Anyway that wasn’t the main point, which was that in comparison to most of the negative commentary on here most of them were also levelled at Apple. So one back at you

Really? WP7 doesn’t allow MULTITASKING, and is very RESTRICTIVE in its services/APIs.
You fell for that trap? You could be describing Apple’s SDK when it came out

Technically, for a developer, WP7 is a dead end – it doesn’t allow multitasking, and is very restrictive in its services/APIs.

Can you explain why you “don’t care for MS”? What is it that they have done that is any worse than any other company?

Also this debate about open and closed systems is silly and a bit emotional at times “enslaved by the biggest and laziest monopoly” indeed. Remember who went to who and why they did so.

There is no one best approach. Open source and closed systems both have their merit and disadvantages. One size clearly does not fit all use cases. Take Apple as a case in point, if the closed systems are so evil as N900 tends to suggest and should be shunned for open systems, think of all the wonderful innovation and benefits that came to the market when Apple arrived that people would not have realised. Then came along Google with an open source solution, again this demanded the market lift its game. Competition is good and diversity breeds competition. Some people like the closed (consistent) systems and some love the freedom of open standards to allow them to innovate themsleves. It would be best to focus on the outcomes rather than the technology because at the end of the day the technology can be great but if the outcome is not well received it will fail commercially and ultimately die (think Digital Equipment corporation – great engineering, terrible execution in the market).

Hard working and clever Finns had acheived 3 things:

1. Nokia had a usable strategy of developing and tweeking an open source OS that has already passed the security test.
2. They had an excited partner (Intel) who was willing to spend some time and money to get the platform over to a anxiously-waiting, open source developer community.
3. They had long-time customers who were interested in giving the new platform a chance, because of what they would gain.

The hard work and prize now thrown away – freedom from the world-wide Telco/Data monopolies.
The harsh reality – Nokia enslaved by the biggest and laziest monopoly in the computer world.

Google, Apple, Blackberry, Nokia, etc – They have come a long way to make computers more useful and useable, but still have a long way to go before any one of them will become the defacto standard for everyone in the world. Therefore, why would Nokia kill off their chances to evolve with everyone else by choosing Microsoft? Microsoft might seem like the defacto standard right now, but give the open source smart phone community a little time and love, and Microsoft will be ignored – then shunned – then left to die.

Hard working and clever Finns had acheived 3 things:

1. Nokia had a usable strategy of developing and tweeking an open source OS that has already passed the security test.
2. They had an excited partner (Intel) who was willing to spend some time and money to get the platform over to a anxiously-waiting, open source developer community.
3. They had long-time customers who were interested in giving the new platform a chance, because of what they would gain.

The hard work and prize now thrown away – freedom from the world-wide Telco/Data monopolies.
The harsh reality – Nokia enslaved by the biggest and laziest monopoly in the computer world.

Google, Apple, Blackberry, Nokia, etc – They have come a long way to make computers more useful and useable, but still have a long way to go before any one of them will become the defacto standard for everyone in the world. Therefore, why would Nokia kill off their chances to evolve with everyone else by choosing Microsoft? Microsoft might seem like the defacto standard right now, but give the open source smart phone community a little time and love, and Microsoft will be ignored – then shunned – then left to die.

For comparison, Android was bought in 2005 and the first devices appeared at the end of 2008.

WP7 isn’t succeeding – wholly untrue. WP7 is on par and in most cases ahead of both customer adoption numbers and application numbers

Imagine if Apple’s iPhone or Google’s Android was deemed to be a dead duck after 4 months. People who state this about WP7 do so from a point of incorrect data and possibly bias (BTW I don’t own a WP7 device and have used the iPhone, and Android devices).

Nokia going for Android – why would you, your value is in differentiating yourselves and showing your value. What do you see being left for the host of Android slave organisations pushing out increasingly powerful devices just to be trumped two months later. The other areas of differentiation such as their own app stores or skins are no longer sufficient to differentiate. Long term cheaper (Chinese versions) of smart phones running Android will come out just like they have in Nokia’s own back garden of feature phones. Then where will all the HTC’s and Samsung’s go to differentiate. Watch out but Huwaei (sp?) and others are coming.

Nokia’s value is in mapping, imaging. Do you see Google Android sitting well with the Nokia offerings?
I would have not been as brave as Nokia and may have gone for a joint Android and Windows phone 7 strategy but I think this will work on the BIG PROVISO that they come out with very good eye popping, high spec devices before the end of this year. By that I mean devices that are well into the top 2 most powerful specified devices. They even need to beat some of the highest specs i.e. a 12mega pixel camera. They also need to provide new services that noone else has e.g. Digital Audio Radio with a link to the Zune market place so you can one click oredr on Zune what you are listening to on the radio. DAB is effectively the radio internet, all audio data (comedy, news, classic, rock, politics, pop etc) 24hrs a day with minimal impact on battery but another significant sales channel.

Individual features like connected contacts or diaries is not going to do well enough.

Also they are going to need to get the most popular apps available out there and advertise advertise advertise these apps and features and not some silly message talking about users needing to use their phones less! People want more not less and the approach MS took was an anti the others approach rather than we do more and better.

that’s simply not true! get your facts straight.

WP7 is only 4 months old! and already there’s 7000+ apps and around 2 millions handsets sold. Where was Android 4 months after its introduction?

WP7 had 4,000 apps just 2 months after launch – whereas it took Android a year to reach that number!
Do you compute?

And even then, Android was slow, ugly and buggy and no one cared about it.. it’s only in the last year when Samsung jumped in with their infamous Galaxy series that people started to take notice!

Do your job, do some research!

Nokia does have pretty good camera technology. In fact, Steve Ballmer singled it out as an example of one of Nokia’s strengths, so that’s saying something. However, cameras alone don’t make or break the phone. If Microsoft could bring in technology to rival or exceed the iPhone’s, then we could be talking.

That being said, I’m optimistic for good things from Nokia and Microsoft. The smartphone market could always do with more competition, and I, for once, am glad that the development of operating systems has again been divested from the domain of handset manufacturers (with the prominent exception of Apple, of course, but it seems to work fine for them).

You people need to wake the hell up and pay attention to what’s been happening. WebOS is not a well established OS.

This deal was made in hell.

It very much looks like WP7 would have failed without Nokia. Nokia have to save WP7 but that will cost them a lot (independence, licensing costs…etc). Without Elop, they could have made a much better deal.

A much-much better choice would have been WebOS in partnership with HP. That is a well-established mobile OS, technically superior to Android and looks better too. WebOS also could have synergies with MeeGo (Linux base, possibly even common APIs, so development costs can be reduced).