We got a preemptive taste of what something like this might feel like with that
banged up impostor-phone, the "Nokia" N94i -- but now things are getting real... ish. According to Microsoft's mobile communications business international marketing director (phew) John Starkweather, Redmond is in talks with the folks from Finland about getting Windows Mobile onto Nokia handsets. "They obviously have significant investments in Symbian but there are a lot of places where we have significant synergies and we would love to see the day where those synergies would extend completely with Windows Mobile," said Starkweather, though he couldn't say when or if any agreement will be met. "We work closely with Nokia and we would love to have them go all the way," Starkweather said. "It's something we talk about all the time." Hold up John, we think before you go all the way, Nokia's gonna want a ring on that finger... do we hear wedding bells?
[Via
IntoMobile]
posted February 7th 2008 1:55PM
Microsoft must be pitching Windows Media 7 to them. I don't see why Nokia would want WM 6 or 6.1.
I hope you meant Windows Mobile 7 and not Windows Media 7...Actually I take that back, I hope you've thought this whole article was about Windows Media files playing on a Nokia.
@Curtis the Claw Game Master
LOL - Yes, I thought this was about getting Windows Media to run on Nokia.
..
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Nah, just kidding .. I meant to type Mobile and somehow Media got typed.
Ouch. Not another were looking at blending. How about "will in blend" marriage. The Symanbian OS rocks. Windows mobile, while looks like windows, does a decent job. But from a usability view, IMHO, Symanbian is much better. Plus with them having Active Sync, what’s to stop them in a Windows mobile world. Nokia just need better placement in the US business world.
Matt
mobilescoop.org
This better not happen. People buy Nokia's smartphone because they DON'T want to use Windows Mobile! It's the sole reason I've switch to Nokia's S60 phone! Nokia would totally lose their identity if WM take over their phones.
No it's because people know Nokia makes good hardware. Symbian crashes a lot, is hard to use unless you have smarts and in general is outdated. Windows Mobile would be a welcome ADDITION to Nokia's lineup... I said addition because it isn't about to take over all of their phones - but they MAY introduce a few models woth WinMo6 as standard.
are people here so naive as to say, i dont like MS, which means there's no way i can like windows mobile? windows mobile is honestly, as people have said above...feature by feature the most rich platform on the market. it has the most available customization, and the most application of 3rd party apps. Even apple started to figure out, in all their arrogance, that locking out 3rd party apps is a stupid thing to do (hence their upcoming SDK for the iphone). But always refer to the iphone as the jesus phone (i big to differ), but w/ windows mobile, that only thing that seperates any phone from being a so called jesus phone, is a handset maker that actually puts something together well since MS is staying hands off as far as the OEM handset manufacturing (if you woulda asked me 4.5 months ago about the undisputed jesus phone, i would have said it would be the kaiser/tilt/tytn ii...but since HTCs' asses got extremely lazy and didn't bother to get the video support down right, well...thats where that phone falls short)
In the US the Nokia E61 and E62 haven't caught on. Windows Mobile would be confined to business smartphones. S60 would continue to serve the consumer sector. Nokia wants to sell more smartphones to business users. What's wrong with that? Choice benefits customers.
I don't think this has much to do with the quality of Symbian, though - it has to do with carrier offerings in the US. AFAIK, the only s60 phone offered by the major carriers is the e61 on AT&T, which is a piss-poor phone considering the other Symbian phones out there. (I don't have time to look this up and am going from memory, but you get the idea).
I'll buy a Nokia with Microsoft Windows the day Osama Bin Laden marries a Jewish man and converts to Judaism!
@ Andrew
Here is how not to sound like a fanboy:
"I'm writing this on my Windows Vista Laptop. I really Microsoft, except that their OS sucks, their mobile OS sucks, their office suite sucks and Playstation blows Xbox 360 out of the water."
That's how the professionals write it.
P.S. All of the above was a joke for all you anal fanboys out there.
@Skullfighter
I am really not sure what you meant to say. Sure, I like Nokia but I don't have one at the moment. I am currently considering purchasing one of their models (N95). But I will never buy a Nokia with Windows and that's my choice.
At the moment I have several SonyEricssons, Samsungs and an iPhone. I switch daily depending on need, form and function.
I have a Windows Smartphone from HTC as well - and I hate it - I keep it in the original box to save other people from the misery it would bring. Call it "Pandoras Phone".
On the other hand I am perfectly happy with both Windows XP & Vista. But I also run machines with Linux and I have a bunch of old and new Macs. But keep Windows off my phone!
All those screaming "noooo", just goes to show how ignorant you are. Just because Nokia theoretically adds windows mobile to their portfolio doesnt mean they immediateley and are compelled to abandon their own S60 OS. Ever heard of choice? Nokia hardware with WM flexibility, most likely with a new Nokia-designed interface. Sounds like a good match, its not as though apple is going to licence the iphone OS to them are they?
That's my kind of man. Give me choices or give me death!
Microsoft doesn't enter a market to be #2. Never have, never will.
DOH! Reliablke Nokia phones just got unreliable!
God please no.
I use both. N95-1(V21) and HTC Mogul (and for what it's worth, iphone).
As one of a million tests (I'm on of those crazy benchmark guys), I did a wifi test using Cnet Bandwitdh meter.
In Kbps
N95-1(V21)( - 444.5,469.6,478
HTC Mogul(PIE+) - 1020,1360,1280
Desktop(IE7 over Lan) - 2150,2456,2721
Seems almost double the speed, although I do have the wifi boost on the HTC to Max Performance(does this make a difference?)
Overall it's oranges to apples to pears, but they're all being eaten and ranked on taste.
That is my dream phone...
Well almost... needs a Qwerty...
That picture will give me some serious nightmares for a long time... ugh
I would absolutely buy a Nokia Windows Mobile device.
First, Bill Gates wants to buy Yahoo! to fight against Google.
Now he talks with Nokia when the release of Android (Google too!) is imminent.
He's obsessed! :D
That would be "Steve Ballmer". You know, the guy that took over from Bill a while ago.
Just my take on it, for what it's worth. I've owned S60 phones, WM5 phones and now an iPhone. I loved the S60 phones, lots of apps, easy to use and functional. The phones would rarely crash. I bought the Nokia 3650 several years ago, so the multimedia functionality and mature apps weren't really there so when my contract was up this past June I figured I'd give the Samsung Blackjack a shot with it's WM5 OS.
I own Macs and PCs so getting the phone to play nicely was not a problem. My biggest frustrations were with the OS. I experienced daily crashes, memory leaks and the interface was so different between applications that it was confusing at times. I found the uncooked version of WM6 for the BJ, installed it and I didn't see much of a difference. I also can't understand why I can't just quit an open application?! I went through four Blackjacks--all with the same defective antenna problem until AT&T offered me a $350 credit to buy a new phone.
I picked up an 8gb iphone for $275 and have been very happy with it. I like to use my phones as an ebook reader and the lack of third party apps for the iPhone (for now) doesn't allow me to do that anymore without Jailbreaking it. Love the interface, speed and ease of use on the iPhone but it really needs the ability to install 3rd party apps for it to be complete in my book.
Where was I going with this? I guess it all comes down to personal preference, but I will say that S60 was great and I would own another S60 phone. I will not be going back to WM unless WM7/8 really changes the game. I'm sticking with the iPhone and will do so in the hopes that third party apps will be readily available shortly. Sheesh, I'd be happy with just an ebook reader--though Jobs claims people don't read anymore. Phbbt!
B
Holy crap no. Symbian (which is 47% owned by Nokia) is finally maturing into a great mobile OS. On my e90, I've hardly ever had a crash, I can have 10 programs opened at once, the menu system is great. WM on the other hand is as evil as vista, the browser sucks, the system crashes every other day. The OS literally has half the functionality of any s60 device. When I think of Nokia, I think of very smart Finish people making phones.. when I think of Microsoft I think of very business minded people making phones.
The future is bright for these companies post iPhone. The key will be ease of use with no compromise on stability.
just to share my experience, I owned a dopop phone about two years ago, and it has been great.
was there crashes ocassionally, yes, but not crazy as some of the posted above suggested. and what i found was even when it crashes, the main phone functionality still worked.
my usages:
browse webpage, ie was old on wm5 but quite robust, i load some quite heavy sites, and pictures, no problem at all.
ebook, i often just same and read books on the phone.
music, no problem. only that it can have some better features such as stop playing and adjust voice when there is incoming call.
chess, yes, this was the part i love the most, i play chess on it daily.
other games, i played two mainly, one is a board game, the other one was a thunderstorm sth fighter plane game. both awesome.
to the end, when i looked at the iphone comercial and saw stevej act like god, i was really puzzled, being able to play with your two fingers other than one was the whole idea of being 'innovative'? .......
Outside of the US, Symbian totally *owns* the smartphone market. The two runners up currently are RIM and Apple. Windows Mobile (or Pen, or Pocket PC, or CE, or whatever the hell they'll call it in a month) does exist, but it's nowhere near the top 3. So if Nokia were to introduce WM-powered phones, it would most likely be a US-only affair. Even then I have a hard time figuring out why they'd compete with their own mobile OS.
Also, I wonder where the acquisition of Trolltech comes into play. Nokia has already played with Linux on the tablets with Maemo, and they have a fully functional (AFAIK) phone OS in QTopia, apart from their marketleader Symbian stack, of course.
Maybe Nokia *will* do a WM handset, but I doubt that it'll "go all the way", no matter how much begging comes from MS.
I love my symbian,
Windows mobile? NO WAY!!! Ahhhhhh say it ain't so :'(
Windows Mobile works quite well up against Windows Machine which most people have, it is something to take into consideration when Nokia looks at the solutions they want to provide.
I hope Android can help push Open Source systems forward
If you don't like WinMo, then don't use it. It's obvious that WinMo is just a choice.
I personally love WinMo. I never had any real issues with it, and it's very extensible with add-ons and stuff. And it's not that hard to use. If you can read, you can use WinMo. I just wished most WinMo phones could use a bigger screen.
I've always liked Nokia phones for its hardware, and the N95, and it's great that they'll now be offering WinMo.
NOkia might be thinking of stealing a significant market share by HTC in-order to complete their monopoly.
Why are Nokia phones always ugly? They can't even make a good looking Windows Mobile phone?
This would be great for the N95, one step closer to the Nirvana Smartphone.
http://nirvanasmartphone.com
wouldnt mind buying an N95 if it had windows mobile, but couldnt Nokia give you options, make 2 models of the same phone, one with Symbian and another with WM
I would normally think that a company should give us all the options (i.e. S60, UIQ, Android, WM). However, S60 is just so awesome for me that I wouldn't consider other OS. Of course, this is not true for most people. So, oferring more choices would be a damn nice strategy for Nokia, especially since S60 hasn't been as successful in the US.
Did you know that the number 4 is regarded as unlucky in many Asian countries?, try to look for a Nokia with a 4 in it, the only exeption is 5140 and it's "i" version, the 5140i; and for that we should ask that wasn't bad luck? I think 5140 wasn't what they expected, and also maybe the 40 it's not as bad as the 4?
So if we are talking about the N94i with WinMo, it would be defenitly double bad luck for Nokia so xbit profecy/comparation about Palm stocks will come true :-D
First I was going to say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Then I thought I don't have Nokia phone currently so screw everybody else
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS EVIL Laugh hahahahaaaaa