are interesting to read. A comment by John Helms gives a short list of the outcome of several "partnerships" FOSS companies had with Microsoft:

Corel Linux (inflitrated and partially owned by Microsoft, trashed/dumped stock, eventually Corel failed and sold)
Xandros Linux ("partnered with Microsoft, dropped efforts on desktop Linux)
Lindows Linux (bought by Xandros, desktop effort also gone)
TurboLinux (same as Xandros)
SuSe Linux (same as above with Novell partnering with Microsoft)

We can now add to that list Novell. The pattern is so obvious that a blind person could see it. In another year or two we will be able to tell if Nokia has shot themselves in the heart as well.

I must make an addendum: de Icaza's plan to move Gnome to a total Mono-based DE (instead of using GTK# bindings) in which Mono even replaces the underlying lib6 utilities that make calls to the kernel, thus giving a Mono built Gnome COMPLETE control of the Ubuntu desktop may have been thwarted with Suttlesworth's announcement that in Ubuntu 11.10 Gnome will be dropped in favor of the Unity desktop, which is being built with the Qt API. That is EXCELLENT news, as long as Unity and KDE don't "compete" to the point that KDE suffers or dies. Here's why:

On the Nokia website and several other blogs about the Nokia-Microsoft "partnership" one fact has been pointed out: Microsoft now has significant influence and/or possible CONTROL over the COMMERCIAL version of Qt. Nokia has said it will be reducing its Qt R&D developers staff "while" it works on getting a WP7 powered Nokia smartphone out the door, even though they claim that Qt will be used to support the 200 million Symbian powered Nokia smartphones, and the predicted additional 150 million in Symbian smartphone sales. That's their pitch to Symbian Qt app developers to keep developing for Symbian.

Their agreement with the KDE QtFree foundation states that if Nokia fails to make any SIGNIFICANT improvements over a span of one year (say, between 2/11/11 and 2/11/12), OR, allows more than one version release difference between the commercial and GPL versions, then the entire Qt toolkit, including QtCreator and Qt-SDK can be released under the BSD or GPL. The agreement is also void IF the KDE project does not continue to actively develop and support KDE or KDE dies. IANAL, but as screwed up and corrupt as the courts and the USTPO is, a lawsuit against KDE by Microsoft could stop the development on KDE long enough to cancel the QtFree agreement. Regardless, Microsoft DOES NOT WANT Qt under a BSD license. Such a license would cause an even more massive switch from MS toolkits to Qt than was currently taking place before the 2/11/11 announcement. But, "just in time" releases (and it will always be debatable about what is significant) can keep the Commercial Qt a year behind hardware and software advances. This could cause 3rd party developers & corporations of proprietary binaries to shy away from Qt and put the MS plantation chains back on. They could get around that by using the LGPL version and having their LGPL gui's link to their non-Qt generated libraries, the way Apple exploited Konqueror to create Safari. But, the Nokia-MS agreement has given pause to several proprietary software houses already. I just hope they are smart enough to see that they can work around this road block and continue to use the LGPL version of Qt.

It is obvious that when Microsoft paid other smartphone manufactures to put WP7 on their hardware (HTC, etc.) the response by the public was underwhelming, no more than a yawn. EVEN after their massive and expensive pre-release PR campaign, which is still ongoing, WP7 has manged only about 1% per month growth, for a total of less than 5%. It will be months before a Nokia WP7 release. Apple and Google won't be setting on their thumbs. IF the heavily funded MS PR clout was going to achieve anything it would have already. Among other possible reasons is the fact that WP7 doesn't have multi-tasking, and it is not visually eye-appealing, but Android does and is. MS tried a PR flood to "demonstrate" why multi-tasking wasn't desirable (mainly battery life) but their next release of the WP7 OS will have multi-tasking.

Microsoft cannot let Nokia die because they cannot allow Qt to become a BSD project, which would make it a lethal MS phage, eating the core out of Microsoft's GUI RAD tools business. So, I predict that while Nokia will devolve into a mere smartphone subsidiary of Microsoft, enough Qt development will go on, barely enough, to keep Qt in the GPL but not the BSD. What parts of Qt get worked on will be in Microsoft's control. The GPL version of Qt could lagged behind the commercial version by almost two years before the QtFree agreement kicks in. If newer hardware and software techniques are not rapidly incorporated in new Qt classes the pressure to fork Qt will grow.

In the end I suspect that Qt will fork, and that KDE will switch to it. Distros using KDE will continue on as they always have, including Ubuntu with Unity, and Linux will continue eating into Windows market share. After all, smartphones are only 1/5th of the cellphone market, and Symbian is only 1/5th of that, so 1/25th of the cellphone market isn't going to affect the laptop market in a significant manner in the foreseeable future. (Verizon requires that you download mp3's to your PC so you can install them on their smartphone!) Most smartphone analysts are betting that a Nokia WP7 is already a lost cause. What about the commercial version of Qt? That's why Microsoft won't let Nokia die, but they could persuade it to give them an exclusive license to the commercial version and include a Qt extension as part of Visual Studio, or release MSQt (you thought that website was a joke? It was, but the joke may be on us) . 3rd party commercial developers will buy MSQt in order to "write once, run anywhere", but Microsoft will be pocketing the license fee and controlling its use. They could also sell static binaries of Word, Excel, etc, written with Qt and running on Win7, Linux and Apple. Mono would die immediately but the commercial version of Qt could fulfill what de Icaza was trying to get Mono to do, put MS API on all desktops.

[lmilano]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

The WSJ published a very nice, factual analysis of what actually happened, and how Nokia did consider Android. In a Nuthshell, MS put a boatload of money (in what was perhaps their last chance to take a shot at mobile)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...ch_LEFTTopNews

Of course, there is a 90% chance that Elop will go down in history like the moron who put the nail on the coffin.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

Here is the stock info which shows the corporate and individual stockholders. Some said Elop was the 7th stock holder, but when I checked on the 11th he was the 8th. Today, I see that he is the 7th again, so either he has bought some stock back or the guy ahead of him sold off a lot.

At the end of the 1st quarter of sales vendors had to resort to "2 for 1" sales to try to get WP7 sales moving, but Microsoft's silence on the sales figures spoke volumes at the time. IF sales had been "equal or better" than iPhone or Android they would have shouted it to the roof tops. As it is they've used the usual media manipulation techniques to spin the truth. Saying that 1.5 million phones were sold by MANUFACTURERS is not the same as saying that vendors sold that many. As one observers of Achiem Berg's announcement remarked:

90,000 were given away free to Microsoft employees, several display models for each model of WP7 had to be given to each of 2,200 AT&T retail stores plus distribution outlets such as Best Buy, Walmart, Costco and RadioShack, etc.

Ahh, I see, probably about 15% of the 1.5 million were "freebies" and perhaps 30% were exaggerations by the Microsoft executive. Finally, 1 million were needed to stock shelves and fill the distribution pipeline.
...
For the first six weeks of WP7 distribution the RBC Capital Markets estimate of the smartphone industry showed only 10 million smartphones sold by Blackberry and Nokia for a total smartphone market of 34 million. .... That would put the 1.5 WP7 launch figures at a 4.4% market share -- if all 1.5 million were sold to customers and activated. But RBC Capital Markets ranks WP7 phones at a 2.9% market share for the full year 2011.

Microsoft itself claimed a "pre-WP7" smart phone market share of 9.7%, and that announcement also spun Androids figures DOWN! (Because WP7 vendors used the "Sense UI" to make it look more like Android, confusing the buyers! i.e., they thought they were buying Androids but they were sold WP7 instead. Amazing chutzpah.). BUT, three months after the release of WP7 a report showing the difference between the market share on Sept 1, 2010 and Dec 31, 2010 was released and it shows Microsoft's smartphone market share dropping from 9.9 to 8.4%. It has dropped even more since then.

Microsoft revealed last month that it has now shipped 2 million devices to carriers. The figure is controversial as this doesn’t explain exactly how many Windows Phone 7 owners there are. Microsoft previously revealed that the company had shipped 1.5 million Windows Phone 7 units between the October launch and December.

The forecast for the smartphone market is interesting. Published on Oct 8th, 2010, it shows an Android world:
[img width=400 height=213]http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/2010/10/07/technology/google_android/chart_smartphone3.gif[/img]
BUT, that was BEFORE Nokia lost its corporate mind and blew its software brains out. From 2011 onward a steep exponential drop to 3% by the end of 2012 could replace the gradual decline predicted for Nokia.

So, while Microsoft's WP7 manufacturers were sending 1.5M units out to carriers and vendors, 4M iPhones and 9M Androids were ACTIVATED by customers!!! Microsoft is keeping the activation figures secret but if even 1/3rd of them were activated that means that WP7 is 1/8th of the iPhone market and less than 1/16th of the Android market. Only a heavy does of MS Kool-Aid could make the market look any different.

[dibl]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

Microsoft's "mindshare" is so heavily biased toward personal computer operating systems that they've always struggled when they ventured into other devices (and this is far from their first time). I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Microsoft dominance in smartphones.

But, when observed from a distance, all this competition for the smartphone OS market can only be a good thing for Gnu/Linux users (and Apple OS users, and Android users ...). 8)

[lmilano]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

BUT, that was BEFORE Nokia lost its corporate mind and blew its software brains out. From 2011 onward a steep exponential drop to 3% by the end of 2012 could replace the gradual decline predicted for Nokia.

Nah, I think it will lie somewhere in-between. Nokia will steadily decline, but not nearly close to just a 3% of a hardware market share. In other words, MS and Nokia will meet half ways sort to speak in this apples and oranges plot. A big win for MS, a big loss for Nokia (except for the cash from MS bribe, I mean deal ).

[lmilano]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

But, when observed from a distance, all this competition for the smartphone OS market can only be a good thing for Gnu/Linux users (and Apple OS users, and Android users ...). 8)

No my friend. This is a bad thing for GNU/Linux. The #1 cellphone manufacturer was committed to a mostly GNU/Linux open platform, and they had the chance of embrace another, mostly open, Linux based option (android). Instead, they went for a close ecosystem, which will be driven by a company that destroys its competition with monopolistic practices. Let's live this "competition is good" bull to MS. Sure, Android is good competition to Meego, and they won by scandal . Apple is ok, MS is not.

[dibl]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

Let's live this "competition is good" bull to MS.

Microsoft is in favor of a competition in their market? That's news to me!

Without vigorous competition for higher performance applications, why would any of these operating systems seek to improve?

[lmilano]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

Let's live this "competition is good" bull to MS.

Microsoft is in favor of a competition in their market? That's news to me!

Without vigorous competition for higher performance applications, why would any of these operating systems seek to improve?

Sorry, I phrased that poorly. MS is not in favor of competition of the only market they dominate (PC's). In that market, they actually propose a model of a unique vendor (them). However, when try to enter other markets, they sing the "competition drives innovation" tune. That, I call freakin' bull They did that when they hijacked the OLPC project (and brought it to its knees, well done, who cares about all these kids, ah?)

Otherwise, I fully agree about competition, but that's what I said, no? Android beat the traditional Linux approach in phones, and probably Chrome OS will, too, in laptops/PC's. In part, let's face it, because of the huge corporate backup that Google means.

Open source is the ultimate expression of competition, through cooperation. It doesn't get much better than that

[GreyGeek]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

....
Nah, I think it will lie somewhere in-between. Nokia will steadily decline, but not nearly close to just a 3% of a hardware market share. In other words, MS and Nokia will meet half ways sort to speak in this apples and oranges plot. A big win for MS, a big loss for Nokia (except for the cash from MS bribe, I mean deal ).

It's not like mixing volumes of cold and warm water, where thermodynamic properties determine the final equilibrium temperature. Even though Nokia has sold 200 million Symbian powered smartphones and predicts they will sell another 150 million Symbian phones, just not in the US, or EU (India? China?), Microsoft has sold less than 2 million smartphones, but that's counting every unit sent out the manufacturer's doors, NOT the total of units ACTIVATED by consumers. "Halfway" would be 101 million phones. BUT, phones already sold don't count where future sales are concerned.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-...09-705792.html

Worldwide handset sales to end users rose 32% in 2010 to 1.6 billion units, Gartner said. Smartphone sales rose 72% from a year earlier to 297 million units as sales of Android-based devices increased almost ten-fold to 67 million units.

But Nokia's share of the total handset market fell to 27.1% in the fourth quarter from 36.6% a year earlier .....

I don't know how long it will take to re-engineer the Nokia smartphones to accept WP7 produced in mass quantities and sent out into the hands of retailers, but I doubt it will be before July or August before you will be able to buy a Nokia WP7 phone. That's 4 or more months Apple and Google won't be wasting. Nokia will still TRY to sell the Symbian smartphone but who is going to buy KNOWING that it is will be dead before their two year cell phone contract expires? WP7's growth in the hands of current vendors is already dead, with only a 2.7% market share and showing no significant growth. WP7 can't give Nokia a "hand up" or it wouldn't need Nokia in the first place. Nokia just told consumers that Symbian is dead -- bye bye app developers. No continued supply of apps for Symbian? No new buyers for Symbian. A 21% drop in stock price since the 10th gives no investor confidence.

We won't have Nokia WP7 activation figures (manufacturing sales figures don't say how many consumers are activating their new phones) before the end of the quarter in which the phone is made available to the public. But, Symbian activation figures for the 2nd and 3rd quarters will tell us how long before Nokia joins Microsoft at the bottom of the smartphone market.

[kyonides]

Re: Nokia follows in Novell's footprints ...

Perhaps Qt fork should be called KDE, it's the main platform or SDK that uses it so I think it could be a nice name for the fork, he he he.