Submitted by “Nokia Conversations caught up with Nokia’s CTO Rick Green at this years Mobile World Congress being held in Barcelona and asked him about the future of Symbian, MeeGo and Qt, as you all know a radical change is coming to Nokia’s strategy soon with the announcement of the new partnership with Microsoft, on Friday. A partnership that has been leaving Symbian and MeeGo users and developers alike with mixed feelings as to the future of these two OSs”
It all would be fine if Nokia had a better strategy for the transition period and (possibly) did not bend to Microsoft requests. The way it is now it is not good for current Nokia line of products.
If you are a customer, why would you buy a “smartphone” from Nokia if even they say they are not good products (that is what implicit on the annunciation and on press now) and in a very short period of time they will be canned?
If you are a developer, why would you “waste” your time if you will not be able to carry on with the regular development cycle?
Clearly, Nokia should have give a clear transition path for both, users and developers. For users, Nokia should produce “smartphones” (at least some), that would be able to be upgraded to use WP7. For developers, it should guarantee a “smooth” (as possible) transition through the use of an API that could be used on both platforms, i.e., Qt. It for sure would take some time, but it would assure an acceptable path for developers.
They did nothing like that, that is why consumers have objections to buy Nokia products now, and developers are angry and afraid of work on something that may not bring food to their tables.
All in all, that is why Nokia got a deep hit on stock market. Their management brought to the market one of the most unprofessional, stupid, corporation turn I ever saw.
Edited 2011-02-19 11:26 UTC
No Qt on Windows Phone. Rick Green emphasizes how hard it is to integrate Qt with Phone 7, because Silverlight is so really good integreted, it’s unclear where the app stops and the OS begins, …, …
I don’t believe it. But it’s true.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-notifies-developers-that-q…
Qt, the framework build to do cross-platform development – would be /the/ Nokia-specific strength to add to Windows Phone.
I wouldn’t mind Qt coming to Windows Phone one day, provided it becomes dramatically more mature. QML vs XAML is in it’s current state, a complete joke.
However, it’s really the best that non .NET programmers have. They have good ideas, they just require more incubation. If I were Nokia I’d be pushing Qt big, because it goes beyond mobile phones.
My strategy would be replacing traditional Qt with a declarative Qt based on QML (basically, create a native Silverlight clone) and get it running fast. People would fall over themselves to use it.
Let’s also not forget that WinCE which WP7 builds on, has a C++ version of Silverlight. So who know’s what Microsoft is planning in terms of native code.
That’s what Nokia is doing, putting QML over QSceneGraph that sits on top of OpenGL & is highly accelerated. This skips the legacy QPainter paths completely.
On non-WP platforms, that is.
Well, those were certainly comforting words. As Rich Green paints it WP7 may or may not be the ultimate future of Nokia devices, depending on the success of the next MeeGo device(s) in the marketplace. So basically MeeGo maintains the “experimental OS” status that it has had the whole time up to now, while WP7 takes over from Symbian as the “mainstream” option. Just as importantly, in the third interview he reassures us that Qt is healthy and explains the reasoning for not porting it to WP7.
On a side note, I do believe it’s “Rich” Green and not “Rick”–at least that’s what he’s always gone by up to now. For reference, he used to be the the Executive VP of Software at Sun (basically the “software chief”) before the Oracle takeover. At Sun he was heavily involved with Java and Solaris, and he generally strikes me as a smart man who knows what he is talking about and understands the dynamics of the developer community. I do wonder a little bit though if there is any clash of cultures with Microsoft, not to mention an ex-Microsoftie CEO
. Not only has Green consistently supported the open-source philosophy for many years, but back in the day he was one of the primary voices arguing for Sun to file suit against Microsoft due to their incompatible JVM! …. All water under the bridge now though it seems, as nowadays he talks up the elegance of WP7 and the good work the “guys at Microsoft” have done. How the times change…. 
Edited 2011-02-19 11:40 UTC
I recommend reading this blog post + comments as well:
http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/18/buckets-of-cold-water
Thanks for that!
Btw, that blog also links to this blog, where a nice plaintext summary of Green’s comments can be found for those who don’t want to sit through the videos:
http://mynokiablog.com/2011/02/16/nokia-cto-rich-green-talks-meego-…
Edited 2011-02-19 14:24 UTC
Thanks for the link. Hopefully, Qt will continue to improve on smartphones and reach a point where it can be deployed for cross-platform phone development and doesn’t became just one more trigger of the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance).
If you want cross platform mobile developement waith no more and use Mono.
Edited 2011-02-19 17:15 UTC
Nokia is very much aware of the fact that Qt has a huge impact on developers and is one of its best move till now, then what make u all think that Nokia is going to throw that away and not support it in future.
What Nokia did can prove to be a huge success in long run not only for Nokia but also to developers because now developers have an added choice of creating apps using WP7 and selling it worldwide.
Edited 2011-02-21 07:13 UTC
Why would they make Qt even close to a priority? Few people have started to develop for it, WP7 makes its useful days limited on the high end. Qt isn’t used on any other platform really, so it’s usefulness as a cross-platform is fairly limited.
semi off topic..
I was wondering whether a Nokia/Win 7 phone would seriously have a crack at emerging markets where the exponential growth lie,… thinking that it would be too expensive compared to others.
Then I read this article.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/02/18/nokia.says.windows.ph…
I was wondering the same thing… I guess by the time they transition off of Symbian, though, 1GHz will be considered “low budget”….
They still have S40 and it’s supposed to be two or so more years of Symbian^1 (S60?) and Symbian^3 devices.
Two years would also give faster hardware and maybe also a chance to make WP demand less.
Even if I personally think that there would have been better choices for Nokia than Microsoft WP7, Stephen Elop did a good thing in pointing out a clear direction for the future of Nokia phones. This is something some Nokia executive should have done long time ago. They could have gone Android, they could have gone MeeGo, or even the old Symbian pig if they made it bit QTer, but customers needed a sense of direction.
In the old days it was, we will develop new cool phones, using technologies like Meamo, and later MeeGo, but we only do these to play with the technology, not to sell to serious customers. We will sell them old outdated symbian instead. If you bought a Nokia phone you bought good hardware, but you could never be certain that it would be part of a viable software system. E.g. When they released N900, the first thing they did was to tell their customers that it will run the last version of Meamo, and we will not upgrade it to MeeGo. This is not the way to keep customers.
Now this guy comes along and says we will develop new cool stuff on MeeGo, but we will want to sell you a windows phone, and Symbian will still be around. Sure, there will be a lot of Symbian devices, but most of them will not be smartphones or bought by people who add new apps to their phones and no IT department in their right mind will build their phone services on Symbian based phones like the nokia E series and who is going to buy their MeeGo phone he talks about, more or less directly implies that this is some sort of experimental model whit the main purpose of developing new technologies.
From a business information perspective Nokia still have problems. If you make a decision like Nokia did, it is important that at least their executives support it and stop doing misguided attempts of damage control.
If you need damage control, then perhaps you made the wrong decision in the first place.
I know many people who bought a Nokia E series phone because they are business-oriented phones. No touch, no whiz-bang, a nice qwerty keyboard and support for many standards. In short, the exact opposite of what Nokia’s doing now. WP7 is, if I recall, a touch-only os and won’t fit well on to these types of phones. So, are they just going to let their business users leave and go somewhere else, most likely RIM?
There exist WP phones with real keyboards and I assume this is one of the things Nokia could add, improve upon or change if they needed to, either by themselves or by asking Microsoft for help to do it.
Same with language support and so on.
Edited 2011-02-20 00:40 UTC
Yes, I know, but just having the keyboard isn’t what I meant. I meant the ability to operate the phone completely without touch. Touch screens are good for what they are, but some things (like quickly navigation from one field to the next) are quicker with a keyboard especially if you’re dealing with a program or web page you use regularly.
“corporate doubletalk newspeak, doublethink blah blah blah*
That was a whole lot of nothing…
Edited 2011-02-19 21:29 UTC
+100. Then again, what did you expect? I can’t remember the last time a high-level official in one of these corporate giants actually said something direct and to the point. I think the inability to just tell things like they are must be a requirement for such positions.
Indeed. That’s why these giants will all eventually implode after they gut their interior and build up a facade of investor/shareholder-pleasing bullshit.
Nokia’s dead, time to move on.