By whom? The old Nokia was a terrible software company, with so many abject failures at creating platforms (Symbian, N-Gage, Ovi, etc.) that I don't think anyone else in this business can compare.
It's a good thing that they're getting out of software and concentrating on stuff they're actually good at.
As a platform, surely not. The wheels came off by the end of 2008 when S60 5th Edition went touch-only, leaving keyboard devices still shipping with the hopelessly outdated 3rd Edition. Symbian touch devices never gained any platform traction.
Was it a success as a software foundation upon which handset makers could innovate, as had been the original idea behind Symbian? No. Everyone that used Symbian abandoned it for more flexible alternatives. The lack of a unified UI development track didn't lead to the hoped innovation, but merely fragmentation that ultimately doomed Symbian. (It didn't help that the most popular UI layer, Nokia's S60, was so poorly designed and thoroughly mismanaged.)
I actually use a Symbian^3 device, the Nokia N8. It's not bad at all. I love the physical design, and the software works fine for what I do (although the browser is a turd, it's replaceable by the fine Opera).
Still, I can't escape the feeling that this is the OS that Nokia should have had over two years ago. Also, it's a development dead end. Symbian^4 was supposed to be a UI rewrite, but it failed. The promised improvements to S^3 have been slow in coming. (Still no Qt 4.7...!)
How is Symbian a success at this point? What reason would Elop -- or anyone else -- have to believe that the existing software development structure at Nokia could substantially improve this situation?
Comparing market share of Symbian devices to iPhone or Android is like comparing market share of bicycles to market share of cars.
Symbian OS has several version. The version that ships in volume powers devices like Nokia C1-01 http://store.nokia.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/productdeta... or worse. It's not the same product as iPhone or Android or even the old Palm OS shipped on Treo.
The share of Symbian OS devices shipping a version comparable to iPhone or Android is a blip on the radar. A drop in the ocean. And a peasant among Kings.
No, that's a misunderstanding. The C1 and its ilk are not Symbian devices.
Most of Nokia's cheap phones are on the Series 40 platform, which is a closed "non-smart" OS (that has nevertheless grown some fairly smart features recently, like QWERTY keyboards and a HTML browser).
I think integrating would be better, because it seems wrong to judge a products "success" only at some specific instant of time, rather than judging it over a full period of time.
The sign of the first derivative only gives you the present rate of adoption/abandonment of the platform, while integrating gives you a measure of success over the platform's entire existence.
I was just answering his question. Thank you for defining the opposing view quantitatively. I have never used a nokia phone, but certainly I would count myself a success if I had area under the curve like that.
Pretty much since the time it was called EPOC. It failed to grow and support more resources, as phones became more powerful than the desktop computers of the time it was designed in, and it's no longer suited for current smartphones. It still excels on the low end, where neither Android nor WP7 reach.
yes but MS-DOS was followed up by windows 3.1 and then windows 95 both of which were a huge success. What followed up symbian was not. I think this is very sensible for them to focus on hardware while let somebody else do the software. Though I must agree their choice of MSFT is startling. I expected them to fragment Android even further. Glad that didn't happen.
I'm actually not surprised by the choice of wp7, and not simply because the new ceo is ex-MS. Going with Android would make Nokia just another Sony/Samsung/HTC, but throwing all of their eggs in the WP7 basket at least gives them a chance to maintain some relevance as a distinct entity. It's going to be rough on the hardware guys though, making every new phone with a Windows logo on it.
Because there is such a limited range of Winpho7 handsets (and as a matter of personal opinion, I feel they're all token efforts) Nokia can step in and become "the" Windows phone handset. Microsoft needed a hardware partner that was all in with them, not diddling android on the side.
If you put out android phones, you're just another fish in a sea of commodity handsets, no matter how you differentiate your product.
But they're doing it as an afterthought. They're committed to Android, and are supporting wp7 to cover their bases. Nokia's going all in, which would position them at the top of the WP7 hierarchy. If wp7 is a hit, Nokia rides the wave back to relevance, If not, well, they tried.
> would position them at the top of the WP7 hierarchy
This is a mistake many Microsoft partners make. Nobody but Microsoft is at the top of the WP7 hierarchy. If WP7 is a success, Nokia's efforts will be rewarded by lots of competition with more money (because they are already riding the other hit, Android), not relevance.
The only way you could say Symbian was an abject failure is by comparing it to Android or iOS. Before those two systems came out, Symbian was the best mobile OS that was available.
I agree that Nokia is better at hardware than software, but I wouldn't go so far as to call Symbian a complete failure. It served its purpose at its time and did it well.
[My old N70 with S60 from years ago ran a python interpreter on it. Can iOS do that? :) ]
It's biggest issue was probably fragmentation.
There were too many releases - Symbian 3, 1st Edition, Symbian 2, 3rd Edition etc...
That made it difficult to write software that could target more than a handful of the latest models. And with so many models available, the audience you reached was significantly less.
> - CEO quickly decides that the O/S developed in house is not worth maintaining. And that the right O/S is no other than Microsoft's offering
And it's even better when you factor in that in each case there is a viable and much better suited free and open option available. Linux would have made a much better choice as a transitional platform from IRIX.
It's nepotism on the corporate level & just like nepotism will destroy the morale of a department, this kind of nepotism will destroy the morale of an entire company.
> Linux would have made a much better choice as a transitional platform from IRIX.
It would have, but this was 1998, so very few of us knew this at the time. I don't know if you remember the tech zeitgeist in 1998, but Linux was still a pretty hardcore geek alternative at the time, maybe like Vim today. NT had things like journaled filesystems.
You can delve into history to see what the Linux community was talking about at the time:
"Intel and Netscape are now officially investors in Red Hat Software. A year ago such a thing would have been almost unthinkable. But times have changed."
"With this release, the GNOME desktop is reaching a usable state."
"Expect that, with the introduction of pre-installed Linux systems from vendors like Gateway, IBM, Dell or others, the number of people searching out a Linux VAR in order to get a pre-installed Linux system will rapidly dwindle."
"140,000 Mexican school labs to be outfitted with Linux and GNOME." (That was the "Red Escolar" or "Scholar Net" project. Its failure is described in http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/08/45737: "RedEscolar, or "Scholar Net," has put computers in 4,500 schools, but fewer than 20 are equipped with GNU/Linux machines. The rest are running Windows 95 or 98.".)
So, from the standpoint of 2011, it's easy to see that committing head-on to Linux could have saved SGI. But, at the time, it was a risky decision.
They did actually start to hitch their wagon to Linux a year later: Scott Bekker "SGI Backs Away from Windows NT - Silicon Graphics - Company Business and Marketing". ENT. FindArticles.com. 11 Feb, 2011. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FOX/is_15_4/ai_55675...
Rick Belluzzo was the CEO who made the NT decision. WP says had been working at HP for the last 23 years, not Microsoft, but he did take a job at Microsoft after being deposed at SGI. WP also says his only degree is a BS in accounting from Golden Gate University, a vocational school, so he's probably not very smart.
Here's what he said about working with Bill Gates: "I was always surprised how much Bill knew. I wonder how you find time in the day to be on top of how many things Bill seemed to be on top of. Bill is so passionate about technology, and he really is in the right role to focus the vast majority of his time."
To me, that sounds like typical non-hacker cluelessness. So maybe it's not that surprising that Rick was blind to the finer points of technical risk, compatibility, portability, and how the free-software community worked. (He was also largely responsible for committing HP to Itanic, effectively killing PA-RISC.)
The the historic state of Linux at the time makes all the difference. I should have been more general and said "Open Platform." Because at the time BSD was a much less risky choice -- it was more mature & didn't have the GPL license stigma being pushed so hard.
The outcome of the SGI WinNT decision is even more interesting when juxtaposed with Apple's decisions during the same time period.
The adoption & use of FreeBSD as the base of OS X's Posix layer shows how SGI could have gained all the benefit of a set of core tools that they needed to stop spending money on maintaining while still retaining control of the best parts of IRIX.
In 1998 both Apple and SGI were on the ropes. Apple embraced and integrated open source, SGI turned to a closed platform. Apple immediately got geeks like me on-board (still have my OS X 10.0.x disk around here somewhere). The difference between the two companies & where they stand now is the ultimate example of how open source can help a corporation succeed.
Apple was pushing very hard at the time to get geeks on. They actually flew their evangelist and lead dev for OS 7 out to my undergrad CompSci program in '99. They really wanted to get a foothold with a dev community & integrating FreeBSD not only allowed them to save on the cost of developing a whole new posix layer, but also was a great way to get a new community of developers interested in the platform.
The Apple story is interesting. I switched from Windows to Mac in 2000 to get on the OS X Public Beta, and it really was all about the BSD underpinnings for me.
But at that point Apple was already on an upward trajectory thanks to the iMac and iBook, with the iPod to come the following year. Granted OS 9 was a dog that has long since seen its day, and the technology in OS X was necessary to create a modern operating system that would enable the kind of UX that Jobs sought. But I question how much of it can really be credited to open source or the geek early adopters per se; certainly it helped, but was it pivotal?
Yeah, I guess it does sound like I'm crediting Open Source and the geeks with singlehandedly saving Apple.
I don't think it was open source itself that saved Apple, but the decision -- as revolutionary as it was at the time -- proved to be an excellent business decision. They added value to their product (hardware sales) by integrating Open Source. And as a bonus, they appealed to a specific audience without having to invest significant resources in selling to that audience.
It was a brilliant business decision because it not only opened a new channel of potential customers, it opened up a whole new set of possibilities for integrating Open Source software; they could leverage the movement. And that's really the significance of the decision in this context.
Apple, Nokia and SGI all focused on their core business -- making hardware -- but only Apple saw the value of leveraging a movement to add value to their hardware/brand. All three were in desperate positions, but only Apple saw the merit of leveraging the Open Source movement for the good of the business.
Where Nokia could have built on the goodwill of their brand by adopting an open and vibrant platform -- one where they could have as much control as they desired -- they have chosen to chain their fortune to a third party that has relatively little vested in their success.
The biggest irony here (other than Apple's role in Nokia's demise) is that choosing Android comes with very little risk compared to the risk that Apple took: there's ongoing development underwritten by a single organization; there's no licensing or quality stigma about the platform; there's a worldwide consortium of companies already using the platform; and there's already a significant and growing market share.
They have missed the opportunity to leverage the movement.
Actually, I think you are confusing things. Rich Belluzzo worked at HP, where he convinced the company to reduce development of PA and HP/UX, favoring Windows and Itanic. He then went to SGI, where he convinced the company to license its IP to Nvidia, support NT on x86 and other stupid ideas. He then went to MSN and it became obvious, at least for me, he was working for Redmond all that time.
I don't disagree with you in general, but IRIX was a dog of an OS. They dominated in hardware, but the OS was always something you just had to live with.
A dog by what metric? In 1994 IRIX was the first 64 bit Unix kernel running on the first 64 bit workstation. In 1997, the same IRIX 6.5 could run on machines from 100Mhz/16MB to 512 cpus monsters. IRIX had really a nice, easy user interface, and many features (real-time IOs, /hw virtual filesystems giving a hint of /proc and /sys long before they came into existence, modular kernel, full 32 bits compatibility on 64 bits machines...) that were long to come on other OS.
It had real time I/O. It had the best user interface at the time, with super fast scalable vector graphics for everything in '94. (Modern desktops have caught up some 13 years later). It had usable 64 bits everything before anyone else - R10000 was generally available in '95.
They were insanely fast compared to the Sun and Digital stations of the time - the only competitor was Digital Alpha, and IRIX beat Ultrix to the ground and mopped the floor with it.
These were the days of multiculture, where my employer insisted on having several Alphas, Suns, SGIs, RS/6000 and more to make sure we're not locked to any specific vendor.
In the press conferences, they stressed that they're going to contribute to WP7 ecosystem (by bringing OVI maps, and their expertise with developing for range hw range, or something along those lines).
- Total domination of their own field
- Resting on laurels while others snatch the market from under them
- Panic
- Get a CEO from Microsoft
- CEO quickly decides that the O/S developed in house is not worth maintaining. And that the right O/S is no other than Microsoft's offering
- Company continues dive to irrelevance, albeit at a much faster rate than before
Well, the last one hasn't happened to Nokia. yet.
Goodbye old Nokia. You will be missed.