That's right, MICROSOFT is an ANDROID vendor after Nokia gobble Nokia won't be changing its strategy now that it's been gobbled up by Microsoft, its former CEO Stephen Elop has said. Elop, who has returned to Redmond after almost a four-year absence to head up the software giant's new Devices Group, said in a blog post on Friday that we'll continue to see the same mix of Nokia-branded …
They want to be Apple, and they think that being in peoples pockets and being a brand that they see many times a day will help move them to this position.
To bad its not a brand that I want to see outside of my Windows 7 Desktop, much less on my TV after having suffered though two dead 360s. The closest MicroSoft will ever get to my Pocket is the Coat with the USB Thumb Drive executable installer of Windows 7 in it.
I haven't seen a physical Nokia presence in any large UK city for many a year.
Maybe they're talking about Finland, but I doubt they have a significant presence anywhere else - if you want service on a Nokia product you either mail it in or deal with a third party, that's the reality of Nokias "world class" support. Utterly laughable.
'Nokia Care points' bit early just yet... it will be like another 'care branding'... LOL
-- {phone shop name}
----- help with your phone - Apple sir?? right this way $ )
-------- android
------------- nokia care {soon with Microsoft!!! :E
------------------older phones
But MS only got a licence to use Nokia IP. It's all still Nokia's
Possibly Nokia still has the toilet roll, Welly boot, Satellite Receiver and TV set IP too.
Unlike most other Tech companies, Nokia has "re-invented" themselves many times. This time they really had to as the Bureaucracy and internal politics has been strangling making the right decisions for about the last 12 years. The take over of Siemens' Networks via NSN "merger" and Motorola Networks hasn't gone too well (Mobile Base Stations etc). Ericsson and Huewei may yet eat their lunch on that if they don't get sorted.
Samsung has plenty of IP.
I haven't heard of any changes, since takeover a few years ago.
Do you think that it is a normal situation to offer a product for 32bit version system only with certain architectures? There is no 64bit version of skype for Linux. I'd bet it's some messy coding to be responsible. Last time I checked linphone (a free analog of skype) is offered for almost every version of most architectures, 32 and 54 bit: GNU Linux, MS Windows, *BSD, Mac OS X, iOS, Android etc.
> I'm sure Microsoft wouldnt leave such a key product on such a poorly supported platform.
"""The new Skype backbone is composed of about 10,000 Linux servers."""
http://www.geek.com/news/microsoft-updates-skype-to-use-secure-linux-servers-instead-of-p2p-supernodes-1487121/
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/skype-what-kind-of-infrastructure-changes-has-microsoft-made/12612
Step 1 - Offer Android phone, set up ecosystem
Step 2- Go to each company offering Google/Android and offer to waive the IP fees if they drop Google and switch to the MS ecosystem
Step3 - (when they drive Google out of the market) announce there is no future in Android and they are dropping it , but hey you can start selling Windows Phone.
MS is happy - back to the MS's "Good Old Days (aka MS GOD) when they owned everything.
Google sells advertising space.
MS Sells HW, SW and Services.
They are not actually in the same market, though it might superficially appear so. Amazon is more likely to be the real direct competitor to Apple and MS in the long term as unlike Google they want to sell physical stuff and Services. Google's Services are all purely a means to the end of making money from selling advertising.
Google would happily scrap Android and endorse WinPhone if it gave them 80% mobile market and MS let them have the info for their Advertising business. Google is loyal only to Google making money.
I don't see WinPh displacing even iOS never mind Android any time soon.
"Step3 - (when they drive Google out of the market) announce there is no future in Android and they are dropping it , but hey you can start selling Windows Phone."
If they can do that and replace the Android OS with the more efficent and secure Windows kernel but still keep the application comptibility layer working then they are onto a winner imo.
May be a strategy with Android for MS ... Android is at is root open source however the version most people use is the version with the Goole services (google apps/play store etc) which, from recent revalations from someleaked contracts details comes with very severe restrictions from Google - if you sign up to use their services they require you to have them all, make them all default and even specify which are on home screen or one click away. Item on a guardian podcast on this comment that not many people would be able to provide an alternative as they'd have to duplicate all the services.
Now, MS probably are one of the companies who could put together a competing set of apps to match the google services. So, if they develop the Android line to have the range of services currently provided by Google then
1) they can direct everyone to MS based cloud services and tie people into an MS eco-system
2) they can serve ads from an MS based ad-server
3) they've already got a windows store that could be extended to sell apps for their variation on android
4) MS/Nokia android variant apps can be designed with a Windows TIKFAM style so that moving to a windows based phone doesn't feel like an OS swicth
.... and then they can spread wider by signing up other phone manufacturers to use their andoird variant + services as an alternative to them having to bow to Google's demands - may well be a case of "out of frying pan and into fire" but I'm sure MS will be perpared to offer a good deal to buy themselves (back) into this market.
You'd be a fool not to sell Android devices if you could do so without scuttling your own products, and that's exactly the situation here. No different than when Chrysler owned Lamborghini (which is quite the fitting analogy. Android might not be Lamborghini, but MS is certainly Chrysler). The target market gap between WinPhone, Android and iOS is huge, you're just not going to get much core bleed over between any of those offerings.
It's too bad Nokia had to be smothered, slowly, for Microsoft's benefit. But it's dead now, time to move on and that's exactly what's happening. They've resurrected Nokia, it'll be different sure. Resurrections never go perfectly well you know. Jesus couldn't even nail (Ha!) that one 100%.
But the common consumer will quickly forget all that. They'll remember Nokia and see it has Android and everybody will be happy as pigs in shit. Even before Elop holed the good ship Nokia it would have been cheaper for MS to buy them than to build a new globe spanning company.
Given that MS have decided to offer the WinPho 8 for free for smaller devices, and Nadella has said Cloud First, Mobile First, he didn't say "Windows first", and they are a devices and services company now, so they say.
The OS is a means to that end, rather than the ending. Expect to see Office 365 on Android soon, and better integration to their cloud offerings, both public through 365, and private clouds and internally managed Sharepoint.
We may be seeing a realisation that Windows is in a managed decline, and in order to protect core revenues of Office, and enterprise apps, cross-platform integration is essential. Microsoft won't care how you connect to their services, just that you do. Much like Googles approach.
WinPho, and Windows desktop are there to offer the tightest supported integration model to their services.
That could refer to the ongoing strategy of dropping operating systems and replacing them with ones incompatible with both hardware and software. Which is why I will never spend more than a throw-away amount of money on a Nokia phone ever again.
(How many is it so far, 4 operating systems killed?)
Android runs a Linux kernel, distributed under the GPLv2.
Section 7 of that licence says, amongst other things, :-
if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
IOW, to distribute the kernel legally, Microsoft would have to grant a licence to those 200+ patents they claim Linux infringes, which kills their FUD campaign stone dead.
So I'm pretty sure Micrososft will kill this line rather than lose their rights to rattle a sabre...
Vic.
You should read the license carefully, especially about loadable kernel modules. There's a lot of proprietary non GPL software needed to run Linux (think about nVidia drivers...) and not everything needs to be under GPL. Sure, Torvalds may try to bring some company to court to try to enforce it, but losing support from nVidia and others I guess it's the last thing he wants...
You should read the license carefully
One of us should...
There's a lot of proprietary non GPL software needed to run Linux (think about nVidia drivers...) and not everything needs to be under GPL
Indeed so. But that only has any relevance whatsoever if the code that allegedly infringes Microsoft's patents is in one of those modules that is not covered by GPL.
And if that is so, that's proof positive that Linux does not infringe any of those patents, which puts an end to the FUD.
Vic.
"In a separate blog post, Nokia's Tiina Jaatinen said current customers can also expect the same level of support for their pre-acquisition Nokia devices as before."
That, however is true only to end users. Seeping information from organizational change in Nokia predicts, that Microsoft is going to play cellphone carrier game totally different way to Nokia. It just have not got that boaa game and never will. This will be expensive journey to Microsoft.
The "carriers" are very big and quite powerful concerns. They pretty much despise MS and all they stand for, and ELOP=MS in their eyes while he was at NOKIA.
I have a sneaking suspicion that any goodwill that is left between NOKIA and the "carriers" resides at NOKIA headquarters, rather than in Redmond.
I am also expecting a long, slow, painfull bleed of the former NOKIA devices until its ultimate death. I expect this first wound will be selling a large chunk to Lenovo or some other division of China Inc.
Don't be daft. Owning a patent grants you the legal right to pursue violations. I suspect that you are not obliged to do that. It is probably not like trademarking (at least in the UK) where failure to quash violations is eventually tantamount to losing the trademark.
Besides: MS can simply license those patents to Nokiadroid for nothing.
Feel free to dismount at any time. It's business - nothing more.
Cheers
Jon
All they said is that they would offer support for X and Asha handsets. He did not say they would be selling new ones beyond what was currently on offer. They have millions of feature phones in the channel and a whole ecosytem of used phones. If they want to migrates them over to winphone then they have to taper off support over say 3 - 5 years. This is no big deal because outside of Afghanistan, Southern Ukraine and other places where consumer protection is not a priority at the moment, they are legally obliged to do it. With phones of course its meaningless they rarely last that long (apart from the nokia 3300 in my glovebox perhaps?)
... Nokia executive could see that they had damaged the good ship Nokia and was it sinking fast. They could do one of two things. Make a last ditch, heroic, do or die attempt, applying all their business acumen, working all hours and risking everything they had to fix the mess they made and return Nokia to greatness OR sell out what little they had left for whatever they could get for it. Maybe they couldn't sell it outright but they could find someone gullible enough and desperate enough to tie themselves into a partnership that once made they can only go further in without admitting they made a mistake.
It might be arguable that the Nokia board took the second option. If that is the case they did get a bloody good deal for what they sold.
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