^

Yeah its scary. Nokia will totally loose its identity with this MSFT merger. I mean they already start adapting the whole design language of wp7.

This Windows Phone thing is just a fear reaction by Nokia.

They're trying to take the longer term view of the whole wretched "ecosystem". After trying for many years to put it by themself together, with maps, store, games (remember N-Gage) etc., and seeing the initiatives fail... they've come to the conclusion that they can not do such diverse ecosystem by themselves.

Microsoft has all that, games, business suites, phone + desktop, application store, search engine... whatever.

So Nokia's board of directors lack the self-confidence that Nokia could create such an ecosystem. And they think, in the long term, that such ecosystem will wipe out the other players. So they try to jump into something that seems promising enough so that they could be a relevant player in the future.

This is how I can make any sense of their reasoning. In some parts I can understand their fear.

But personally I feel it's still early days in the smartphone world, and a product like MeeGo Harmattan could have made a real difference if it was pushed strongly.

So I feel, if there's any chance for Nokia to revert their course all of the following must happen:

- Nokia's Windows Phone sell abysmally
- N9 sells a ****-load

If either of those points fails to realize, they will continue on their course, as sad as it is. As for myself, I know I will be using MeeGo Harmattan phone for the foreseeable future. If there's nothing better available when I have to upgrade, it will be Android for me, not Windows Phone.

Agree. I never understood how the same organisation that produced the N95 (for instance) could also do such an abysmal job at services (e.g. Ovi)... but then that's what happens when you let marketing take complete control of the services. Image is important, but it is not everything.

As for Elop's speech at Nokia World, remind me: who does he work for again?

Every time he starts with the MSFT evangelism, he's quick to tack on a phrase like "...and we at Nokia see that too."

Yeah, right.

Whatever.

Elop's pinned to my dartsboard and that ain't changing. Childish? Sure, but it makes me feel better

Question is, did the iphone succeed because of ze ecosystem or because they built a groundbreaking UI and provided developers the tools to easily extend the functionality of the system?

Without iTunes the iphone would not have taken off?

IMO making your software and hardware special is far more important in the long term than all that ecosystem crap.

A successor would make great sense after the attention the N9 gathered. But with Elop in charge, I don't know if making sense is "new-Nokia's" thing!

Interview with Elop: Tweakers.net finds him -regardless of his somewhat uninteresting appearance- very honnest in his answers and knowledgeable.

http://tweakers.net/reviews/2358/las....html#reacties (warning, shocking picture)

E did not really want to comment on future of Meamo but dropped following between the lines

-Swipe will live on in other Nokia products
-QT apps will come available for the next billion (probably Maemo, can't be S40)
-Innovation is being increased cheap phones, doesn't tell where exactly.
-No high end phones with Maemo, cheaper phones with Maemo very likely.

Imo we are already beta testing and financing the new cheap format by N9. The screen and material is really that of next year's 200-300 USD phone.

Lumia 800 may be presented as pretty high end right now but .. it is a beginning of more high end to come where the N9 , sadly, may be the end of hardware evolution for Maemo for long time to come.

There wasn't one single Symbian phone announced at Nokia World 2011, let alone 4.