Nokia recruits Silicon Valley developers, says good things are coming

February 3, 2011 9:49 PM
Dean Takahashi
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MobileBeat 2013
July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA
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Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone maker, dedicated a new office building in Silicon Valley today, and its leaders promised that good things are coming soon.

Stephen Elop, the former Microsoft executive who in September was appointed chief executive of Nokia, is planning to make a major announcement during a speech to investors in London on Feb. 11. As its rivals move fast in the growing market for smartphones and tablets, Nokia doesn’t want anyone to forget that it’s still the biggest player and isn’t going away.

Nokia isn’t saying exactly what he’ll talk about, but it says the announcement is a strategic one. The New York Times says Nokia may throw its support behind Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 software (a possibility that we’ve been reporting since last September).

That would be a huge change, since Nokia has been committed to its Symbian operating system for a long time and has been developing the Meego smartphone and tablet software with Intel for some time. Rich Green (pictured) chief technology officer of Nokia, was at the Silicon Valley building dedication today and said in a brief conversation that he is very impressed with Nokia’s willingness to embrace change and turn the ship around. Elop got tongues wagging on Jan. 27 when he said that Nokia was open to “create and/or join other ecosystems.”

Green, a former Sun Microsystems software executive, joined the company eight months ago and is eager to help get it on track. It dominates the market for feature phones (the new Nokia office’s lounge has a display of all of Nokia’s phones, pictured), but in smartphones, it has stumbled. Our review of its flagship N8 smartphone praised its hardware, but found it lacking in every other respect. Apple’s iPhone and the Google Android operating system, and its various hardware supporters, have proven to be formidable competition.

The Finnish company’s growth has slowed, and it replaced its CEO because of market share losses. In the fourth quarter, Nokia’s share of the global smartphone market fell from 40 percent a year ago to 31 percent. Profit declined 21 percent. In the U.S. in the third quarter, Nokia’s market share was a tiny 2 percent in the U.S., according to strategy analytics.

Yet Nokia officials offered reminders that they have cool technologies such as Qt, (pronounced cute), which partners such as Netflix use to create TV-based web movie download applications. Qt, available for free, has won a loyal following for its ease-of-use as a tool for developers to create applications on a wide variety of web-based platforms.

In Silicon Valley, Nokia’s new office occupies about five floors of an office building in Sunnyvale, Calif., and it has a bunch of researchers in Palo Alto and Berkeley as well. At the event today, the company was courting all sorts of mobile developers, encouraging them to get to know the company and partner with it. Green wouldn’t say what was happening on Feb. 11. But he said it will indeed be big news that will signal the direction of the company in the future.

  • Crowd_Sorcerer

    You could understand if Nokia made some Android handsets.But Windows Phone 7? That's just plain wacky.The industry should now be well aware that Windows Phone 7 has been knocked out of the mobile game. Windows Phone 7 sales are declining, not increasing. It could not even attain half the sales of the failed old Windows Mobile OS.For those companies creating a new mobile OS, it's a risky business. So there is risk with MeeGo. However, for hardware OEMs / ODMs, they can easily switch to the winning OS later, and quickly gain marketshare (with the right handsets). Nokia can switch to Android at any time, and do well. It may as well try its own OS with MeeGo.Microsoft played its cards very badly with Windows Phone 7. A closed, buggy, half baked OS missing basic functionality. Plus, Microsoft's reputation in mobile is the lowest of all, following failures such as Windows Mobile (2% world market share and falling fast), and the Kin phones (the words 'Kin' and 'debacle' are interchangeable).The failure of Windows Phone 7 does not mean that MeeGo will fail. So long as Nokia can bring MeeGo to market in a reasonable time frame, and include basic functionality such as tethering and custom ringtones (which WP7 lacks), and make the OS highly open so others can profit from it too.

  • http://twitter.com/Carniphage Carniphage

    It's impossible for any manufacturer to set its own agenda and create distinctive products as long as it outsources its software production to an external company. The consequence is that all you can manufacture is commodity phones with small profit margins. The trouble with Nokia is that they already have small margins. 8 Euros per handset on average.So yes' they could slash billions off their R&D budget, and they would be no worse off. But Nokia's real problem is a broken structure that is wasteful and lacking in focus. That can't be solved so easily.C.

  • Dubya911

    Not sure where Netflix uses Qt. I know their streaming player uses Microsoft Silverlight however.

  • governor67

    I'm going out on a limb here, but…if both companies simply immolated the billions lost herein, the resulting heat would last longer and reach more people. Call it a hunch.

  • http://twitter.com/ilikegirlsdaily I Like Girls

    Just give up Nokia. It's over.

  • http://twitter.com/ilikegirlsdaily I Like Girls

    You have no idea wtf you're talking about.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EF4ZM42SKN5UAUC66VMPJJL2UQ Rahul

    Well, this alliance could mean a lot to Microsoft. Just as this partnership is announced, the no. of potential users of WP7 will skyrocket. For Nokia, this is a very strategic “face-saving” decision. Tru to the last syllable, Symbian is th most mobile-optimised OS out there, but it lacks the fit-'n'-finish the comptitive OS's out there have. Gloss and eye candy are equally important. This is where WP7 can come in. WP7 is a closed and buggy OS, agreed, but it definitely shows promise. I know I will be bashed for this, but there is only one problem that I see with an Open OS like Android (apart from boatloads of obvious and pretty convincing benefits)- The development is just too fast. The various OEMs simply arent able to stay up-to-speed. Most OEM's either ditch their old phones to sustain development on the next bet thing from Google, or update it veeery slowly. If you think about it, Most of the galaxyS deices only recently got 2.2 Froyo. Thats when 2.3 has been announced just 2 months ago. This is most definitely one thing that disappoints. Only the Nexus phones can stay up-to-date.This is one thing that you don't see happening with closed systems- Take for example Apple. The iOS support goes as far as 2 generations back- Which is a great thing. I know it is too early to comment on thisaspect with respect to WP7, so I won't.As long as Microsoft is a little quicker and Nokia is a little more receptive, I am sold to this idea. Moreover, I badly want the refreshing new OS that is WP7 on my Nokia N8. :) Give said partnership one year, and we can see both Nokia and Microsoft back on the mobile tech radar.

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