Comments on: Nokia to Stake Its Future on Maemo

By: With Mobile, Firefox Buys Into the Browser and Scorns Apps

With Mobile, Firefox Buys Into the Browser and Scorns Apps — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 03:21:57 +0000

[...] Maemo, which was released earlier this week, offers some undeniably cool features for Nokia’s new mobile operating system. The browser includes Weave, a tool that syncs bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history and [...]

By: New, Open Symbian Looks Beyond Smartphones – GigaOM

New, Open Symbian Looks Beyond Smartphones – GigaOM — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:36:37 +0000

[...] But carriers are already looking to connected devices to shore up slimming voice margins, and a variety of new tablets will come to market this year. It may seem odd to hear that the 10-year-old Symbian platform is targeting the new wave of devices, but it’s a smart move for an operating system that continues to lose market share — especially now that Nokia’s long-term hopes for high-end handsets hinge on Maemo. [...]

By: With Mobile, Firefox Buys Into the Browser and Scorns Apps – GigaOM

With Mobile, Firefox Buys Into the Browser and Scorns Apps – GigaOM — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:56:33 +0000

By: Could Ovi Support Lead to a Subsidized N900 in the U.S.? – GigaOM

Could Ovi Support Lead to a Subsidized N900 in the U.S.? – GigaOM — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:34:24 +0000

[...] reviews (which Om took as a sign that the Finns were beginning to get things right). Nokia has staked its future to Maemo — at least on high-end devices — in an effort to better compete with Apple’s [...]

By: Nokia to Halve Its Smartphone Portfolio – GigaOM

Nokia to Halve Its Smartphone Portfolio – GigaOM — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:46:05 +0000

[...] has a massive installed user base and will continue to be the company’s primary OS as development continues on Maemo. Coupling an overhauled Symbian platform with a smaller lineup of impressive new handsets would be [...]

By: Symbian Overhaul Key to Nokia’s Smartphone Hopes in 2010 – GigaOM

Symbian Overhaul Key to Nokia’s Smartphone Hopes in 2010 – GigaOM — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:08:30 +0000

[...] Nokia’s long-term prospects appear to hinge on its Maemo operating system, vast improvements to Symbian would go a long way toward boosting the company’s standing in [...]

By: For Nokia’s Ovi, the World (Minus the U.S.) Is Enough – GigaOM

For Nokia’s Ovi, the World (Minus the U.S.) Is Enough – GigaOM — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:28:17 +0000

[...] said. The company will drive Symbian into all its feature phones, and for high-end devices, it will focus its energies on Maemo, the Linux-based OS. “Ultimately every phone is going to be the smartphone,” he said. : Nokia, Ovi, Tero [...]

By: pacman

pacman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:08:59 +0000

>>>but my question from a development perspective is, what am I going to develop for this? I am limited to the top-end device in a long line of incompatible product.<<<

Nokia is deploying Qt accross it's product. QT is a cross-platform application and UI framework. Using Qt, you can write applications once and deploy them across desktop, mobile and embedded operating systems without rewriting the source code. Initially it will support Maemo, Symbian and Winmo but it will eventually support more paltforms in the future.

http://qt.nokia.com/

By: Anonymouse

Anonymouse — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:53:19 +0000

A very good comment (because I totally agree!). Nokia must buy Palm, but let Palm run as it is now with the financial support of the bigger corp. Stick to one or two current devices, gradually perfect them and continually improve the OS. The present belongs to Apple (RIM just don’t know it yet), but Mobile web is the future. If Nokia invests now, *maybe* they can again be competitive in the smartphone/small device market in 1-2 years.

Symbian, Trolltech, Maemo – what on earth is Nokia thinking? At the least adopt Android instead of Maemo.

By: Ankur

Ankur — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:15:37 +0000

Nokia has employed over 100+ ppl in India/Bangalore to work on Maemo …

By: powel

powel — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:23:53 +0000

totally, what’s stopping them from going android? hopefully not their hubris.

By: Murat

Murat — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:43:55 +0000

By the time Nokia get their act together the iPhone will have a larger market share, have you seen their revenues lately? That’s just with one phone!

Nokia should have gone Android.

By: Markus Goebel

Markus Goebel — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:35:33 +0000

Don’t worry!

They are cross compiling thousands of Debian apps now. Even a full OpenOffice runs on the N900. That’s the beauty of Linux.

By: Jason Lackey

Jason Lackey — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:16:09 +0000

I commented on this a bit here:
http://thecsr.blogspot.com/2009/11/bat-out-of-espoo.html

The Maemo stuff, while promising, does not yet seem fully baked in the N900 that I have played with a couple times over a couple different firmware builds. Sorta like early Android, it seems like it could be something, but no where near iPhone and not quite even Android 1.6 yet.

Nokia does a bunch of frustrating things. So they make all this noise about Ovi and their appstore, but oops they seem to have forgotten to include support for this vital new platform. Makes it look like either they don’t know what they are doing with platforms, Ovi is dysfunctional or Maemo is a rush job or all of the above.

I like the build of the N97 more than the N900, seems more like a phone.

Of course if I had my fantasies I could buy an N97 with Android on it, but would settle for WebOS.

Regardless, they need to figure out their story and once they have done that, communicate clearly to the world, inside and outside, so that all the Nokians as well as developers etc can at least make an informed decision…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:44:27 +0000

A small observation about Nokia.

I see that it is over paying for companies/technologies (Navteq for $8.1 billion, now huge sums on Symbian) and the pattern seems to be similar to Nortel. We know what happened to Nortel!!!

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:24:58 +0000

I just stopped in at the Nokia store in Chicago to play with the N900. Not bad, but my question from a development perspective is, what am I going to develop for this? I am limited to the top-end device in a long line of incompatible product.

Afterwards, I stopped in at the Apple store down Michigan Avenue. I can buy a device which is better than my day one 2g model (I know I’m nuts, but this is the baseline) for $99. I can develop for every one of them coherently. The only thing that does not run on mine is Layar. Time to upgrade!

I really think they need something like Palm’s WebOS more than they need Maemo. If they did this 2 years ago, cool. Nokia would now be competitive. They are not getting Maemo up to speed for less than half of the rumored $2B Palm price tag when one considers losses. The future is mobile web. Unless a company has an excellent app dev process in place right now, screw it and move to services.

If Nokia could build a small screen mobile web device, think an iPod Nano with a keypad with any of the available OSes, make it now and sell it cheap. If they cannot find something that works be it WebOS or otherwise. The WebOS needs some cleaning itself though!