“It just becomes less useful”
And that totally depends on what you do on it.

 Wrong, supporting waste does not provide progress but just more of the same.  There’s plenty of examples of companies getting bailouts that did nothing but continue the same policies that got them in trouble in the first place.

Really, rewarding failure is not the way to bring about change needed to fix problems!

The only reason they justified it is the erroneous concept of companies being too big to fail when the reality is they can just restructure or another company that can handle the challenge will take its place.

Really, someone cheats and gets rewarded and they’re just going to keep on cheating.

Depressions/Recessions are all natural parts of economic cycles, but it’s only when we try to interfere with the natural process that instead of recovery we get extended periods of loss.

And there are other examples like the US has been throwing more and more money at education for decades and it has only gotten worse.  Systems don’t improve just by throwing money at the problem!

Like the old saying goes, need is the mother of invention.  So removing need stifles innovation and just promotes inefficiency and corruption.

Only through competition and struggle does waste get cut and makes room for innovations to get promoted and chances taken on new ideas.

Besides, a free market can’t be dictated and still be a free market! 

That 99% is exaggerated as most apps that are compatible with even 1.6 are also apps that are either just as old or are very basic apps that make no use of features in later versions.  While not all apps work equally as well on all devices.

Especially with phones with hardware limitations, which is not something Google can control!

While the ramifications of the re-merging of the Android and official Linux kernels is not all good news for Android.  The combined kernel is much larger than the stripped down one Android has been using up till now.  Compatibility and support has to go both ways, and it’s not unusual for Linux to break API compatibility as the official Linux Kernel rapidly evolves and continuously changes.

While efforts to run both GNU/Desktop Linux and Android on the same device means similar hardware and compatibility issues that caused MS to not offer the upgrade to their older devices.

So Google may soon be putting their users through a similar predicament.

While some growth has happened with the WP app ecosystem, they did after all get to over 100,000 apps by the end of June and WP8 will still run those apps.  So while they do have to start over, there is also a transition period that will make sure the effort they put in so far won’t go completely to waste and give the new platform more time to develop and the old more time before they truly become obsolete.

 Let’s not exaggerate, WP8 still runs WP7 apps.  So they’re not going to drop the older apps anytime soon.

At the very least it will take them a long time to replace all of the over 100,000 apps they have now.  While not every app for WP8 will require to be specifically made for WP8 only.

Developers aren’t going to just drop the older phones until they go out of circulation and that may takes years given they’ll still be sold in emerging market countries.

Mind we’re still many months away from most of the WP8 phones being released.  The ones coming out soon are just the low end models but the release of the higher end models is being spaced over a couple of months.  So we won’t see the entire line up until the beginning of next year.

Also not everyone will be able to just get out of their existing contracts to switch to a new phone.

While the initial focus for the new WP8 apps may be for apps that are cross compatible with Windows 8 and RT.  So may not be phone centric and thus irrelevant to many existing Phone users unless they feel they really want or need that cross compatibility that WP8 phones will offer for Metro apps.

The WP 7.8 update may be mainly just the UI, with a few extra improvements like flip motion to answer option, etc. but it should help keep the existing phones going for at least the next year before users will have any real reason to feel envious of the newer WP8 models.

While these are still ARM phones and many have already gotten rooted and custom ROMs for either dual booting or switching to Android.  Some like the Lumia 900 haven’t yet been cracked yet but even if MS drops all support, eventually any present WP owner can just opt to run Android.

So there’s always plan B 😛

I’m not defending Microsoft, I’m saying the phone will still work. It’s not dead, it’s not a paperweight, it’s an obsolete piece of hardware. I have a Dell Axim from like 2003. Hasn’t been supported for years, yet still works perfectly. A more recent example? Blackberry Bold, obsolete the day I bought it yet still works well as an everyday phone. Obsolete tech doesn’t just die instantly, it just becomes less useful.

The new OS will not run on it.  Due to this fact that flagship Lumia 900 is essentially useless because applications written for Windows Phone 8 will NOT run on Windows Phone 7.  So yes the phone has essentially become a paperweight seeing that all future applications and ones currently in development will be targeted for WP8.  This leaving all those that purchased the Lumia 700 and 900, a lot of them on a 2 year contract, with an obsolete device with some more than 1 year left on a legacy device with NO support from the OS or hardware manufacturer in terms of upgrades.  Yeah that just inspires confidence and screams buy my future products doesn’t it?

The phone still works, that fact doesn’t change.

“Asymco is one huge Google hater, don’t read his bogus pro-Apple posts.”

I’m terribly sorry for reading Asymco. From now on I will get your permission before I read anything.
/sarcasm

Goodbye

Skype have recently announced that they shall implement Google standard proposal for VoIP webRTC which also w3c supports (because of that webRTC is Open Source and royalty free license).So, when the most common VoIP-client as Skype is shall implement Google proposal to VoIP standard webRTC it really can be webRTC that will be mostly used audio and video codecs in VoIP.

Marc Dillon is Operating chief of Jolla Mobile Ltd.
So, Nokia will within 6 month have a competitor in Jolla Mobile which have Nokia knowledge as former MeeGo developers at Nokia.
Smartphones have still only 13 per cent of Nokia totally sales so Nokia have this coming year to release something that their costomers must like.

Asymco is one huge Google hater, don’t read his bogus pro-Apple posts.

Google’s advertising revenue is spread out throughout all of their online services. It’s Android, it’s Gmail, it’s Maps, it’s Google+ (indirectly), it’s YouTube, it’s AdSense and Display Advertising all over the web. It’s not only Google Search. Thus Google makes money on just about everything that they do.

Google monetizes the Internet, that is the core of their business. It means Google is the number 1 at connecting the whole worlds businesses to consumers.

Apple’s main profit stream (70% of Apple’s overall company profits) comes from the iPhone (soon disrupted by cheaper/better Android smartphones), one smartphone design, manufactured by Chinese slaves and sold with a 400% profit. 20% is iPad (soon disrupted by iPad Mini and lots cheaper/better Android tablets). Less than 10% of Apple’s profits is their Mac business and Apple pretty much makes zero point something percent profit on their iPod, iTunes, App Store and other service business. When China refuses to be a slave to Apple’s hardware profit stream, that’s the instant end of Apple. When smartphones are a commodity, that’s the end of 70% of Apple’s current profits. When tablets are a commodity, that’s the end of 20% of Apple’s current profit. Apple has nothing in monetizing the web. Betting against the web is an obviously loosing strategy.

Google revenues from September 2007 to December 2011:

http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/13/the-worlds-biggest-startup/

“Compared to Microsoft and Apple, Google’s revenue is distinctly single-source: advertising. Though divided between own sites and those of affiliates, advertising is today 96.1% of revenue and was 98.6% four years earlier.”

99% of Android apps work fine even on old Android 1.6 based devices, that is because Android has a proven track record of cleverly designing Android to be backwards and forwards compatible.

Microsoft promised that there would be growth in their ecosystem, that isn’t happening, and the little effort that they had partners put in Windows Phone is already being outdated.

“Google makes most of their money off of advertising. They try new strategies every week it seems, but none of them add significantly to Google’s profits.”

Google makes money on advertising not only on Search, they make money throughout the whole web and throughout people using all of Google’s online services. Even with services like Google+ and Google Docs, it’s just wrong to suggest Google doesn’t make Billions of dollars on all the online services that they do. They do. It’s quite easy to measure that increased usage of the web in turns provides Google with increased revenues and profits. And any time Google wants, they can flip the switch and decide to offer more of their services ads free for a fee, like they do for Google Docs, and Google Drive. Upwards half of all the worlds businesses use Google Docs, a rapidly growing share of them pay for it. Tens of millions of people pay for storage on Google Drive.

With your suggestion, we wouldn’t even be having power and an internet connection to have this comment conversation. The world would have gone into a very deep depression, much worse than anything imaginable. The US dollar would be worthless by now, not anymore use to trade oil and gas worldwide. The EU would have completely collapsed. Quite possibly a third world war would be underway.

There is no “people just find another job”, you have to stick with what your country’s strengths are. If change and innovation is required, you have to build it with what you have. Obama told the US car industry to start making energy efficient cars, electric cars, and now growth is back in the US auto industry, and it didn’t even cost the Obama Government anything, the loan is paid back.

Android is to Meego what Ubuntu is to Red Hat Linux, but the difference is 1 million times wider. The Smartphone Linux OS industry moves 1000x faster than on the Desktop. It just is totally meaningless to still today suggest that an alternative to Android should be pursued. Those fanboys need to give up already. Meego was a desperate reaction by Intel against Microsoft announcing ARM Powered Windows, anything Intel does is a failure.

Apple would be nothing if it wasn’t for the carriers paying $650 per iPhone. Without the huge scam that are the carrier voice minutes, making people pay over $2000 over the 2-years of smartphone contracts that a majority of people buy in the USA and 30% of Europe pay for. Without the scam that is the hugely overpriced voice 2-year contracts, Apple would not be able to make 400% profit margins on the iPhone and which represents over 70% of Apple’s current overall company profits.

Surely the carriers have done the math on being dumb pipes or smart pipes, they just don’t see it as possible that they can make as much money on being a pipe compared to what they are doing now.

Voice takes as little as 13KB/s. It means it costs the carriers about 0.00078 per minute (if you consider it costs them $1 per GB, it probably even costs them much less than that) to host a voice call for their customers. It costs carriers exactly the same to host a normal voice call as a VOIP/SIP/Skype voice call (as long as the VOIP/SIP/Skype uses the same audio bitrate quality). Carriers are selling each voice minute at $0.20 or above. That means carriers are making $256 for every $1 in expense that they have to provide the service. That’s a 25600% profit margin. Obviously, the carriers sometimes give 40% of their profits per customer to Apple.

“… focus on making the worlds best sub-$50 Android phone, the worlds best sub-$100 Android phone and the worlds best sub-$150 Android phone and sell a billion of those over the next couple of years.”

That’s a sensible suggestion in many ways. Huawei and one or two other companies in China are trying to make that strategy work, and may very well succeed.

“Nokia can …”

It would require a major change in corporate culture and strategy. Microsoft is making most of their money off of Windows and Microsoft Office. They have tried many new strategies in the last 15-20 years, but none have been very profitable. Google makes most of their money off of advertising. They try new strategies every week it seems, but none of them add significantly to Google’s profits. It’s not easy for a big, successful company to change the way it makes money.

“OK, so the US Government should have left the US auto industry to go bankrupt. States should not try to fight to keep jobs in their country. People should just give up and accept to go starving, or even go bankrupt as a country.”

The US automakers built lousy cars for 20 years or so (1970’s – 1980’s). In cooperation with the unions, they set up a Ponzi scheme to pay the retirement benefits of their assembly line workers. They deserve to suffer some for doing these things, and they have. Note that Honda, Toyota, BMW, etc. build autos in the US now. If Nokia is broken into pieces and sold off, which seems inevitable, it doesn’t mean that everyone who works there have to lose their jobs.

Carriers should mainly be afraid of other carriers. In France, the gov. allowed a new entrant, which barged into the market with a $25/mo contract for unlimited minutes to landlines in most countries, and mobile in France + a handful of countries, unlimited texts, unlimited data (throttled after 3GB), and NO RESTRICTION nor discrimination as to what that data can be (VOIP, newsgroups, torrents…). That’s about half to a third of the price of incumbents’ similar contracts, sometimes less. 

They also released a $3/mo contract with 1hr national calls + a handful of texts, no data. For that “safety” phone.

THAT is hurting them. A lot more than the handful of nerds doing Skype.

Charbax, it’s possible they’re detecting my VoIP calls and making them deteriorate, but considering a VoIP call will work well for hours before not working, I doubt it.  More likely their network is just not well-built, especially since I’ve had outages where I couldn’t access the web for the whole morning.  I don’t see what carrier over-charging for voice data has to do with Apple’s success, one has nothing to do with the other.  And it’s nowhere near a trillion from over-charging for voice calls, though it may still be big.

Bruce, I did mention that they’re more likely just afraid of Microsoft, not Skype.  The carriers have been the biggest beneficiary of a free Android: a free OS that doesn’t make anybody else any money, so they don’t have to be scared of another big, successful mobile phone vendor like Apple.  Another reason why a free Android is a bad idea.

I’m sick of the “dumb pipe” nonsense, because that’s not even an alternative.  They frame it like that to justify their ridiculous monopoly practices, but the real alternative is a smart pipe, which they’re too dumb to realize.  Offer a higher-priced fast lane internet channel with low latency for VoIP and video conferencing; cheaper data rates at night when few people are on the network so I can download my HD video overnight and not strain the network;   true metered billing, like Ting is trying to do, and they could build a real smart pipe, one where I’m offered different service levels and prices and they could focus on optimizing the network to deliver those things well.

Instead, they keep trying to get into stuff they don’t do well, like mobile device design or, god forbid, the media business, by selling music and other media themselves, and failing miserably.  I suspect they are too dumb to ever build a smart pipe and will instead be routed around by wifi providers, which will lead to their death soon enough.

Yes, the US auto industry should have gone bankrupt and they did, both GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy.  They both also got loans from the govt, which they never should have gotten.  States should not “fight to keep jobs” because if your companies can’t compete, nothing the state does can change that.  No Nokia people will “go starving,” they’ll just have to start over with a more reasonable salary.  Nokia could have been a big Android vendor, but they chose an ex-Microsoft executive to run the company and he thinks Windows Phone is better.  Even if he hadn’t, most Nokia people would probably have favored one of their own OS’s rather than Android.  Do you think they’d have been any more successful with Meego?

1- Windows Phone as an OS offers nothing than the incumbent OSes don’t offer.
1b- Windows Phone as an ecosystem (content, apps, cloud, peripherals) offers nothing the others don’t, especially no killer app (Which Office might be for tablets) and no distinctive advantage. And a lot of stuff (apps…) iOS and Android have is missing.
2- Windows Phones’ hardware is inferior in almost all aspects (CPU, screen size, RAM, ports…). Quality/sturdiness is good, but doesn’t count, people even prefer glass phones over plastic ones !
3- Windows Phones’ range is very limited: none with keyboard, none with huge screen, no tiny model… all these special niches end up making up a fairly big slice of the market.
4- Windows Phone targets 1st time smartphone buyers. Those follow the advice of geekier acquaintances, none of whom have Windows Phone (nor ever will if the hardware remains that lackluster) so they don’t, and won’t, recommend it.
5- In the US for example, smartphone penetration is already at 55%+. All those people already have money invested in their current ecosystem, and will need a mighty good reason to switch and throw that money away. Plus people probably don’t want to have to learn a new platform (I know I don’t)… Incumbency and network effect biting MS back… poetic justice ^^
6- Resellers are whores, they sell what the customer wants. “Push” is mainly an illusion, you need “pull”.

I could go on ?

If you have better insights into why carriers don’t want to sell Windows Phone and why nobody in the world is buying Windows Phone devices, feel free to post and I may quote you next time.

OK, so the US Government should have left the US auto industry to go bankrupt. States should not try to fight to keep jobs in their country. People should just give up and accept to go starving, or even go bankrupt as a country.

Nokia has a huge experience, infrastructure and knowledge in building high quality phone hardware in massive numbers and to sell those throughout the world, dominate throughout the developing world. It would be a piece of cake for Nokia to transition all that know-how and expertise in mass producing low margins phone, that Nokia could easily keep a large market share in the smartphone industry, they just very simply need to use Android, it’s that easy. Nokia can focus on making the worlds best sub-$50 Android phone, the worlds best sub-$100 Android phone and the worlds best sub-$150 Android phone and sell a billion of those over the next couple of years, that’s simply what a Nokia CEO should decide.

“I have a cheaper Skype paid plan, which uses the data connection for voice calls.  It doesn’t always work so great, probably cuz T-Mobile’s data network kind of sucks with occasional outages”

That is because carriers like T-Mobile do packet shaping, they detect when VOIP and Skype usage is happening on their data network, and they down-prioritize those packets, often cutting off the stream of packets, and a voice conversation that does not work smoothly is unusable so most users give up and stop trying to use it.

“charging ridiculous fees for voice data”

The carriers over-charging or voice data is currently a $1 Trillion dollar industry per year. Or more. Over-charging of voice data makes the carriers industry nearly as big as the global oil and gas industry. Over-charging of voice data is the only reason Apple is a $565 Billion company today.

Carriers just aren’t eager to give up that scam $1000 Billion/year voice over-charging business that easily.

“… this comment by Bruce is a breath of fresh air.”

Thank you. Most of what I have learned is from the website of a former Nokia employee named Horace Dediu. His site is called http://www.asymco.com

“What I don’t understand is why the carriers care so much about Skype…”

They are afraid of Microsoft, who now owns Skype, and not without good reason. This is one reason for Android’s initial success. The carriers saw Android as a counterbalance to the possibility of Microsoft taking over all of their high value services and leaving the carriers with “dumb pipe” data access to sell and nothing else.

“I got a plan with 100 voice minutes and unlimited data on my Samsung Android phone and I have a cheaper Skype paid plan, which uses the data connection for voice calls.  It doesn’t always work so great…”

This is what the carriers should also be afraid of. Not just Skype on Android, but Google Voice plus Talkatone on Android or iPhone. Or Google Voice plus YateClient on the Mac, or whatever. They may stop Microsoft from turning them into dumb pipe sellers, but someone will succeed at this.

Like Nokia, the carriers have the problem of their own success causing them to be unable to adapt to changes. The carriers are not as far along in the cycle as Nokia is, and they have semi-monopolistic franchises from governments that make it difficult for them to fail completely.

Wow, after the garbage Charbax was posting about the Finnish govt taking over Nokia, this comment by Bruce is a breath of fresh air.  Jolla could be the fresh start for ex-Nokia employees that could do things right, that’s the way to move forward, with new companies coming out of the destruction of the old.

What I don’t understand is why the carriers care so much about Skype when it’s already there on Android, not to mention iOS and Blackberry.  I got a plan with 100 voice minutes and unlimited data on my Samsung Android phone and I have a cheaper Skype paid plan, which uses the data connection for voice calls.  It doesn’t always work so great, probably cuz T-Mobile’s data network kind of sucks with occasional outages, but it’s good enough for now.  I plan to switch to the better Ting service eventually, which runs off Sprint’s network.I suppose the carriers think Microsoft will push Skype more than the other OS vendors, but anyone who wants VoIP software will always get it on Android or IOS.  More likely they’re still scared MS will pull some moves and kill off iOS and Android somehow, so they want any excuse to keep Microsoft out.  The carriers are morons- yes, I know, understatement of the decade- if they think Skype is the biggest threat to their existence.  The biggest threat to the carriers is their own incompetence.  Everybody knows that charging ridiculous fees for voice data- much more than other kinds of data, including the much heavier video data- couldn’t last, they’d be idiots to act like it could.  The biggest threat to carriers is someone doing an end-around around their monopolies, perhaps using unlicensed wi-fi, something that could happen sooner than they think.

I don’t believe that Nokia is culturally prepared to do that. For a company like HTC that was used to doing business with Microsoft, switching to Google was easy. For a company like Nokia which is used to doing the OS themselves, a total reverse of direction is necessary to use Android, or to use Windows as well. This requires much more internal cultural change.

“The Finnish population has a right to be mad angry at Nokia.”

I think they should be proud. To expect any tech company to last longer than Nokia and to be able to adapt to rapidly changing conditions is too much. Most companies in Silicon valley never achieve Nokia’s past success, much less the future success that people are expecting from Nokia. What people need to understand is that Nokia had a very good run, and their time is over. What is preventing Nokia from continued success is all of the success that they had in the past.

The Finnish population and government should recognize that it’s time to put their positive energy into something else, not waste their negative energy on Nokia. Create, succeed (for a while), fail, destroy, create. Failure and destruction are part of the process. Do those two things well, and your next creation will be that much better.

Very few companies can fail and destroy internally, it usually requires breaking up of the company and starting something new. That’s the way the tech game is played in Silicon Valley. If Finland wants to excel in technology, they should accept the demise of Nokia as part of the process. Let go and move on…

They can comment. Everybody can.

In that specific case, the comments are stupid though. We don’t have to repeat any random crap spouted by a guy with a grudge.

So Finnish people and former Nokia employees are not allowed to comment on how pathetic Nokia is being managed? It’s their right to be angry about it. They should care. It’s like a Canadian and/or former RIM employee shouting in anger about the bad decisions at RIM. It’ll be like American fanboys and ex-Apple employees soon weeping at Apple’s collapse inevitable if they don’t somehow successfully pivot (become a successful web services company instead of a hardware company).

True, but that’s not the point.

This guy’s arguments are all bunk. And he was there when they were making all those bad decisions, or, rather, resting on their laurels.

That Nokia woke up too late, with good hardware, a bad OS, not enough Apps/content, and no 3rd party peripherals is a tragedy. Playing backseat driver like he is doing, now that it is too late, is pathetic.

The Finnish population has a right to be mad angry at Nokia. They have been making constant wrong decisions for the past 10 years. It’s outrageous and the Finnish Government should have nationalized the company and taken over control and put Android on those devices instantly. Just like Obama took control over the US car industry to save it from total bankruptcy.

You must be the looney if you seriously think that Nokia has been taking the correct decisions not only since Stephen Elop and Microsoft but years before that.

Just look at Nokia’s collapsing market share, Nokia’s collapsing stock price, Nokia’s collapsing revenues and profits, Nokia’s mass layoffs, massive protests by Nokia employees all over Finland.

The guy is a looney. Get him a soap box and a ticket to Nokia’s front lawn.