Nokia's WinPho 8 double date announced Nokia will unveil Windows 8 phones during its joint event with Microsoft this September, sources stating the bleedin' obvious revealed. The two handsets – codenamed Arrow and Phi – will form part of the firm's Lumia range, with the former joining the mid-range party and the latter succeeding the Lumia 800 and 900 as its …
Why on earth have you got yourself into such a state that you actually are cheering the possiblility that Nokia might go down the Swanee? What has the company done to you or yours that you feel impelled to log on and excrete that kind of steaming odoriferous rubbish? Just to give one example, my lady and I to not have a single item of Apple kit in the house - do you see me logging on here howling "Apple must die"? Get a life.
"What has the company done to you or yours that you feel impelled to log on and excrete that kind of steaming odoriferous rubbish?"
Made me redundant 5 years, wrecked my life, and that of my family, with no prospect of another job, other than cleaning work. Finland is drowning in newly-redundant, highly qualified (BSc/MSc/PhD) younger engineers. I'm 56, not a graduate, but was a Senior Specialist at NSN.
There. Fixed it for you.
"Why on earth have you got yourself into such a state that you actually are cheering the possiblility that Nokia might go down the Swanee? What has the company done to you or yours that you feel impelled to log on and excrete that kind of steaming odoriferous rubbish?"
How about that they teamed with Microsoft? Why should we expect Nokia to succeed when WP has been an utter failure from the start? The best thing that could happen to Nokia is bankruptcy so that Elop and the Microsoft deal are gone. WP brings no competition to to the market except for last place.
Why would you celebrate the end of a company (which you've hardly shown will happen)? Competition is good. If you (I am presuming) have an iPhone or Android device, then the better Windows Phone devices are the happier you should be as it provides stimulus for the companies that make your device to keep pushing forward.
Because he will have been proven to be RIGHT. On the INTERNET, no less!
I won't deny there's a certain amusement in watching Elop suffer for canning Symbian and Meego but Nokia were a really cool phone maker once upon a time and I do have fond memories of using my 9300, N95 and other exotic and inspired phone ideas. Black slabs will not save Nokia but they might make a rather stylish tombstone. =/
It's interesting - if and when Nokia does get bought out/go into administration, it will essentially have the same skilled engineers and designers as before, but, new management. Maybe the problem is the existing management, or an excess of same, or so.
It would be interesting to see what Nokia's brightest could achieve, were there a clearout of the stables, and some real business-heads (as are many company doctors brought in by administrators) take the reins.
I wouldn't want Microsoft to be the new owner as they simply wouldn't be as profit- and competition-oriented as someone who really is determined to make money.
Well having worked on Symbian since 99 I could have told you not to buy an N97. No GPU, poor specs all over, first touch UI, resitive touch screen, cheap plastic body, this device and all the S60 5th edition range was doomed from the start. My guess at the time was that Nokia did not want to give Symbian touch good hardware knowing the software was rubish anyway. Anyone with a bit of a clue never bought into 5th editon. Trouble is it precisely the time where mass market was going into smartphone and they sold lots of them because people had no clue and thought Nokia is a safe buy. Most will never forgive Nokia for this. I as an 'insider' waited until they came up with something half descent to replace my E90 and ended up with an E7. Just wished it came with the specs of the 701 and 808. Other than that it is a quite a good smartphone. Too late though they switch to WP. 701 and 808 are just great though.
"It must be said once more: Symbian was dying before Elop killed it."
It was? 2009 Nokia sold 100 million smartphones (mostly Symbian.) 2010 Nokia sold over 134 million smartphones (once again mostly Symbian.) Look at how many phones Apple sold in 2010; 40 million. If Nokia say a 34% which was a 34 million increase, Apple hardly gained overall. While Apple say huge market share gains, 34% that Nokia saw was far from a dying as you claim. There are many companies that see single digit growth in their sectors and they survive. Seeing 34% is highly respectable and shows huge growth.
How is Nokia doing with the Elop plan called WP? They are seeing their market share shrink and hardly any growth. They also had 50% of the German market, not they are around 3% in about 18 months.
I will say it again, Symbian was still growing, WP is still dying.
i think you have misread my post. im happy beacuse its almost over. Nokia are dead, they just dont know it yet. The sooner the pain stops, and the body is buried, the better.
and if anyone does read this, yes, ive replied to posts over a week old on a topical news website. i realise the chances of anyone of the above accusers reading it are nil.
> Note other manufacturers can also create WP8 phones
They _can_, but will they actually do so in the face of MS throwing money and advertising at Nokia and expecting the others to pay MS for the privilege ?
Others did make WP7 phones but when Nokia sold a million or two the market share did not rise, it just took sales from the others.
"They _can_, but will they actually do so in the face of MS throwing money and advertising at Nokia and expecting the others to pay MS for the privilege ?"
Yes. HTC have licenced Windows Phone 8 and should be releasing a couple of WP8 devices in October or November (release date not confirmed). Other manufacturers will be releasing them also, I have no doubt of it.
you mean a good dirty dozen like they used to have in their S60/Symbian days ? One "flagship" and some 25 satellites of odd colors, shapes and sizes ? And possibly fries with it ?
I'm not so sure that Nokia did itself a favor with that "variety" (rather, varieté).
Sometimes, less is more. Even if they're not going all the way to Fruitycorp-style product line clarity. The "dozens and dozens" Nokia still has in their S40 lines.
Microsoft's mobile offerings were quite successful thanks. They had about a third or more of the market until the iPhone effect kicked in.
The product is fine, it just needs more development and I'm sure WP8 will be a turning point. Firstly apps from Windows proper will be easily ported and secondly this will be the first chance for Nokia to develop a proper handset from scratch and make it themselves. The Lumia's were derived from existing handsets and made by a contractor.
Do you want less competition in the market? have you even used WP7.5? it is an extremely efficient OS for communication and social media. It's not a geek toy like Android and it's a lot more modern than iOS.
Awwww bless. You actually believe that...
Only metro apps will port easilly, and it's yet to be seen is anyone is actually stupid enough to want to use metro on the desktop.
I know onlt 4 or 5 people that have ever had Windows Phone/Windows Mobile/WindowsCE or whatever it's called this week, and 100% of them say it sucks beyond belief, barely usable, and all the while, all the others are WAY out in the distance now, laughing at Microsoft's feeble attempts at pretending they are relevant.
Possibly not, but that might beat the way Apple do it: give more headline features so that the upgraded iPhone will run like a dog afterwards and people have to downgrade. :)
As a WP7 user I would love the upgrade, but I'm not too worried. As long as any changes they make don't spoil the phone, I'm happy with any upgrade I get now. And at least we get the new UI as a minimum.
I have the Lumia 710. I don't feel particularly bothered by the lack of upgrade. I bought my device SIM-free for £160 and it will still do all the same things after Win8 is released as it does now. The loudest people on how unfair it is not to have an upgrade on these forums have typically been those who are anti-MS in the first place.
I don't need anyone to be angry on my behalf, thanks. I grew up in a time when phones weren't upgradeable and I don't see it as some human right that after having bought it, someone should come along for free and magically grant it the hardware it needs to run a newer OS that was released long after it was designed. I get security updates, etc. Sure, it's nice with other phones if you can install a future OS on it (and that this doesn't cause your legacy hardware to run like a dog, which often seems to be the case), but I knew what I was buying and I still like it.
I really don't think you can call the lack of a WP8 upgrade on older handsets a shafting. 8 makes far to many changes from 7 for it to work right, running next years OS on last years hardware spec has never been a winning idea - just look how many Androids have failed to adequately run ICS and the old iPhone models which have to be feature limited and still run like dogs.
Phones are appliances, designed to run the OS of *now" not to be upgradeable for infinite years, OS builds have to be balanced just right to offer maximum features without getting bogged down. I reckon WP7 users should be happy that Microsoft are backporting things to give them an upgrade rather than either offering an OS upgrade their handset wouldn't run properly or nothing at all.
It is an interesting point. So few people even 'upgrade' by downloading applications that it is mute as to whether any beyond 'geeks' give a monkeys whether they get win 7 or win 8. For me a phone is a phone, the iPhone is not appealing because I don't like the form factor, size, style or lack of keys. Unfortunately this old curmudgeon is somewhat at odds with what the manufacturers want to make (a touch screen is much cheaper with less parts, less manufacturing problems and more reliability).
... between el Reg's continual bashing of the Windows Phone and a herd of cows?
Answer: A herd of cows hasn't been milked to death yet.
Seriously, this is getting silly. It's already been announced that WP7 apps will run on WP8, and with most owners on contracts, it's not like WP7 will vanish overnight. As has already been pointed out, there are still plenty of older model iPhones/'droids out there that cannot offer the features of their more up-to-date counterparts, so - apart from the knee-jerk hate reaction - what's the difference between these and the WinPhone?
> WP7 apps will run on WP8
You miss the point completely there. The point is that WP8 apps, the ones that will be filling up the app store soon will not run on WP7 (OK some may be back ported).
If someone bought a WP7 phone a month or two ago on a 2 year contract then they have a dead end product that will be increasingly obsolete.
> plenty of older model iPhones/'droids
And what you fail to notice is that the 'older models' were bought years ago and have had a useful life during which they were, for the most part, updated.
WM6.5 was a dead end when WP7 was announced because nothing carried over. WP7 is a dead end because it cannot be upgraded (beyond some cosmetic updates to the UI). The question that should be asked is will this happen to WP8. Will WP9 be a complete redesign when TIFKAM (Metro) is rejected on Windows 8 and MS has to dump the whole thing and get back to a UI that will sell, leaving WP8 phones as another dead end with a falling market share ?
> Who cares. It's a phone.
Who cares? People buying phones, that's who cares.
> I expect technology to move on in the mean time...
The problem with WP7 is that technology continued to move on after WP7 was released, but the WP7 phones did not, they were limited to what MS dictated. WP8 is a catch up to what other phones have had for some time.
I have a Windows Phone (WP7.5) and quite frankly I like it. Its my first 'real' smartphone and although I'll be the first to admit that it has certain limitations it also has plenty of advantages (at least for me).
But there is something bothering me. WP7 as it is now not only has certain limitations in comparison to other phones; its functionality is also heavily depending on the country you're in. In some countries the so called "Bing services" will operate as expected, in others they don't (think "Local scout" (what is around you), speech recognition in other languages than English, the ability to look up sound phrases, etc.
The part which bothers me is where MS apparently couldn't manage (?) the gaps were quickly filled up by other companies in the form of apps. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it does raise the question if MS will ever fill in those gaps themselves.
When looking at WP8 we get stories of a dozen new features, stuff like e-pay and being able to quickly pass information between phones and such. Strange in itself since bluetooth has always been a good protocol for that yet MS totally ignored that part (it seems it was only added to support headpieces and hardly anything else. I couldn't even get my laserkeyboard to work).
But that does raise the question: will all those features be available on all platforms in all countries, or are they going to try and pull the same stunt: promising features, adding small print that "it may not be available" to end up with something which only seems to work in the States and hardly anywhere else (at least in the beginning) ?
But just as important: what about all those promised features on WP7? Cool that, say, local scout now also works in Germany and the UK, what about France, Spain, Denmark or my home country of Holland? Will those ever get added or can we totally forget about all that because WP8 is what matters now?
Considering that WP8 uses the same Bing services as WP7.... Maybe this is now "good enough" because of all the new features in WP8 ?
Quite frankly I would be very careful with all the promises made by MS. While what they say maybe fully true; they seem to have a very nasty tendency these days to make things sound much better then they actually are.
Picked up a HD7 about 18 months back when it was just WP7, not 7.5. On the same day I picked up a Galaxy-S. I've still got the HD7, and the Galaxy got traded at CEX.
My wife has a 3GS, she's OK With it, but after playing around with my handset (and stealing it for a couple of weeks) she's rather more impressed with it. Prefers the menus, the battery life, and the software (Zune isn't bad really, it just takes a little getting used to).
In the past 2 years I've had Symbian, Blackberry, iOS, Android and WP7.5. I'm still using the Windows Phone, and I'm a demanding user*. Likewise I know a number of other people who are converts to WP7, because it really does "just work".
If you're slating it (like I did when it first arrived), you've not used it for more than a few minutes. Give it a chance, you may like it!
*My only gripe is being unable to use Mass Storage Mode.
Rick Leeming,
Please don't be so nice about the Zune software. I too have a WinPho 7 phone. But in my (not so) humble opinion, Zune makes iTunes look superb. I dislike iTunes, although it's apparently a lot better if you have a Mac. But Zune is slower, harder to use, had a messier UI, and is generally a pain in the arse.
WinPho 7, on the other hand, is great. The People Hub is the bit that sells it for me. There are limitations of the software that sometimes annoy me, but to have such simple control of 4,000 work contacts and about 100 personal ones is great, and beats any of the address books I tried on Android, or the one on iOS. First and foremost, it's a phone.
It's also really good for social networking, if you like that sort of thing. I tried out the Facebook link, and it's very good, although horribly intrusive, which is exactly what you want if you check your FB page every few minutes. If, like me, you use Facebook reluctantly, maybe logging in once a month - then it's not good. I don't have a Twitter account to test.
Release an Intel Windows 8 phone with an open bootloader and the possibility to get it without Windows 8. That product will then be bought by the thousands by companies searching for an easy way to get specialized mobile devices like cryptographic telephones and the like.
Unfortunately the Windows licensing agreements mean that such a phone would then have to have an x86 CPU.
There are lots of unchartered seas in the mobile device world. It's not all just Android/Blackberry/WPx/IOS.
If I had the skills I'd design a series of Raspberry Pi "phones". Small portable devices with different form factors containing the hardware of a Raspberry Pi, a decent display (something perhaps 800x480-ish or so) and either a built-in UMTS modules (tricky) or some clever way to add third party UMTS dongles. Some of those hardware versions would have keyboards.
The main problem is of course to design a case. If you de-solder the connectors the Raspberry Pi board might already be small enough.
@ RICHTO,
Q4 2011 Microsoft had 1.9% and saw their OS on 2.759 handsets. Q4 2010 3.4% and installed on 3.419 million handsets. Doing a great job aren't they?
How about all of 2011?
Q1 2011: 1.6 million WP and 2.1 million WM.
Q2 2011: 1.7 million for WP with 1.6% of the market.
Q3 2011: 1.7 million for WP.
Q4 2011: 2.8 million for WP.
So, WP was on less than 8 million handsets. How did Symbian fare on Q1 2011; 27 million. Q2 2011 saw nearly 18 million. 2009 was 100 million and 2010 was 134 million. So, take Q1 or Q2 2011 and Symbian sold more in a single quarter than WP saw the entire year!
So the WP is ecosystem is quite small. On average in 2010, Nokia sold 367,000 Symbian handsets each and every single day. The entire WP ecosystem saw almost 22,000 a day.
How many free handsets did Nokia give away on the Lumia 900? How much was spent on marketing? AT&T spent between $450 and $500 on each and every Lumia 900 on marketing alone. They didn't sell all that many and they spent more money on the Lumia 900 than they did for any phone in their history. The ROI on it was poor to say the least.
Q1 2012: 2.7 million; 1.9% for WP.
Q2 2012: 4 million; 2.7% for WP.
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