Sunday, January 30, 2011
The next Nokia OS: Android or Windows?
I have read rumors that Nokia will have a special announcement on February 11th. Many are convinced it will be a shift away from the current strategy on operating systems.
Let me revisit what they have now:
- Symbian, a semi-open source OSS, their stronghold in the smart-enough-phones
- MeeGo, a fully open source OSS, now managed by the Linux Foundation, which is a merge of Maemo (formerly Nokia) and Moblin (created by Intel). In theory, this is Nokia's play in the touch phones or Internet phones (the smartphones that are so smart to have a good browser), including tablets
Everyone will tell you that a dual-OSS strategy is a lack of focus. It is already difficult to have one, having two is impossible. Too much effort, too many resources, too many things overlapping (hint for Google: you should pick between Android and Chrome OS, choose the former ;-)
Now, if you were Nokia, would you pick Symbian for the future? Probably no, it is an old OS, it has a very long history and a lot of code that is hard to manage: it is time to let it go, albeit slowly. This is exactly what Nokia has been doing lately.
What about MeeGo? It is a pretty good OS. I have tested only the laptop version, so I cannot fully comment on it. But Maemo was very good as well, so - if you combine that with the Linux Foundation management - I have very few doubts it is going to be a great OS.
Therefore, one would assume that Symbian for the low-end (and dying) and MeeGo for the high-end (and growing) is the way to go. Nokia's strategy makes a lot of sense.
Unfortunately, there is a little problem: a phone today is appealing if it comes with developers. And developers go where there are a lot of phones. There are no MeeGo phones, therefore there are no Meego developers.
The big question is: will there ever be a lot of MeeGo developers? Hard to say, the ship has sailed a long time ago. Developers today build for iPhone first, then Android. If they have a good reason (i.e. Microsoft paying) they build for Windows Phone 7. If they are in the enterprise, maybe they look at BlackBerry. If they want to support the existing bunch of devices, they suffer and go with Symbian as well. Hard to think they will pick yet-another-OS...
Will developers go for MeeGo? Honestly, it is hard to be optimistic. If this is the conclusion Nokia is coming to, then there is just one alternative, unimaginable until a year ago: that Nokia will start building phones with a third party OS, like any other device manufacturer excluding Apple.
It makes sense to me. They do not have to bet the entire house on one OS, they can keep Symbian going and maybe even find a place for MeeGo (although having three OSs would sound insane at best).
Bottom line: they still have a super-powerful brand and, with a popular OS with lots of developers, they could keep selling like crazy.
Options? Probably just two: Android or Windows Phone 7.
Naturally, I would go Android. It is open source, it is winning (ehm, are the two related?), there is room for differentiation. Granted, Google is not the easier partner to work with and Nokia will probably not be considered "special" by them. But it is a sure bet. Nokia with Android will sell a lot. It is a killer combination.
However, Microsoft needs Nokia more than Google does. And the new Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop, is a former Microsoft. The two companies have existing relationships (remember the Nokia notebook, built on Windows 7?). It is a no-brainer from the corporate perspective. Still, Windows Phone 7 is not a winner (yet) and it needs to attract developers (a lot). Going with Microsoft is a bigger risk, but Nokia will be treated as "special" for sure (although they will not have room to customize the UI on the phone, which is a biggie). In any case, it must be an attractive proposition, because Microsoft will offer the moon.
Windows Phone 7 needs developers and, possibly, having Nokia behind it will attract them. If that happens, we'll have a third OS with equal chances to Android and iOS. Having just two in the fight would be better, but variety is the spice of life, after all ;-)
I vote Android, but I bet Nokia will go with Microsoft (assuming the rumor is right, of course).
Posted by Fabrizio Capobianco at 15:05
16 Comments:
I think it would be foolish for Nokia to go with Android or WP7, because phones with those OSs will rapidly become low-margin, commodity products. It will be hard for a company based in Europe to compete with Asian manufacturers in a commodity product category. But if they choose between those two, then Android makes the most sense. Microsoft is concerned with keeping the look and feel of WP7 consistent across devices, which will make product differentiation difficult. On the other hand, you can basically do whatever you want with Android, and in particular, you can modify the UI. That might at least give Nokia some hope that they could charge some premium for their product. They've got deep pockets, and could afford to make a high-quality UI atop Android.
Comment Posted at 16:42
Fabrizio said...
Agreed! Still, if they go with a different OS, I think they will pick WP7. It is such an easy choice from the corporate standpoint...
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 16:46
Andreea Cristescu said...
Even if the commodization will happen, it's not like they actually have a choice here. Sure Meego will mean higher differentiation for them, but will that matter? I think it won't. Having a strong ecosystem behind your phones is a much more powerful factor that.
What I'm saying is that even if Android is a commoditized OS, they'll still make more money off Android phones, because they will sell more than the Meego ones, especially since media gives so much attention to Android nowadays (almost as much as for iOS devices).
Nokia will be able to use Android from the high-end and down to under $100 phones. By the time no one wants a cheap Symbian phone anymore, it will be years, and Android will work on those very cheap phones, so from a transition point of view Android is a much better option.
Plus, Android should be more flexible in putting it on more phones faster, while with WP7 you'll have to wait for Microsoft to insure compatibility will all those phones Nokia will churn out.
As others pointed out, I don't think Nokia is that important to the Android ecosystem anymore. Of course, if Nokia adopts it, it means game over for any other OS besides iOS. But even if Nokia adopts Android now, I don't think they'll even be a top 3 Android phone manufacturer, quality wise for the next 2 years. It doesn't seem like they can keep up with the processing power and resolutions that Android phones have, even today.
What this means is that Nokia wouldn't be able to help WP7 as much as Microsoft hopes. They won't be able to make the WP7 phones competitive enough and give WP7 enough momentum to catchup to Android. Right now, HTC, Samsung, Dell and LG together sell about 1 million WP7 units per month with 10 devices, maybe less because I think sales are slowing down. By the time they reach 2 million per month with Nokia's help, there will be 15 million Android phones activated per month (it's over 9 now). How can Microsoft hope to catch-up even if they do regain some momentum? They can't.
If Nokia chooses WP7, it will be their last big mistake they make, because if I'm right and they won't be able to sell too much or create a strong WP7 ecosystem, Nokia will lose its #1 phone manufacturer spot and their profits will turn negative.
Comment Posted at 17:50
Fabrizio said...
Andreaa, I think you are right on most counts. However, you are discounting WP7 maybe too much. Microsoft is still a strong contender, if they can match their OS (which is a good one) with a huge and committed partner in the HW world, they can actually make it happen. The Nokia brand is still very big in many parts of the world, so is Microsoft.
That said, I still vote for Android, but I see WP7 as more likely. The other option is they do not do anything and keep the course... Not that it looks great...
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 19:10
Mafiatounes said...
Qt developing is for maego, maemo and symbian problem solved if nokia pushes out the the good developing tools for Qt.
Comment Posted at 22:51
Scot said...
"Windows Phone 7 needs developers and, possibly, having Nokia behind it will attract them."
If Nokia could attract developers to WP7 why can't they attract developers to Symbian? While I wouldn't be that surprised if Nokia did launch a WP7 phone, it wouldn't make much difference to WP7's popularity and it would make Nokia look a lot like Palm when they launched Windows CE PDAs - a company slowly waiting for death.
If Microsoft wants WP7 to be any sort of success, they would be better off taking things into their own hands and start selling their own phones.
Comment Posted at 23:58
Fabrizio said...
@Mafiatounes, the problem with QT is the same for Symbian or MeeGo: there are not enough developers. You can push as much as you want, but if the developers are elsewhere, there won't be application and nobody will buy the phones. You need phones to attract developers, and developers to build apps to attract buyers to the phones...
@Scot I do not believe Nokia will attract developers to WP7, I am convinced it will attract users, because of the brand and the look of the devices. If that happens, developers will take notice and the likelihood of a growing ecosystem around WP7 will be higher.
The problem here for Nokia is breaking the cycle developers->apps->users->developers. You have to start somewhere... and the train has already left the station.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 07:24
How many developers there are to Nokia OSes compared to iOS and Android ones?
I believe Nokia has a gpod base of developers, not crappy as you might think of all the negative press lately.
Comment Posted at 15:10
Fabrizio said...
Never said it was crappy. We develop for Symbian and it is one of the best clients we have... However, if you look at the sheer volume of development done on iPhone or Android today, it dwarfs what it is done on Symbian or QT. This is a fact, not press, in my opinion. Sad but true.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 15:47
Michael Mace said...
Wow, Fabrizio. Looking back at this post after the Nokia announcement, you absolutely nailed it. Very impressive. Let me know if you ever have any stock tips!
Mike
Comment Posted at 22:08
Fabrizio said...
Thanks Mike, if picking a stock requires only to be lucky, then I will think about it ;-)
Fabrizio
Comment Posted at 07:20
Which one is better Symbian or Windows? if I take a symbian os it will perform more than windows?
Comment Posted at 17:13
Martin said...
I thought Nokia CEO said that Android is bad for the companies that use it and that it will never be big, or something similar If they had continued with Maemo instead of jumping on MeeGo with Intel and kept their users happy, we might have had 4 big smartphone OS(sorry RIM), Android, iOS, W7 and Maemo, but since they didn’t, they left their users without updates or new developers(you usually don’t code too much for an OS that is dead if you wanna make some money out of it).
BTW, I haven’t heard anyone saying W7 is good yet, only that it’s no multitasking and big ugly icons.
Comment Posted at 01:54
Fabrizio said...
Martin, in my very limited sample of W7 users, I only found people that are very happy. They like the UI, they like the tight integration with Exchange, they say the phone is very stable.
"no multitasking and big ugly icons" sounds like a developer comment ;-) But we do not decide if a phone is going to sell or not...
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 07:25
Custom Logo Design said...
next OS foe Nokia phones is wp7, and i like this os, it is great.
Comment Posted at 00:18
used cell phones said...
Nokia choosing Windows Phone over Android has put the company in a tight spot when it comes to low-end smartphones. There is no question that Android is pushing the price of smartphones to levels that are considerably lower than that of smartphones based on Windows Phone in the near-term, which means that Nokia has a gap in its portfolio.
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