Nokia strategy has 3 platforms evolving Series40, symbian and MeeGo and still there are alot series30 devices selling really good on the extremely low badget (below 50$) segment.

The really bad move from Nokia that really killed today’s symbian touch devices was the bad hardware they used. So outdated that made the likes of 5800 and n97 being even worse than they look with the outdated (to many people) UI. Although I like that UI and there are a lot of people used on it we live on the iPhone era unfortunately where the simplicity of the UI as well as the bells and whistles will make a phone look better. That is actually the big difference bettween Maemo and MeeGo. They want to make it simpler, not for geeks. But unfortunately there will be no backward compatibility. (and im not so sure but I thing they moved from debian to redhat which is not a good move for the community)

I agree with you that Nokia’s PR as well as marketing really sucks. They make some good moves now to promote N8 but I don’t know how good enough are to make the masses want to have that phone. As for Steve Jobs we all know how good he is in Marketing but also how much hated he is by many for Apple’s policy on…everything!!! Let’s say he is a God in the US but not so loved on the rest of the world!

Other than that I guess Nokia also learned from their mistakes when picking hardware for their future device. There is an agreement with Qualcomm that gives us hints that Nokia is going to introduce on some of their future devices the really powerful snapdragon processor.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/17/nokia-to-splice-symbian-and-snapdragon-says-qualcomm-ceo/

A for Intel they are not really into the smartphone market but they will earn alot into having a non M$ OS for their future netbooks and tablets which will be easy to use and also be similar with that of a phone (doesn’t that reminds you the iPhone and iPad which they use the same platform). In other words they want to have an OS that will work really fast on their atom based devices as well as have a better and easier UI than any other Windows or Linux based device. But Atom is not yet ready for really low power consuming devices. Neither Intel has an alternative non ARM processor for that type of devices! But if they make the step to develop one I’m sure Nokia will be the first one to use it for their MeeGo devices!

Unfortunately only time can tell what’s coming, so I can’t be the Oracle :p

For the success of MeeGO it depends on how Nokia portrays and market it . For now the problems I forsee are that the first MeeGO device from Nokia will have ARM processor not Intel’s now will Intel allow that to happen? beside which ARM processor ? not the same old ARM Cortex they have in N900 which is going to be a disaster for Nokia as people could perceive it as N900 re branded .

In my opinion Nokia also has to rework on their marketing strategies , a friend of my mine once said , Nokia people are great engineers just not great marketers , Olli Pekka or who ever his successor will be should make notes from Steve Jobs marketing strategy and techniques

http://mynokiablog.com/2010/05/29/video-meego-qa-with-alberto-torres-nokia-evp-meego-computers-at-openmobile/

All the coming flagship phones from Nokia will be using MeeGo…So symbian will just the the OS between S40 and MeeGo!!! We will see it in both powerfull devices and cheap not so good devices but the top devices from Nokia will use MeeGo…and S40 is far from dead too!!!

so we have (according to the site above) th following Key points:

* MeeGo phone being announced this year
* MeeGo phone will push the boudaries of processing power
* MeeGo phone will be a very high end product
* MeeGo is an opportunity to create something well beyond what others are doing
* MeeGo phone is step 5 of 5 and intended for mass market
* MeeGo phone will be something everyone wants to own
* MeeGo phone will try to satisfy all needs into one plate
* MeeGo phone will be capacitive, more stylish and more beautiful with simpler UI that average users will find as equally compelling as tech leaders.
* MeeGo has potential to be something deeper than typical smartphone
* Maemo apps not directly backwards compatible with MeeGo
* Nokia N8 will be Nokia’s flagship in a few months
* All future flagships will be built on MeeGo
* MeeGo phone will be on Nseries (not rumoured Sseries)
* MeeGo will have higher experience level than Symbian
* Symbian^3 and MeeGo will have certain minimum base level specification to ensure apps created on one device works in another.
* N8 is first step in reclaiming momentum at high end.
* MeeGo is the next step.

Coming back to N8 , I hope Nokia has given some out for testing and also incorporating the feedback they are getting . I had the N97 a month before it’s official launch ( I became the second person in the world to post it’s unboxing snaps ) at the time I informed Nokia Paksitan that it’s user available phone memory is going to be a problem at just 50 MB which has fallen to just 5 MB within one day of my regular usage with updates and Nokia Messaging . ( I never made it public as I’m no Eldar ) I was told that ‘ not every user is like you , you are a power user which general public is not ‘ 3 months after it’s launch they started hearing the same thing the world over .

I’m not giving up on N8 , I may not buy one for myself ( I already have 3 screen widget based desktop on my N97 Mini with SPB Shell ) but I will buy it for my wife to replace her N86 8 MP .

Talking about Symbian ^4 as far as my information goes it’s a totally new Symbian built from ground up ( or something like that ) and first devices are expect in Q1 or Q2 2011 some 6 – 12 months after launch of N8 and many people are asking if N8 will get a Symbian^4 upgrade or it will be another N900 , hyped and abandoned.

I agree Symbian ^3 is much more improved than existing Symbian flavors and N8 has some nifty features to it but I’m not going to invest into it when I know that the next best thing is some 6 mths away ( I’m no fan of MegaPixels and still take pix at 5 MP on my 12 MP Cam )

For N900 – I’m no Linux guy , have no programming background but I got the N900 and never want to let go. Call it a love / hate relationship it may not have all the bells and whistles of an iPhone ( I have that too ) but N900′s user experience is such that it’s simply marvelous , I again say that if Nokia would have paid more attention to it , it may have given Android a hard time from the start.

I never said that N8 is the flagship device but Nokia’s future in high end phones depend on it . Nokia does has a diverse portfolio launch planned for future including the Nokia C3 which surely is going to be a big hit given it’s price point , feature set and mass market appeal along with other new QWERTY devices .

Through my post , I don’t mean that Nokia is going for a disaster which Sony Ericsson has become but it’s going to loose it’s market share in terms of monetary value as average revenue per phone which Nokia is getting is falling so to make the same amount as before , Nokia now has to resort to sell more units in it’s mid and low tier category while it’s competitors are targeting the high end market where although volumes are small but profits are much high .

The beauty of Nokia is that it has a strong presence in low and mid tier category but it should also concentrate on high end too to increase it’s net worth

As for Symbian^4 you try to compare things the wrong way. We have an open source operating system like linux. Just think of Ubuntu ver A lets say that uses Linux kernel version A but there is already out there linux kernel version C. Canonical is working on the next version of Ubuntu which will use kernel version B. Does that mean you will not get Ubuntu cause they don’t use the latest version. In technology unfortunately you should never wait. You should buy what you need at the specific time. Symbian OS works that way similar with Linux. They release a specific version which meet some standards and then the vendors take the source code and make all the changes they want to put it on their hardware. Symbian work on the next version without that meaning they abandoned the previous version trying to fix bugs for it with the help of vendors…vendors on the other side may play with the source code and built some features of the next version of symbian if they have at least part of the unfinished code (thats what nokia did with Symbian^1 adding features like kinetic scrolling and homescreen from Symbian^2). So you cant wait for a Symbian^4 device because by the time it will be out you will be hearing about Symbian^5 & ^6 and how more superior would be. Thats how things work on Open source and should be working if we want stability…if not you go the “do it yourself way” but Nokia won’t let you do it…at least for Symbian devices, at least for now!

So if you like the new UI of Symbian^3 you get it, maybe its not the big change but it is much much better than Symbian^1. Personally I wouldn’t buy N8 cause of the lack of a physical keyboard…maybe N98 with Symbian^3 would be for me. Some people that also like the S60 UI may be alienated by the UI of Symbian^4 so being new doesn’t mean being better.

And lets go to N900. Nokia would never support anything else than the version of the OS installed on the device. You have to pay to get a new version and when I say pay I mean buy a new phone with the latest. Unfortunately on a device running linux things are not going the way vendors want and thats mainly because of the GPL. So unofficially N900 can get an update to MeeGo. The very first versions are out there for N900 but Nokia won’t support them just like any router manufacturer won’t support the use of OpenWRT firmware!

I agree though that Maemo has potential…either as MeeGo or Maemo, Nokia has plans to release 10 devices based on it till 2012. N900 was just the begining and I really wait to see a smaller and lighter device on Maemo/MeeGo. But that kind of device still is not for the majority of people and sure not for people who are used on iPhones. Such phones are for people who are into technology, not for people who just want to do simple things (and thats the main reason iPhone sells so good other than the marketing and the apple brand).

Most people wont care about multitasking and the OS behind the device as long as they don’t want to do many things with their phones. And don’t forget that Nokia follows the same policy all these years…different needs different phones. There is not a real flagship phone but they have different sollutions for everyone. See how they still sell S60 ver. 3 devices like the e72 and how good they are. Once upon a time they had their flagship phone (n95) but now its not like that they turned back to what they were doing and believe me N8 for me is not their new flagship phone…its just what 5800 was when it was first released. The first of its kind and they want it to be good this time and not a fiasco!!! We will see much more devices on Symbian^3 some cheap some more expensive to go side by side with the new iPhone. Let’s not judge Nokia by just N8…

I’m not talking about N8′s features but will you buy a Symbian^3 device when you know that Symbian^4 is around the corner ? – in words of Jo Harlow – Vice President, Category Management Live Category at Nokia ” Symbian 4 is a very different UI from Symbian ^3 . S^3 has the same Symbian structure as earlier with lot of improvements for graphics , with S^4 we are moving away from familiar and moving into something very new and focus on personalization and customized
content you want to interact with ”

N900 is a Geek phone but the phone had potential , find me one phone from Nokia’s which stands at par with N900 , it’s open source , it’s powerful and it ‘had’ a future , it was never meant to be an iPhone killer but if Nokia had played it right with applications it would have been an Android killer .

For MeeGo , the official Nokia statement is that it’s not for N900 it’s for tablet , netbooks , ebookreaders , car info systems and a whole range of devices but not for N900 atleast not officially

First mistake the first symbian^3 device is N8… Asian manufacturers will use Symbian^2 for MOAP…and also you should note that no MOAP device is actually a smartphone and has no similarity with S60…they just use the core of the OS (Symbian or Linux) and their own UI…so there is no similarity at all with what Nokia, SE, Samsung and all the other manufacturers do in their symbian device…
Thats why Nokia went from Symbian^1 to Symbian^3 and thats what the others will do…AND take a look at that : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11613_First_Symbian2_phones_ship_in_.php

“Incidentally this news would suggest that Sharp and Fujistu can be ruled out of the list of Asian manufacturers who might be producing the first Symbian^3 phone. Symbian^2 is likely to be the version of choice In Japan until the next generation platform (which is likely to be based on Symbian^4 or Symbian^5) is ready in late 2011 early 2012.”

N8 will be one of the best phones out there spec wise…12mp camera…great multitasking…usb on the go…. and you keep rantling about the User Interface…sorry but do you know what Qt is and the full support from N8…not to mention that Qt will replace Carbide in Symbian^4 but even that way it may not be so eye candy like the iPhone but still its so easy to use and better than Symbian^1

N900 is the geek phone….and talking about it you should be enough informed about how linux communities work..so Im really sorry you can’t touch it…N900 was never meant to be an iPhone killer or a flagship phone…its a phone for the few.

as for Meego you will see it on N900 as well as many other devices…from tablets, netbooks to smartphones…just be patient!!!