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Posts Tagged ‘nokia’

Last August Nokia and Microsoft announced an historic partnership where Microsoft agreed to bring its Office Mobile applications and System Centre Mobile Device Management software to Nokia smartphones, making the devices finally full corporate citizens.

It now appears that something even deeper is going on, as this recent job posting by Microsoft indicates.

We are building a charter which combines .Net Compact Framework (application runtime), Visual Studio for Devices (tooling) and Silverlight Mobile (new presentation layer) into a PU. Our dreams are big and we want to not only shine with Windows Mobile platform but also extend the reach of our developer platform to other dominant industry platforms for Smartphone like Nokia S60.

We are looking for energetic and passionate SDE II candidate for a role in the team that delivers Silverlight Mobile on Nokia S60. This team owns the end to end delivery of the mobile developer platform based on Silverlight and .NET Compact Framework to Nokia S60 devices to start with and would also own the kit that will enable this platform to other Nokia devices in the short term and other Mobile platforms longer term.

It will be a plus for the successful candidate to have some exposure to presentation technologies such WPF/e, Silverlight stack, runtime technologies such as core execution engine, JITing, Garbage collection etc, Mobile development on platforms like Symbian & S60.

We had known for some time that Microsoft intends to bring Silverlight to Nokia’s smartphones, but this is the first indication we have had so far that the .Net CF will come officially to Symbian, and that development will be possible for Nokia using Visual Studio.

Both Microsoft and Nokia are facing challenges to attract developers to their platforms, and in that context the alliance to being better tools to both platforms make perfect sense. At the same time however it does appear that Microsoft is giving away the crown jewels of their new Windows Mobile thrust. All the same however I am sure Microsoft would prefer its development tools on 50% of the smartphone market rather than just 10.

What do our readers think of this move?  Let us know in the comments below.

There has been a lot of people who really should know better decrying the Nokia Microsoft partnership as bringing no value to both parties while not representing any real threat to the main target RIM.

They are of course very wrong.

Most bloggers and even analysts concentrate on the Office Mobile suite coming to Nokia’s Symbian OS, but of course this has never been the real star of the Windows Mobile experience.  The real jewel in the crown is Microsoft System Centre Mobile Device Manager, which brings an extremely detailed level of device management which rivals RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server in granularity of control and tie in Windows Mobile smartphones to the corporate network, just like Windows desktops.

Bringing SCMDM control to Nokia’s E-Series smartphone is a major coupe for the company that, despite massive volume, never really gained a foothold in enterprise. It will finally bring credibility to the company’s enterprise offerings which has seen the same erosion of market share against RIM as Microsoft has.

“The plan is to design System Center so customers will be able to provision applications to the Nokia mobile device, and update the applications, so customers have secure and productive mobile computing experience,” according to a Microsoft spokesperson.

While this advantage to Nokia is clear, the question is of course what it brings to Microsoft. 

Microsoft has developed a number of technologies, like SCMDM, but also like Office Communicator Server, and Sharepoint server, which are pretty amazing but are essentially proprietary solutions for Windows Mobile.  By opening the technology up to other platforms, the likelihood of the services being adopted by enterprises wary of being tied in to one platform increases significantly.

A similar synergistic effect is expected with the now wide adoption of Exchange Activesync, now an expected feature of a smartphone with any enterprise ambitions, and which has helped Microsoft demolish Lotus Notes’s market share from 40% in 2005 to 10% in 2009.

Of course the conclusion most  commenters jump to is that supporting Nokia means Microsoft has no confidence in Windows Mobile.  This ignores Microsoft’s long-standing position on its technologies on other platforms.  Microsoft is happy (or possibly forces to be happy by various anti-trust rulings) to share its technologies with other platforms, which only helps Microsoft by making it the standard,  but they have long said their advantage will be having the best, most full implementation of the technologies, something that can already certainly be said about Exchange server support. Where Microsoft has traditionally fallen down is making their implementation attractive to users due to ease of use issues, but with this being a focus of future versions of Windows Mobile this is not expected to be an issue much longer.

To conclude, RIM should certainly be more and more worried that nearly 80% of the smartphone market will soon support Microsoft technologies, versus their own single-vendor implementation, with no clear route to countering this. They should be worried indeed.

Why is Microsoft Not Winning the Smartphone War?
Microsoft, the personal computer juggernaut, has long dominated the computer industry with their Windows Operating System. Windows has managed to stay dominant and ward off both Apple and the countless versions of Lunix thus far. If Microsoft has been able to do this in the PC industry, why can’t they win in the mobile industry?

It’s personal
A mobile phone is much more personal than a PC. Microsoft’s goal (and how they make money) is to have every person in the world own a PC.

The truth is, there are more phones than PCs in the world today. Because of the huge amount of mobile phones owned, it has given room for six contemporary smartphone operating systems:

• Iphone OS
• Blackberry OS
• Android
• WebOS
• Windows Mobile
• Symbian

Unlike in the desktop/laptop/netbook/nettop/whatever industry, the mobile industry is brimming with competition.

Faster Paced
Microsoft is familiar with releasing an updated version of Windows system roughly every 3-5 years. This differs from the mobile landscape where new smartphone OS are being developed in intervals as little as 6 months.
Take for instance the Iphone’s OS. Each year a new version is debuted.
Android: 1.0 released in late 2008, was updated to 1.5 in early 2009
I could list more examples but it is clear that the industry is filled with constant evolution.
The PC industry evolves in steps. The mobile industry evolves up a hill (constant).

So will Windows Mobile Die?
No,
Windows mobile, or “Windows Phones” are here to stay. Because of the sheer size of the mobile industry there is room for 6 smartphone operating systems. For now, Microsoft is able to afford being ‘late to the game’.
Windows Mobile needs revolution, not evolution
This is where Windows Mobile 7 comes in. Like Windows 7, WM7 it is the opportunity for Microsoft to ‘get it right’. Microsoft is taking the correct path in my opinion, by having WM 6.5 and 7 out in the market at the same time. This way, they can attempt to compete in two different categories:

• 6.5:The all-in-one hardware/software experience (Apple, Palm, RIM’s approach)
• 7: The general operating system for many different types of hardware (Google and Symbian’s approach)

Who will become dominant?
If you are asking my opinion: undoubtedly Google’s Android.
Android is constantly evolving at an alarming rate and it thrives off of ‘the cloud’. Since cloud computing is surely moving mainstream I believe that Android will be the most commonly used smartphone OS.

How Could the others win?
Blackberry: is in a niche market for the business or text-happy consumer; failing to make real cutting-edge progress in multimedia consumption. They need to modify their OS for multimedia consumption and creation.

Iphone: is in too closed of an environment to allow innovation outside of Apple’s own updates. In addition multitasking is completely necessary.

Symbian: Nokia needs to step-up on their hardware’s power. The N-Series, E-Series devices are high-quality but the processors used inside of them are clocked at laughable speed. In addition the S60 email experience is terrible, to say the least. Perhaps the Symbian foundation’s next releases will rapidly improve on this. I am not quite sure yet.

WebOS: Palm has already made an Os that also thrives in ‘the cloud’. Palm’s hardware manufacturing sadly falls short of other manufacturers. Palm should let HTC manufacture their devices and instead put more time and effort into evolving WebOS. In addition, gaming support is necessary for the mainstream consumer.

Windows Mobile: Multi touch, capacitive screens, Zune integration. There are so many opportunities that Microsoft has refused to take advantage of thus far.

Let’s hope for a better tomorrow.

Long live Windows Mobile!

This post was submitted by skyler17.

IntoMobile has done the now classic face-off between these two smartphone titans again, and unsurprisingly, again came down on the side of the HTC Touch Pro 2.

While this comparison is of course completely subjective, it is of note that the Nokia N97 is being widely compared to the device which shares its same form factor, and probably the only place it ever won is on Allaboutsymbian.com

Read the 4 page detailed hands-on comparison here.

Crowing about second place doesn’t often sound very good, but when we are talking about Nokia in the European market, that may be the best that’s available for very long time.  The company, as usual, dominated the 2 million Dutch smartphone market, taking 49.5% of  2008 sales.

Its when you come to number 2 that things get interesting. Windows Mobile champion HTC took 16.6% of the sales, way ahead of media darling, Apple’s iPhone, with only 5.6% of the market share.  The small Taiwanese company even beat global giant Samsung, who achieved only 14.4%, despite the very popular Samsung Omnia.

Of course this news should come as no surprise to regular readers, who will know we reported in October 2008 already that the HTC Touch Diamond was outselling the iPhone in that market.

See the full numbers here.

Via Telecompaper.nl.

UK is not USA, despite having more or less the same language, and one of the ways it shows is in the attitude towards Windows Mobile. While USA has a pretty big downer on the OS, UK is often chosen to launch a new Windows Mobile smartphone.

A recent survey by ZDNET of 400 UK IT professionals shows how this attitude is reflected in business practice.

With over 58% of companies already having smartphones, when it comes to mobile OS use, Windows Mobile is the clear leader, with 47% of companies using that OS.  iPhone owns 20%, Symbian 15%, leaving RIM with around 18%.

When asked which smartphones the IT professionals themselves used, 19% used HTC phones, 16% Blackberry and 14% iPhones. The much promoted Android G1 was only present in 2% of users.

There also seemed some active resistance to the iPhone, with 49% saying the did not plan to adopt it, citing high cost,  lack of full support for Microsoft Exchange (despite Apple’s efforts in this area); ease of management; and a lack of security as the main reasons.

Read the full result of the survey, which seems much too focussed on the iPhone, here.

Gartner doesnt report too well on Windows Mobile, but their results is still an occasion for some discussion, be it positive or negative.

On this occasion the results could be interpreted rather positively.

According to Gartner 4.7 million Windows Mobile phones were sold to consumers in the last 3 months of 2008, which of course included the festive period.  This is a 16% increase over sales in the previous Quarter (3.95 million) and a 7.8% increase Year on Year from 4.35 million.  While Windows Mobile even saw a slight increase in market share from 11.9 to 12.4%,  which should (but will not) silence critics who claim the operating system ins increasingly unpopular. In fact, more and more people chose it each year.

Windows Mobile is of course beset by competitors, the noisiest one being Apple of course with its mobile OSX. While the iPhone saw a much increased market share after dropping its price 50% from $399 to $199 (leading to a doubling of sales) the operating system in fact saw a 16% drop in sales (oddly, as much as Windows Mobile increased) between Q3 and Q4. Quite contrary to the notion that the iPhone is on a meteoric path to take over the smartphone world, it seems more likely Apple would have give the iPhone away fro free to see the same increase in market share as previously.

Windows Mobile’s net greatest competitor is RM, an they are doing very well indeed, increasing sales by 85% YoY and taking a commanding lead in the Not-Nokia segment, with 7.4 million devices sold. Of course Q4 2008 was also a launch quarter for RIM, with the release of the Blackberry Storm, but one can not really take away from their success, and it does suggest to me that manufacturers may be remiss in not addressing the front-facing QWERTY market where RIM truly rules.

On the Windows Mobile side, HTC and Samsung are both doing very well, with HTC increasing its own-branded device sales by 26% to 1.6 million.  This figure excludes operator-branded devices like the T-Mobile G1 for example. The Samsung Omnia was a hit for Samsung, with sales tripling in Europe due to the device, and being largely responsible for the 9.6% increase in smartphone sales in Europe.

Samsung has of course moved its Omnia brand to Symbian, but that OS saw a huge drop in sales of more that 20% YoY, with nearly 5 million less handsets sold than in 2007. It is therefore unknown whether the Omnia HD would replicate the success of the Windows Mobile powered predecessor.

Garnet does not provide an outlook for Q1 2009, but if we could risk our own prediction, it is likely there will be a decline in the market in 2009. With a lack of any significant product launches in Q1 2009 Windows Mobile may lose some market share, and its not certain it will maintain its lead over the iPhone (which of course itself is a stale product), but Q2 2009 will likely see a significant bounce back, with many attractive devices by many OEM’s being released, and the rest of 2009 should remain exciting for Windows Mobile followers.

Read the full Gartner report here.