Everything and the Mobile Software Universe…

Despite all what can be read everywhere, Nokia is still an incredible company:

• They have a formidable supply chain (and you have when you are selling arounf half a billions phones a year)
• They are the only phone brand who is making money from emerging countries
• They have an incredible story of reinventing themselves from paper factory to wheel, TV set, phones and network equipments, now why not services?

For me they have everything in hand to succeed and stay the undisputed leader. Even if lately Nokia has been under fire, with its first loss in ten years, they are actively pursuing new ways to recover

• Services startegy, with a lot of acquisitions around OVI (Dopplr, Plazes, Navteq, Trolltech, Symbian, Plum, cellity, etc. See this url for a full list: Nokia acquisitions)
• Hardware differentiation: netbook (nokia booklet 3G)  and widening Intel cooperation (check my article around this here)
• Software consolidation to allow common deployment accross the 3 Nokia’s device software platforms: S40 for low-end phones, Symbian new S60, called Symbian^4 and the next Maemo 6

The last point was, for me, the best way to make OVI appstore a success, to allow developers to target hundreds of millions of phones, then billions in few years … and Nokia didn’t and won’t, for now, deliver it, here is why:

The first part is in this “Nokia Software Strategy WhitePaper” from December this year (2009), found at Nokia Hosted Presentations :
The following graphic speaks for itself:

S40 development will be limited to java:

• no Web runtime, so no webkit, but we are talking here of low cost phones, low data throughput,  low CPU, low RAM so this is not a big surprise (WebKit is not exactly an embedded browser)
• NO QT!  j2me is here for a while…

This is pretty clear : Nokia didn’t manage/want to open-up S40 with an externalizable SDK, and this is a big surprise! For the little story OpenPlug has made it for the very very low cost SonyEricsson J132, just to say that it is possible.
So what happened? Political internal war? Lack of vision? Lack of resources?  I bet on the first one, Nokia is such a big company that refocusing and putting energy in a single direction is really difficult.

It doesn’t stop here : Nokia is developing two incompatible UI frameworks on top of Qt, one for Maemo 6 and one for Symbian^4. So, as a corollary, there is NO chance that a Maemo application will be Symbian^4 compatible without a complete rewrite of the presentation layer, bad news for the developers.
To have all the details, check this thread and this thoughtful post: Maemo 6 loosing source compatibility with plain Qt, and Symbian^4, to sum it up, here is what happened:

1. Qt is an “old generation” UI framework with WinXP like normal widgets, no animation, no fanciness
2. A QGraphicsView has been added to allow the creation of animated and fancy widget, like the iPhone ones for example
3. BUT : no standard widgets has been created on top of it
4. The Nokia Memo team has created its own set of new generation widgets called Maemo Direct UI (Maemo DUI)
5. …and the Symbian team also! for Orbit now called 4 Symbian^4 UI framework.

So here we are, to add a simple button, a list or a table or any UI building blocks, a developper will have to use different APIs to do the same thing, once for Maemo, the other for Symbian, aleviating nearly all the Qt advantages and promises for UI commonality.

What I believe the Symbian and Maemo teams in Nokia need to do now is get together and fix this before it’s too late

Mark Wilcox

And I can’t agree more…they have to fix it before releasing it to the wild.

Again political fights, point of views, and over engineering seem to be the root cause of this non-sense, but perhaps also the Nokia DNA : Nokia is building products, not platforms (if the S60 licensing failure and application development nightmare is any indication of it…), and this is an area where they really need to reinvent themselves if they are serious about their services strategy.

Of course OVI appstore won’t fall apart because of this Maemo/Symbian split, but it will bring more hurdles to application developers, so less applications, and less innovation to the Nokia platform. S40 remaining closed is a much higher subject of concern, as it really looks like a missed opportunity. For the first time I do think that Samsung with Bada (check my article here) has a more pragmatic and comprehensive platform software strategy than Nokia (times are changing…).

Any comments?

[Thomas Menguy is looking at why Nokia and Intel are more and more collaborating lately]

After the ofono initiative (Telephony Stack coming from Nokia, integrated in Intel new OS, Moblin, and Nokia one, Maemo) and Intel licensing the Nokia HSPA/3G modem IP , the honeymoon seems in good shape!

The Intel and Nokia effort includes collaboration in several open source mobile Linux software projects. Intel will also acquire a Nokia HSPA/3G modem IP license for use in future products

Intel/Nokia Press release

Nokia has been in trouble recently:

• Market share and revenues are eroding , down to 35% for smartphone marketshare, first loss for 10 years
• Lost lackluster as technology provider (at east in the consumer space)
• Is looking to reinvent itself (again) as a service provider and a full vertical player… but OVI is, as of now, underwhelmig

Intel  seems to be doing really well right now but:

• It is still missing the ball in the embedded space (netbook are only a fraction of it)
• Atom is selling well … but at a low price : higher end centrino platform has been cannibalized, so revenue is suffering
• Still completely tied to MS Windows for software: Netbook were not selling at all when they were Linux based, market took off when WinXP has been put on it. It can be seen as a strength … but MS has failed in the device space, for years, so Intel x86 advantage is alleviated by all the new embedded OS for whom the ARM processor is THE choice leading to the next point …
• …Qualcomm is now the Intel archrival, with cutting edge Wireless, HUGE IP bag and full system integration (and, as Intel, a ton of cash).
• Is looking to reinvent itself (windriver deal) as a system provider more than a chip (CPU, discrete component) one.

Nokia is moving fast to become a vertical player, from services to devices

• it is now organized in a by platform silos: S40  / S60 / Maemo
• putting strength in its software and integration
• Lots of acquisitions around OVI and services.

As a Software guy I can’t retain myself to comment about this S60 ditching in favor of Maemo : Symbain is a robust OS, with cutting edge wireless capabilities. Where it is really poor is around it’s programming model (way too much over engineered) … and it’s user experience (UX) (S60 is just very dated and poorly conceived, no homogeneity nor UX guidelines)….
Do you really think that changing the low level OS will change anything? Linux is no better than Symbian kernel, just more hype around it, the UX layer has to be done from scratch by Nokia … Hum sounds the same as S60 no?
Will have to wait and see but Qt is still not in Maemo: N900 is GTK based…really old tech…and as difficult to program as S60.

Nokia is trying to be Google (or an Apple/Google hybrid), and, as Google, has an issue with deployment of its own services on a wide range of devices, what can be the solution?

Is it Maemo? I don’t think so: If yes Nokia will have to deploy it like Android…they have failed in the past with S60. Maemo won’t be the only Nokia Platform for a long time : They  need to commonalize efforts between their 3 platforms (Maemo,S60,S40)
They have Qt:

• Ported to S60 to replace its programming model and allows a better UX framework and developers friendliness
• Maemo 6 : at last, Qt based and Maemo 5 gets its Qt shot also
• But the real missing one, the one Nokia sells hundreds millions every year : where is Qt and deployment solution for S40 ???? This would be the real killer one with bilion of platforms deployed in a few years …

Intel is also moving vertically, trying to sell systems instead of chipsets and get out of the MS Windows locked-in: Here comes Moblin, a new OS … with, for now, no traction from OEMs (Who are too in love with Android, but it may change because an OEM doesn’t like to be locked in by a software platform, look at Samsung Bada for example…).

Really a big driving OEM is missing to finish this system vision, to help Intel grow its expertize in the area…And after all why not Nokia?

What would be the incentive for Nokia?:

• If Intel delivers (and it is a big IF) , so if their HW embedded platform is head and shoulders above the competition (Moorestown and its successors), Nokia will have a big differentiator before the competition, IF the software is optimized on it
• This is were I really see a merge between Maemo and Moblin (I bet on this one ) so Nokia will cut dev costs again, with its hardware partner
• Adding Intel as its supplier, Nokia will have a real multi supplier strategy, so less risk (cost and supply)

I really think we should look at those two closely in the following months….

What do you think?