Apple Files Countersuit Against Nokia

[sysiphus]

perception may depend on where you're located. for anyone in the us, nokia smartphones are nonexistent in practice. those phones don't even get past the carriers who are acting as gate-keepers. one could buy a non-subsidized phone but getting a call plan for that will cost pretty much the same as you get buying a subsidized model. so nokia models are out of question for most ppl.

on the other hand in the rest of the world nokia is very relevant in all the categories. eg in western europe iphone has stuck at 4% marketshare in smartphones (and practically all phones sold in western europe are smartphones, ie able to access email, internet etc), while nokia's marketshare in 10x that.

First off, the Nokia E71 is available in the US as the E71x via ATT--I believe it's $50 on a subsidy/contract. Hardly unattainable. Also available is the Nokia Surge smartphone (being marketed as a texting phone) and some basic flip phones. In years past, we've gotten the 6650, E75, and E62 smartphones, too. (all on ATT/Cingular). It's nowhere good enough/as much as in Europe, where you can get N95s, E90s, etc. on contract, but they aren't entirely gone here, either. Hardly out of the question, though.

In Europe, yes, the N-series smartphones in particular (media-driven line) are extremely popular as consumer devices--when riding a bus in Rome this summer, almost everybody around me had a Nokia out for texting/music/videos.

Apple -might- have something to complain about with regard to Nokia wanting reciprocity with each others' patents, but that's as far as I can see it going in their favor--Nokia's original suit is only asking for a court to determine the fair market rate for licensing their technology, and enforce payment. Given that virtually everybody else in the phone manufacturing world has paid to license the tech, I'd be stunned if Apple could get away without doing the same.

 

[Carniphage]

I think the point is, they want to get SOMETHING

But they could also get less... or even nothing.. if the jury is swayed by Apple.

The Nokia suit - the Apple counter suit ...
.. are just foreplay in a protracted negotiation. This is how companies often come to an agreement.

I am sure that Apple would be more than happy to pay Nokia a couple of dollars per handset. It's hardly going to dent their profitability.

These issues will be resolved in a few years with a quiet handshake and Nokia receiving a reimbursement fee of a few dollars per handset. Apple won't miss the cash.

In the same period it is likely that bad will turn to worse for Nokia as they fight to retain customers and developers with their horribly fragmented product line.

Nokia might win the battle, but the war looks lost already.

C.

 

[SeaFox]

Apple accuses Nokia of demanding unreasonable licensing terms, including reciprocal access to intellectual property owned by Apple, for a variety of its patents.

I'd have to label this "and....?"

Nokia is suing Apple for using Nokia technology without a license to use it. If it is found that Apple is using this technology, then Nokia was right.

All the fanbois going "Nokia is teh evil!" are forgetting one thing: Nokia owns the technology, they can license it for however much they wish. Hey, they can choose NOT to license it to anyone. That's what IP is all about: ownership and control of ideas you spent time and money developing. Everyone else can pay what Nokia wants, or develop their own version that may or may not be compatible with Nokia's tech, this is exactly why we have CDMA cell phone networks and GSM cell phone networks that both do the same thing (transmit voice and data over the airwaves) but are fundamentally incompatible!

Apple's just upset because back in the 1980's they spent their time and money working on personal computers and Nokia spent it on wireless communications. Now Apple wants to join in the cell phone industry but it's too late to come up with an Apple owned standard for radio transmission. The market is mature, the standards have been chosen and nationwide, no worldwide, networks have been long deployed now. Nobody's going to build a whole new network of towers.

It would be like Thomas Edison coming back from the grave and wanting to relaunch DC power distribution. But it's too late, the ship has sailed on having another electric power system. So now Edison sues Nikola Tesla because Tesla wont give him cheap licensing for patents on AC power distribution so Edison can start a business designing AC generators instead.

 

[MorphingDragon]

I'd have to label this "and....?"

Nokia is suing Apple for using Nokia technology without a license to use it. If it is found that Apple is using this technology, then Nokia was right.

All the fanbois going "Nokia is teh evil!" are forgetting one thing: Nokia owns the technology, they can license it for however much they wish. Hey, they can choose NOT to license it to anyone. That's what IP is all about: ownership and control of ideas you spent time and money developing. Everyone else can pay what Nokia wants, or develop their own version that may or may not be compatible with Nokia's tech, this is exactly why we have CDMA cell phone networks and GSM cell phone networks that both do the same thing (transmit voice and data over the airwaves) but are fundamentally incompatible!

Apple's just upset because back in the 1980's they spent their time and money working on personal computers and Nokia spent it on wireless communications. Now Apple wants to join in the cell phone industry but it's too late to come up with an Apple owned standard for radio transmission. The market is mature, the standards have been chosen and nationwide, no worldwide, networks have been long deployed now. Nobody's going to build a whole new network of towers.

It would be like Thomas Edison coming back from the grave and wanting to relaunch DC power distribution. But it's too late, the ship has sailed on having another electric power system. So now Edison sues Nikola Tesla because Tesla wont give him cheap licensing for patents on AC power distribution so Edison can start a business designing AC generators instead.

Now this is a person who truly believes in the Patent system, but doesn't quite understand it.

Hypocrisy, look it up. This is what Apple and Nokia are doing. Actually, scratch that, we have no clue how hypocritical Apple are in the Cellphone industry. Any licensing between companies are usually kept secret. If Apple believes that they are being charged too much, they can bloody well complain. Just like you can haggle at your local store.

---

Oh and well done on the Tesla argument. It would have more credibility if Edison and the US government didn't destroy his work because they thought it was for the soviets or something.

Damn them all, we could have wirelessly transmitted power YEARS ago.

 

[SeaFox]

If Apple believes that they are being charged too much, they can bloody well complain. Just like you can haggle at your local store.

When you haggle at your local store, you haggle with the store itself. You don't have the option of suing the store because their prices are too high for your liking. If you can't come to an agreement you go down the street to a different store. If Nokia really is charging "too much" Apple (and other shoppers) would be talking to Ericsson instead (or whoever holds the patents on CDMA) and Nokia would soon find itself with no customers for it's IP. But Apple can't do that if they've been using Nokia's GSM radio technology this whole time without a license, they've already thrown their entire platform behind a technology before they gained the right to use it.

If Nokia's claims pan out in court, Apple will have painted themselves into a corner on their own.

Other cell phone makers are in this patent-portfolio sharing agreement with Nokia, but then again most other cell phone makers actually contributed something to the hardware platform GSM runs on, so reciprocal licensing makes good sense among them. Apple is an outside company to their circle, who's only achievement is grafting a touchscreen iPod onto the others' radio hardware. So of course Apple doesn't want to share patents, they would only have things to share that differentiate their product from the competition, things that they use for competitive advantage.

Oh and well done on the Tesla argument. It would have more credibility if Edison and the US government didn't destroy his work because they thought it was for the soviets or something.

It doesn't change the situation. Obviously Edison and Tesla are not zombie inventors still holding the patents that have either expired or are sitting in a Westinghouse vault somewhere in the real world.

If you'd like a hipocracy example how about this:
Pretend Fairplay on the iTMS is still alive and well. Nokia wants to license Fairplay for it's music playback app on its cell phones so Nokia phone users can play back their iTunes purchased music content, following all the Apple rules for authorization, etc. Apple either:

• doesn't want to license to them, at all
• asks a license fee Nokia feels is "exorbitant"

Nokia now sues Apple for not licensing FairPlay to them at a "reasonable" cost, rather than partnering with M$, Rhapsody, or some other provider.

Who's side do you think everyone on these forums would be on then? It's the exact same situation, only the roles are reversed.

Oh, wait. It's not the same, because Apple didn't sue Nokia first claiming Nokia had already started shipping handsets with its Fairplay decrypter without licensing agreements with Apple inked.

 

[aegisdesign]

First off, the Nokia E71 is available in the US as the E71x via ATT--I believe it's $50 on a subsidy/contract. Hardly unattainable. Also available is the Nokia Surge smartphone (being marketed as a texting phone) and some basic flip phones. In years past, we've gotten the 6650, E75, and E62 smartphones, too. (all on ATT/Cingular). It's nowhere good enough/as much as in Europe, where you can get N95s, E90s, etc. on contract, but they aren't entirely gone here, either. Hardly out of the question, though.

Part of the problem for Nokia in the US is it seems the carriers like to dick around with Nokia phones to unprecedented levels. The E71x is a prime example where AT&T have neutered it by removing free Ovi services like Ovi Maps, removing integrated SIP/VoIP, removing the customizable home screen, and search and then adding their own bloatware.

We get that kind of shenanigans in the UK too but not to that extent. The only branding change I had on my Three E71 was they'd added their free email client and some browser shortcuts.

It's no surprise that people in the US have low opinions of Nokia software when it's been that altered by their carrier.

The Nokia suit - the Apple counter suit ...
.. are just foreplay in a protracted negotiation. This is how companies often come to an agreement.

I am sure that Apple would be more than happy to pay Nokia a couple of dollars per handset. It's hardly going to dent their profitability.

These issues will be resolved in a few years with a quiet handshake and Nokia receiving a reimbursement fee of a few dollars per handset. Apple won't miss the cash.

It doesn't work that way.

Whilst Apple are not paying a royalty, they're able to charge less for the iPhone than companies who have to pay the royalty or who have spent billions on R&D like Nokia. This gives Apple an unfair competitive advantage as they can gain market share off the back of Nokia. ie. "free riding"

The longer Apple leave this, the more Nokia and quite possibly other licencees of the patents will be pressing the point that Apple needs to compensate for their unfair market advantage as well as pay the royalty fees.

Both Nokia and Apple are claiming the other is "free riding" but it's pretty cut and dried in Apple's case as they'd have to "free ride" the GSM/UMTS patents just to have a phone.

In the same period it is likely that bad will turn to worse for Nokia as they fight to retain customers and developers with their horribly fragmented product line.

Nokia might win the battle, but the war looks lost already.

C.

I wouldn't be so sure. Apple may be able to do well in the high end market but Nokia's got a much leaner OS that runs fast on lesser hardware. They also release QT4.6 a while back which gives developers a cross platform framework that they can use for apps that will run on everything from Symbian S60 v3 fp1 up through Maemo and on to Windows, OSX and Linux. Some of the new QT SDK tools like QT Creator are pretty nifty too and arguably comparable to XCode.

But we'll see. 2010 is looking interesting in the phone space. Hopefully the shift to 800x480 screens and 8mp cameras by most of the competition will finally get Apple to give us some decent hardware to justify the price.

All the fanbois going "Nokia is teh evil!" are forgetting one thing: Nokia owns the technology, they can license it for however much they wish. Hey, they can choose NOT to license it to anyone.

No, that's not true.

The patents that Nokia wants Apple to pay for are part of the GSM, UMTS and 802.11 standards. Nokia invented the technology and patented it but they essentially 'gave up' the option of denying a licence by making the technology available to the standards setting bodies. Nokia HAVE to licence them on fair and reasonable terms to anyone who wants to use the standards.

Nokia are saying they've already told Apple what those terms are and Apple disagreed that they are fair and reasonable which is why Nokia asked the courts to decide.

Apple in reply is saying Nokia wanted use of some of Apple's patents as part of the deal. Apple's patents aren't part of a standard and therefore Apple doesn't have to licence them and here's a list of 13 patents Nokia infringe.

Apple can't avoid paying for Nokia's technology so it seems like an odd move when Nokia was quite happy to let the courts decide.

 

[twilson]

"Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,"

Like that pesky GSM technology eh Apple?

I guess Nokia's original suit has legs given this turn of events. *grabs popcorn*

Still, GSM is a standard (that's what the 'S' stands for). Nokia willing committed to providing their inventions/patents to this new standard, for the benefit of the standard, and themselves by agreeing to certain licensing terms (F/RAND) which they are now deciding to TRY and deny to Apple, just cos it suits them.

Nokia wants to have it's cake and eat it. Apple has, rightly called them out on it.

It's arguable that, without being part of the standard, Nokia's technology/patents may not have gotten anywhere.

Apple and others have also made numerous contributions to standards, such as H.264, and I'd hate Apple to resort to this same tactic.

 

[cmaier]

I'd have to label this "and....?"

Nokia is suing Apple for using Nokia technology without a license to use it. If it is found that Apple is using this technology, then Nokia was right.

All the fanbois going "Nokia is teh evil!" are forgetting one thing: Nokia owns the technology, they can license it for however much they wish. Hey, they can choose NOT to license it to anyone. That's what IP is all about: ownership and control of ideas you spent time and money developing. Everyone else can pay what Nokia wants, or develop their own version that may or may not be compatible with Nokia's tech, this is exactly why we have CDMA cell phone networks and GSM cell phone networks that both do the same thing (transmit voice and data over the airwaves) but are fundamentally incompatible!

You are ignoring the fact that Nokia agreed to license the technology to all comers as part of the standards body. They agreed to license the technology on a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory basis (FRAND) in order to encourage the standard to be adopted (so that, presumably, they could sell more phones and get a reasonable royalty from everyone. This is the deal they made. if they wanted to be allowed to discriminate in licensing terms, that's their right, but then they couldn't have put their patents into the standard's licensing pool.

By requiring Apple to cross-license but not requiring anyone else to cross-license, they are being discriminatory.

Courts have upheld the FRAND requirement.

 

[Carniphage]

I wouldn't be so sure. Apple may be able to do well in the high end market but Nokia's got a much leaner OS that runs fast on lesser hardware. They also release QT4.6 a while back which gives developers a cross platform framework that they can use for apps that will run on everything from Symbian S60 v3 fp1 up through Maemo and on to Windows, OSX and Linux. Some of the new QT SDK tools like QT Creator are pretty nifty too and arguably comparable to XCode.

The ability to run Symbian on low-end phones will secure Nokia a future in that space. But there is hardly any profit in such devices.

Nokia's platform is horribly fragmented. Having a cross platform API is irrelevant if there are massive differences in input-method, processor speed and screen size. Trying to write software that works across such a mess of products is a nightmare for developers. Adding another OS and another screen size will just make the nightmare worse.

But developers are the least of Nokia's concerns.

Nokia need to retain customers. And without compelling products, I don't see that happening. Consumers trade-in their phones every 18 months. And Nokia have been relying on Nokia users trading-up to more Nokia phones. The string of lack-lustre Nokia products has seen customers seduced away to better devices. Especially at the high end.

Nokia's response to iPhone has been to litigate. It should have been to innovate.

This suit and countersuit are simply negotiation on the licensing terms. No more, no less. I am sure Nokia will eventually win something. But it will be a pyrrhic victory.

C.

 

[gnasher729]

Apple can't avoid paying for Nokia's technology so it seems like an odd move when Nokia was quite happy to let the courts decide.

It is actually exactly what you would expect. Nokia is quite happy to let the courts decide because juries can be a bit clueless and who knows what they decide a "fair and reasonable" license fee is when some courts have decided that paying almost two million dollars for leaving 24 songs lying around in your "shared" folder is "fair and reasonable".

Now instead of Nokia being able to paint Apple as the evil guys who don't want to pay for Nokia's patents, Apple now can say that Apple is the good guys who are willing to pay a fair amount for these patents ("fair" according to Apple's lawyers is obviously whatever Apple wants to pay), while Nokia are the evil wrong-doers who are stealing Apple's patents.

With this move, it is much much more likely that a jury would agree with Apple what "fair and reasonable" means, and not with Nokia.

 

[BongoBanger]

The ability to run Symbian on low-end phones will secure Nokia a future in that space. But there is hardly any profit in such devices.

Nokia's handset division make about a a billion dollars profit every quarter. There's plenty of profit to be made.

Nokia's platform is horribly fragmented. Having a cross platform API is irrelevant if there are massive differences in input-method, processor speed and screen size.

Not if you know what you're doing. Most applications will run using the new Qt and Direct UI interfaces so it's not the issue it was.

Trying to write software that works across such a mess of products is a nightmare for developers. Adding another OS and another screen size will just make the nightmare worse.

As mentioned, if you know what you're doing and write the software with the parameters in the right place it actually isn't.

But developers are the least of Nokia's concerns.

Since Symbian has the biggest development community in the world you're right. They don't.

Nokia need to retain customers. And without compelling products, I don't see that happening.

Well since sales are up in 2008 from 2009 they appear to be proving you wrong.

Consumers trade-in their phones every 18 months. And Nokia have been relying on Nokia users trading-up to more Nokia phones. The string of lack-lustre Nokia products has seen customers seduced away to better devices. Especially at the high end.

To a degree, yes and certainly at the high end. That said, the Nokia 5800 has been the best selling smartphone in the UK this year.

Nokia's response to iPhone has been to litigate. It should have been to innovate.

Maemo 5, Symbian^2 to Symbian^4, Direct UI, Qt? I think you'll find they have been.

Look, I expect this kind of half assed analysis from people like Dilger and Gruber but, come on, checking the facts in terms of sales, regional market share and smartphone development tell a different story.

 

[cmaier]

Nokia's original suit is only asking for a court to determine the fair market rate for licensing their technology, and enforce payment. Given that virtually everybody else in the phone manufacturing world has paid to license the tech, I'd be stunned if Apple could get away without doing the same.

First, even a party that licenses a patent can assert the invalidity of the patent - while Nokia may try to make hay from the fact that everyone else licenses it, that isn't going to go very far.

Second, that is not all that Nokia is asking for ("nokia's original suit is only asking for a court to determine the fair market rate for licensing their technology, and enforce payment"). Nokia is asking for:

1) a finding that the patents are actually infringed by Apple. Adherence to a standard is no longer necessarily sufficient - Nokia will probably have to show that the actual devices infringe, not that the standard infringes.

2) a finding that Nokia abided by the F-RAND requirements.

3) that Apple has not compensated Nokia.

4) that the patents are valid

5) that the patents are enforceable

 

[MorphingDragon]

If you'd like a hipocracy example how about this:
Pretend Fairplay on the iTMS is still alive and well. Nokia wants to license Fairplay for it's music playback app on its cell phones so Nokia phone users can play back their iTunes purchased music content, following all the Apple rules for authorization, etc. Apple either:

• doesn't want to license to them, at all
• asks a license fee Nokia feels is "exorbitant"

Nokia now sues Apple for not licensing FairPlay to them at a "reasonable" cost, rather than partnering with M$, Rhapsody, or some other provider.

Who's side do you think everyone on these forums would be on then? It's the exact same situation, only the roles are reversed.

Oh, wait. It's not the same, because Apple didn't sue Nokia first claiming Nokia had already started shipping handsets with its Fairplay decrypter without licensing agreements with Apple inked.

Because FairPlay isnt a standard. It is proprietary and thus does not have to commit to FRAND. Nokia probably knew what they were getting themselves into when they pushed the Patents to Qualcomm and the Standards Authority for Cell Phones... whoever they are. If Apple believe they are being overcharged compared to other companies with our without patent sharing. they have every right to complain.

Personally I'm sick of Nokia handsets and smartphones. One peice of mediocrity after another. Much rather take an HTC over a Nokia. If they didn't own the patents for GSM they'd just about be irrelevant. You'd think with all that "raw" ingenuity they could design a decent OS.

 

[cmaier]

Because FairPlay isnt a standard. It is proprietary and thus does not have to commit to FRAND. Nokia probably knew what they were getting themselves into when they pushed the Patents to Qualcomm and the Standards Authority for Cell Phones... whoever they are.

What people don't understand is that Nokia made a choice as to what it wanted to do with its patents, and now it has to live with it.

Nokia could have insisted that it's patents are to be licensed on a licensee-by-licensee basis, and that each potential license would be negotiated on its own merits, taking into account who the licensee is, how many patents the licensee has, etc. If Nokia had made that choice, it would be perfectly free to insist that Apple cross-licenses its patents, pays Nokia $100 per iPhone, or any other thing Nokia wanted. It could, in fact, refuse entirely to license its patents to Apple at any price.

Instead, Nokia agreed to have its licenses be part of a patent pool relating to various standards. Nokia didn't do this out of a feeling of brotherhood and felicity; by being part of the standard, Nokia is assured that its own favored technology, a technology in which it has a huge investment, becomes ubiquitous. It is assured of a constant and reliable stream of income from those that adopt the standard. It is assured that its own components and back-end equipment will be popular as it enjoys a presumption of compatibility Etc. The standards bodies would not have adopted these standards (and would not have conferred upon Nokia these benefits) if it knew Nokia was going to not abide by the FRAND principles.

Apple's argument (which may or may not be correct - we have no idea what Nokia really asked for) is that Nokia wants its cake (the benefits described above) and wants to eat it too (by not following the FRAND principles, and by treating its patents as if they are not subject to the patent pool).

 

[Goona]

Nokia thought they were slick. They wanted to extort money from Apple because Apple is pulling in billions from iphone. They wanted Apple to pay 3 times the industry rate but Apple told them to shove it and they started filing lawsuits. Good for Apple to telling them to go take a hike. They shouldn't let any company try and take advantage of them.

 

[sysiphus]

Nokia thought they were slick. They wanted to extort money from Apple because Apple is pulling in billions from iphone. They wanted Apple to pay 3 times the industry rate but Apple told them to shove it and they started filing lawsuits. Good for Apple to telling them to go take a hike. They shouldn't let any company try and take advantage of them.

Take advantage of them? Try it this way...the companies that contributed to developing the standard get better rates on the licensing. Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia etc all put in millions in R&D on this stuff...and Apple just expects to get the treatment, having not done any of the legwork?

 

[cmaier]

Take advantage of them? Try it this way...the companies that contributed to developing the standard get better rates on the licensing. Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia etc all put in millions in R&D on this stuff...and Apple just expects to get the treatment, having not done any of the legwork?

Apple expected to get the same treatment as every other third party that adheres to the standards, as is required by the FRAND clause in the standards organization agreement.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Take advantage of them? Try it this way...the companies that contributed to developing the standard get better rates on the licensing. Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia etc all put in millions in R&D on this stuff...and Apple just expects to get the treatment, having not done any of the legwork?

If Im not mistaken Apple did a lot of Legowrk in the UI department. Which everybody and his dog are trying to surpass.

 

[seedster2]

It is actually exactly what you would expect. Nokia is quite happy to let the courts decide because juries can be a bit clueless and who knows what they decide a "fair and reasonable" license fee is when some courts have decided that paying almost two million dollars for leaving 24 songs lying around in your "shared" folder is "fair and reasonable".

Now instead of Nokia being able to paint Apple as the evil guys who don't want to pay for Nokia's patents, Apple now can say that Apple is the good guys who are willing to pay a fair amount for these patents ("fair" according to Apple's lawyers is obviously whatever Apple wants to pay), while Nokia are the evil wrong-doers who are stealing Apple's patents.

With this move, it is much much more likely that a jury would agree with Apple what "fair and reasonable" means, and not with Nokia.

That's some real wishful thinking for a "clueless" jury

 

[kdarling]

Nokia thought they were slick. They wanted to extort money from Apple because Apple is pulling in billions from iphone. They wanted Apple to pay 3 times the industry rate but Apple told them to shove it and they started filing lawsuits.

Where did you get "3 times the industry rate"? That was not in the lawsuit I read.

If Im not mistaken Apple did a lot of Legwork in the UI department. Which everybody and his dog are trying to surpass.

What do you think Apple did that was new in handheld or touch UIs? I can't think of much beyond the rubberband edge effect. The double-tap and pinch zoom predate Apple, for example.

What they did do, was concentrate solely on a touch UI, something others could not do because of having to support legacy, smaller phones. Plus they did the wonderful Safari browser, which was the main key to making it popular IMO.

You're right that others are trying to surpass it, which is why they're having more difficulties. Just copying the simple iPhone UI would be easy and quick.

 

[Carniphage]

Nokia's handset division make about a a billion dollars profit every quarter. There's plenty of profit to be made.

And Apple, with it's miniscule market share is making more profit from its handsets per quarter. Because Nokia's profitable top end handsets are losing sales to Apple and RIM.

Not if you know what you're doing. Most applications will run using the new Qt and Direct UI interfaces so it's not the issue it was.

As mentioned, if you know what you're doing and write the software with the parameters in the right place it actually isn't.

Talk to some Developers about Nokia.

It's easy to create some app that runs on a bunch of platforms if all it does is scroll some text. But it is hard to create a beautifully crafted app that runs flawlessly on wildly disparate hardware. Nokia's have such vastly different processor power, screensize and input devices that the UI becomes a mess. Trying to code a game would be impossible. This one has a keypad, this has a resistive screen. This has a capacitative. This mess of random devices, random OSes cannot be considered a single platform.

The solution is to make less lines - not dump the problem in the laps of developers.

Since Symbian has the biggest development community in the world you're right. They don't.

I think you mean Nokia has the biggest community of ex-developers who have grumpily migrated to more profitable platforms.

Maemo 5, Symbian^2 to Symbian^4, Direct UI, Qt? I think you'll find they have been. (innovating)

That is not innovation!

Do you think you could go up to a customer and say, hey Mr. Consumer this phone runs "maemo"

The consumer would say "What the hell is a meemoh?"

Like many electronic companies, Nokia has allowed its agenda to be dominated by engineering issues. That's what Sony did. Nokia's first goal should be trying to understand its customer's needs and then let those need dictate the engineering agenda. Currently the tail is wagging the dog.

Look, I expect this kind of half assed analysis from people like Dilger and Gruber but, come on, checking the facts in terms of sales, regional market share and smartphone development tell a different story.

Nokia are behaving like a cartoon animal in a Chuck Jones cartoon. The bridge was chopped away from them two years ago. Finally Nokia have looked down, and only now have they realised they need to start falling.

This issue does not need pundits to resolve. The market will show which of us is right - and I suspect that in as little as 12 months time Nokia will be looking very weak indeed. Time will tell.

C.

 

[BongoBanger]

And Apple, with it's miniscule market share is making more profit from its handsets per quarter. Because Nokia's profitable top end handsets are losing sales to Apple and RIM.

For now. That's my point about the fragility of high end handsets - all of Apple's eggs are in one basket. Nokia has a spread of markets to get through leaner times. This also happened when small form phones were trendy and when everyone thought clamshells would take over.

Talk to some Developers about Nokia.

I have. Most Symbian - or rather S60 - apps were written a long time ago (in smartphone terms).

It's easy to create some app that runs on a bunch of platforms if all it does is scroll some text. But it is hard to create a beautifully crafted app that runs flawlessly on wildly disparate hardware.

No it isn't. You should try the likes of Gravity or Google Maps or the thousands of other cross platform apps.

Nokia's have such vastly different processor power, screensize and input devices that the UI becomes a mess. Trying to code a game would be impossible. This one has a keypad, this has a resistive screen. This has a capacitative. This mess of random devices, random OSes cannot be considered a single platform.

Yes it can. And since developers - at least competent developers - actually do manage to write versions of apps for different versions of S60 I'm afraid you're flat out wrong.

The solution is to make less lines - not dump the problem in the laps of developers.

No it isn't considering that, as mentioned, the developers understand that the core Symbian platform operates in much the same way regardless of handset. You then select the UI or API layers that are going to be used for the particular version. That's why there are thousands of Symbian apps and why it has the biggest development community in the world.

I think you mean Nokia has the biggest community of ex-developers who have grumpily migrated to more profitable platforms.

No I don't. You really need to check your fact and not believe everything you read in blogs.

That is not innovation!

Yes it is. Innovation is simply a new way of doing something. You know, like Apple did with the iPhone.

Do you think you could go up to a customer and say, hey Mr. Consumer this phone runs "maemo"

Why? Do you think anyone really cares what OS it uses? If you go up and say "Hey, this is an N900" they'll know exactly what it is.

The consumer would say "What the hell is a meemoh?"

As indeed they would likely say "What the hell is Mobile OS X?"

Like many electronic companies, Nokia has allowed its agenda to be dominated by engineering issues. That's what Sony did. Nokia's first goal should be trying to understand its customer's needs and then let those need dictate the engineering agenda. Currently the tail is wagging the dog.

I'm sorry but that's wrong. Nokia acknowledge Apple have the high end just now but their strategy has been clear for a number of years now - dominate the low and mid tier market because it gives stability and scale. They've done that by flooding the market with mid tier phones, selected the ones that worked and then packaged them to the market.

Nokia are behaving like a cartoon animal in a Chuck Jones cartoon. The bridge was chopped away from them two years ago. Finally Nokia have looked down, and only now have they realised they need to start falling.

No they haven't. They have an issue with the high end. Sales have grown since 2008 in smartphones - up by over 3.2 million from Q2 08 to Q2 09 (which is more than the total iPhones sold outside the US in the entire quarter) and up 1.5 million this quarter.

This issue does not need pundits to resolve. The market will show which of us is right - and I suspect that in as little as 12 months time Nokia will be looking very weak indeed. Time will tell.

It will. However I remember people saying the same thing twelve months ago with the 3G though and look: here we are with Nokia selling more smartphones now than then.

The idea that Nokia - which does have issues - is at death's door is a foolish one promulgated by tech journalists and some analysts that really should know better. The figures simply don't match up to their vision of reality.

 

[MorphingDragon]

What do you think Apple did that was new in handheld or touch UIs? I can't think of much beyond the rubberband edge effect. The double-tap and pinch zoom predate Apple, for example.

What they did do, was concentrate solely on a touch UI, something others could not do because of having to support legacy, smaller phones. Plus they did the wonderful Safari browser, which was the main key to making it popular IMO.

You're right that others are trying to surpass it, which is why they're having more difficulties. Just copying the simple iPhone UI would be easy and quick.

No Apple spent time making a usable Touch UI. WinMo and Symbian are still as clunky as ever. Yes I owned PDAs and Smart Phones before.

 

[aegisdesign]

The ability to run Symbian on low-end phones will secure Nokia a future in that space. But there is hardly any profit in such devices.

But there is profit and only Nokia has a smartphone OS capable of running on cheap hardware. Some of the low end S60 devices are single chip devices - really highly integrated low power things. A boatload of low margin phones might be easier to sell than a dingy full of iPhones.

At some point low end feature phone hardware is going to be as capable as smartphones and Symbian will find a mass market way before expensive iPhone and Android hardware does.

Nokia's platform is horribly fragmented. Having a cross platform API is irrelevant if there are massive differences in input-method, processor speed and screen size. Trying to write software that works across such a mess of products is a nightmare for developers. Adding another OS and another screen size will just make the nightmare worse.

Not really. There's S60 v3 (that's the qwerty one) and S60 v5 (that's the touch one) - ie. TWO platforms, both of which share QT now as a UI framework and Maemo is off into the future for geek tablets - also QT. The N900 internet tablet is cool for geeks but not really ready for mainstream phone users IMHO.

Screen size only matters if you're hard coding your graphics like iPhone development seems to involve. If you're laying out a UI properly, you hint the layout rather than hard code it to pixel values. This isn't a new concept as anyone who has done Mac and Windows UI development since the 80s would know but something that new iPhone developers gloss over thinking the iPhone's screen will always be the size it is. I reckon a lot of developers will be in for a shock next year when a new iPhone launches that has a screen resolution that is not 320x480.

Nokia need to retain customers. And without compelling products, I don't see that happening. Consumers trade-in their phones every 18 months. And Nokia have been relying on Nokia users trading-up to more Nokia phones. The string of lack-lustre Nokia products has seen customers seduced away to better devices. Especially at the high end.

Not true. Nokia sold more smartphones this year than last year. The biggest selling smartphone of any model was a Nokia E71 last year. The market has grown but not at Nokia's expense. Apart from that they've a huge market of dumb-phone users trading up to smartphones they can actually afford. Not everyone can afford an iPhone.

Nokia's response to iPhone has been to litigate. It should have been to innovate.

This suit and countersuit are simply negotiation on the licensing terms. No more, no less. I am sure Nokia will eventually win something. But it will be a pyrrhic victory.

Nokia *did* innovate, hence the patents they want Apple to pay royalties for. Meanwhile behind the scenes check out what the Symbian Foundation and QT has been doing which will be in Nokia (and Sony Ericsson and others) phones next year.

Apple expected to get the same treatment as every other third party that adheres to the standards, as is required by the FRAND clause in the standards organization agreement.

We only have Apple's word that that is the case and Nokia did ask the court to decide if it's terms were FRAND before Apple countersued.

 

[cmaier]

We only have Apple's word that that is the case and Nokia did ask the court to decide if it's terms were FRAND before Apple countersued.

Of course. It's a he said-she said. All legal cases are.