Is Nokia pulling the plug on Symbian? (About time!) And will it use Windows Phone 7?

Based on this article, Nokia is about to take a huge gamble.
In my personal opinion, Nokia will either live or die by this decision.
http://www.nytimes.com/external/vent...er=rss&emc=rss

is the most interesting company memo i've read ever.
this is the entire memo:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/n...honest-burnin/

I completly agree with his words. Nokia is losing all the market... because Symbian and Meego is shit compared with iphone and android ecosystems.


They are going to change to android ...
so....
what happen with qt??
:(
I bet this:
they are going to change to Android....
Qt is dead.
(nokia it's only interested in qt because they wanted to make a nice and easy developer enviroment for their mobile ecosystem)

I wouldn't be so pessimistic.
First, I understood more that Nokia is about to go with MS Phone 7, and not Android - they need something different than the others, and it seems they are betting on MS.
Second, no matter what platform they will be going on, they will still need a strong GUI framework, so Qt is going to stay around (in my opinion).
If they choose to go with Android (what I don't think is the case) its even better, since they will port Qt officially to support android to, which should not be a big deal.
There is an open source projects that is doing Qt port to android by the way.

So what ever OS Nokia is going to go with, Qt is not dead as long as Nokia needs strong GUI framework - and it does.

IMHO.

Windows phone 7 == shot in the foot
is the loser horse

In the full memo he talks about iphone and android.... not much about win7...
Android is free and open... is the way to go.

since Nokia control over qt.... qt 4.8... qt 4.7... qt 4.6... it's all about improving qt to facilitate symbian and meego development...

If they go to Android (or win7) I think that Nokia doesn't need to maintain a strong QT.
(of course they are not going to close QT... but they are not going to invest strongly on Qt)

i wish nokia sell Qt to some third party. So that Qt can start adding new things to its Desktop version instead of stretching the stupid things like QML.

Nokia will not abandon Symbian for a very long time since they have literally tens of millions of devices running that platform and Android or Win7 PE are unfit for handling low-end solutions. I doubt they would switch to Win7 Phone Edition because it's... well... not a good platform, so to speak. For me MeeGo is the way to go. Maemo is already ahead of iOS or Android if you compare the requirements and capabilities. What MeeGo is still lacking is the codebase which just has to appear some time and time and money needs to be invested in it. MeeGo is not just the phones, it's also a range of other types of devices (which is maybe a secondary issue for Nokia but not for Intel).

To be honest the conclusions drawn in both the quoted articles are somewhat farsighted. I don't see anywhere that Nokia intends to switch platforms or anything. The argument about switching to Win7 is probably based on the fact that the guy used to work for Microsoft, I think it is one of those "news" where the editor is paid to release a number of news a day and he needed one more article before going home. The quoted memo might as well mean that Nokia wants to focus on selling wellington boots again or merge with some fruit company. It's definitely not some inside-company memo, just look at the expressions used (e.g. how many times the company name is used, do you do that in your talks with co-workers?), it "leaked" to public on purpose and I'm sure Nokia's CEO wasn't struck by lightning yesterday and doesn't want to prepare a new company policy within two days behind everyone's backs. If you're expecting a thunderstorm, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wysota

For me MeeGo is the way to go. Maemo is already ahead of iOS or Android if you compare the requirements and capabilities. What MeeGo is still lacking is the codebase which just has to appear some time and time and money needs to be invested in it. .

---

Maemo maybe is ahead of iOS and Android... but that doesn't mind....
You need the best professional developers in the world craving to develop in your system...
Nowadays iOS is the only interesting platform for professional developers.... because you can earn a lot of money selling your apps in the App Store.
Maemo is far far far away from that.
So... why happy iOS developers are going to develop for maemo now?
That's a chimera.

Nokia must go to Android...
is the only platform capable of beat iOS. (because for developers is a very attractive platform)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by javimoya

Maemo maybe is ahead of iOS and Android... but that doesn't mind....
You need the best professional developers in the world craving to develop in your system...
Nowadays iOS is the only interesting platform for professional developers.... because you can earn a lot of money selling your apps in the App Store.
Maemo is far far far away from that.

---

Note this is not the fault of the platform. iOS had to start from something too. This is all related to marketing and technical base for developers.

Quote:

---

So... why happy iOS developers are going to develop for maemo now?
That's a chimera.

Nokia must go to Android...

---

"So... why happy iOS developers are going to develop for Android now?"

This is not really an argument. All those happy developers used to develop for other platforms a couple of years ago and something caused them to switch. If Qt bridges the difference between different platforms, it's a good motivation for developers to use it. If one can write an app for iOS in native API and sell it to X people or can write the same application in Qt (assuming it'll eventually get ported to iOS) and sell it to X+Y+Z people using iOS, Android and MeeGo, I'd say that was a good trigger to think about not being tied to a specific platform. That was always Qt's advantage and I don't see why this advantage shouldn't be carried to the mobile world. For me the biggest thunderstorm would be if Nokia decided to officially port Qt to iOS and Android to attract developers. To me it's a win-win situation for Nokia, at least on the software market. Hardware then needs to follow. Knowing the fact that you can install Linux on practically anything, I wouldn't be suprised if there appeared solutions for reflashing Android or iOS-based devices to Linux (MeeGo). It's not something Nokia (as in hardware vendor) would take advantage of but that's their problem.

My guess is that the announcement will be about MeeGo, hopefully the launch of a MeeGo phone ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zlatomir

My guess is that the announcement will be about MeeGo, hopefully the launch of a MeeGo phone ;)

---

That's very unlikely considering the guy seems dissapointed in MeeGo. Maybe they'll announce they are firing half of the staff? :P

Quote:

---

Maybe they'll announce they are firing half of the staff?

---

I think this is more likely then we might suspect... :-\

---

Added after 34 minutes:

By the way - if you google Phone 7 review, you will find out that so far, it gets generally surprisingly good reviews, which reinforces the articles assumption, that Nokia is about to partner with MS.
We'll have to wait and see.

I don't know his feelings about MeeGo, but if Nokia install 7 on their phones how are they going to convince all the developers to switch to C# and .net?
Also Microsoft "open" Windows phone 7 platform for Qt seems unlikely. //this will be a good thing

So as i see it: they made interpretable announcements to attract all the eyes to MeeGo phone launch
... or maybe they make a trade: Nokia launch phone 7 and Microsoft allows Qt applications for it (if i remember correctly they already have a mobile "pact" signed for a couple of years)

The Android platform has an unofficial Qt port... so Nokia phone with Android OS shouldn't surprise us... but i still bet on MeeGo

Anyway Qt won't die... not even the one for mobile phones

hahaha... he will fire half the staff, then what? nokia will stop making phones and only become a reseller for fruit-phone?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by high_flyer

By the way - if you google Phone 7 review, you will find out that so far, it gets generally surprisingly good reviews, which reinforces the articles assumption, that Nokia is about to partner with MS.
We'll have to wait and see.

---

Well, I heard Microsoft had lots of trouble selling devices equipped with their brand new OS. I don't know how the situation looks now and I don't care since this is a really crappy system.

Plus in order for Nokia to sell WP7 phones. It would require Nokia to port Qt to .NET. I would love to see Qt for .NET, don't get me wrong. But I highly doubt Nokia would do that. So that's how you can tell Nokia will not use Windows.

Open Letter from CEO Stephen Elop, Nokia and CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft

• Microsoft development tools will be used to create applications to run on Nokia Windows Phones, allowing developers to easily leverage the ecosystem’s global reach.


is that mean QT will be abandoned gradually by NOKIA?

Unless they want to drop Qt. Which would be a pure waste of money of course.

---

Added after 7 minutes:

http://conversations.nokia.com/nokia-strategy-2011/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hashb

is that mean QT will be abandoned gradually by NOKIA?

---

I can't personally see Qt being dropped. It's too valuable a technology. Also, though Nokia is going with Microsoft, it doesn't quite make sense to me while they would only want to target WP7. What about Android? They probably ought to target both in my view, and they could easily do that with Qt, so...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nish

i wish nokia sell Qt to some third party. So that Qt can start adding new things to its Desktop version instead of stretching the stupid things like QML.

---

Strongly agreed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:mad:
It is quite sad to see how several top managers can destroy shareholder's wealth with just a pen. I am fortunate enough not to own Nokia or Microsoft shares (Bill apparently thinks the same way, he is known to drop 1/8th of his MSFT holdings this year), but I am invested in Qt. This alliance is bad news. Microsoft is known for killing the technologies that they consider to be threats. Just remember a wholesale purchase of Borland team.

My prediction is that the bulk of Qt team will be bought with salaries and hired to VC teams or elsewere in M$S.

Now it's official...
Nokia joint with Windows Phone 7...
And they are not going to adapt QT to develop for Win7Phone.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/n...s-phone-devel/
Qt is dead for Nokia.
:mad: