Nokia and Microsoft to announce an "alliance" tomorrow -- what? Update: Office on Nokia phones
By Nilay Patel 
posted Aug 11th 2009 6:59PM
posted Aug 11th 2009 6:59PM
Update: This is probably unrelated, but Microsoft's Mac BU just called its own presser for Thursday, so if you're looking to spend the night weaving wild nonsensical conspiracy theories, we'd say all the pieces are in place.
Update 2: Told you it was nothing too out there -- the Wall Street Journal says Microsoft will announce it's working on a version of Office for Nokia phones. Anyone surprised? Didn't think so.
Thank YOU JESUS
i want my zune phone!
"i want my zune phone!"
LOL!
Zune Phone == Tard Phone
Microsoft = Software
Nokia = Hardware
zPhone realized
If anything close comes out of it, I just my find myself out of HTC's arms and at Nokia's front door.
@yoyodyne
Why because your Iphone is a smartphone? Lol.
Aren't tard phones just those mactards' phones?
Microtards.
Mmm...yummy!!!
.
@yes,
the same tard.
micro-sized.
Scene: Four people sitting around a resteraunt patio having drinks.
Person 1: Hey, look I got my iPhone today. Love how smooth it scrolls.
Others: Wow, cool.
Person 2: Hey, look I got my Android phone today. Google Voice is amazing.
Others: Wow, cool.
Person 3: Hey, look I got my Palm Pre today. I like the interface much better than the iPhone's.
Others: Wow, cool
Tard: Hey, look I got my Zune Phone today.
Others: -awkward silence-
*crickets*
Second update killed everyone who wanted a zune phone and thought this was it. Maybe next time but it would be nice, oh well.
Scene: Four people sitting around a resteraunt patio having drinks.
Person 1: Hey, look I got my iPhone today. Love how smooth it scrolls.
Others: Wow, cool.
Person 2: Hey, look I got my Android phone today. Google Voice is amazing.
Others: Wow, cool.
Person 3: Hey, look I got my Palm Pre today. I like the interface much better than the iPhone's.
Others: Wow, cool
Person 4: Hey, look I got my Zune Phone today.
Others: Gawk in silence and drools over the screen resolution while putting all the other phones in pocket.
"Anyone surprised?"
*crickets*
Wow yoyodyne, did you come up with that yourself? You should forward it to Lorne Michaels.
I'd like the brown one, please.
ZuneHD Phone? by nokia?
New joint venture like SE? NoWin.
As lousy as Symbian is, WinMo is a step down.
It was nice knowin' ya, Nokia. Hope you keep your dumbphone business swift, you'll need it.
No Mobile OS is as robust, as flexible, as capable, or as mature as WinMo at the moment.
Name me one thing that Symbian can do that WinMo can't.
WinMo's downside is perhaps that it supports too many devices that are not fit to properly run it.
Case on point, Apple's iPhone struggles to multi-task to this day with its doubled RAM capacity (in spite of whatever excuses Apple gives), and in the case of the 3G (sans s), you could actually feel it chug and lag when forced to juggle a couple of first-party apps on its 128 MB whereas WinMo phones have been juggling multiple apps with as little as 64MB.
Nevertheless, with stricter hardware requirements for WM7, the day shall soon come when people will stop incessantly hyperbolizing the performance issues of WM and WM devices.
Be intuitive on a non-touch screen based device? Not run slow as hell? Run on reasonable hardware? Must I keep going?
S60 makes a fool out of WinMo. Why don't you tell me one reason why WinMo is better than 60?
Wide-spread?
Nokia's strategy is so bad that it has put them in first place as mobile phone leaders...oh wait...
Both Windows mobile 6xxx and S40/S60/S80/S-whatever should be put in the ground. If Nokia doesn't want to go Android, then they need to make Maemo 5 a Phone OS.
Quix,
MS fans don't loathe WinMo.
If they did, WinMo phones wouldn't have outsold iPhones (or Android phones) in 2007, 2008, and thus far in 2009.
We may despise some of the hardware choices that go into WinMo phones, such as HTC's insistence on sticking with the same 528 MHz Qualcomm chips they've used in 3 generation of phones now and without forking over the extra dough to enable its 3D drivers, but, we do not loathe MS's Mobile OS.
In fact, a skinned WM (with TF3D/TF3D2/TouchWiz/Mobile Shell 3) or even a native WM 6.5 is just as slick as an iPhone or whatever other phone du jour.
Capabilities wise, WinMo plays second fiddle to none.
As I've said before in the past, if you want to blame WinMo (MS) for something, blame it for supporting too many devices without a higher level of min requirements.
Nokia comes with music coming to winmo phones? lol
Yeah, better yet that Nokia is providing the back-end tech for the Zune HD Phone.
That's what I was thinking...
"Otherwise, hell -- Nokia would be supporting three different mobile OSs, and that seems just a little too crazy, even for Espoo."
As opposed to SE, who are launching 3 new devices with 3 different mobile OSs in the near future.
This reminds of The Fellowship Of the Ring
"Otherwise, hell -- Nokia would be supporting three different mobile OSs"
s40, s60 and Maemo. They already have three ;)
That looks horrific, the phone from my nightmares!
Microsoft definite is step up the game, first ally with yahoo and now nokia.
For the first time in a long time, Microsoft is very much on the defensive (not counting monopoly commissions......), ditto for Nokia. Nokia is producing some great phones but they have not captured the imagination or the sales momentum compared with Apple. The same is true for Motorola and Sony-Ericsson. WinMo has also dropped behind the curve compared with RIM.
WinMo has been on "nokias" for ages now . I believe engadget calls them KIRF's.
nokia is better off using zune and windows services anyways
anywho i totally had this premonition the other day.
i thought, how do you get a phone on the zune?
let some mobile company suppport the phone features.
bada bing, is this the big answer?
it's all fitting into place.
Microsoft has a lot of new ally (yahoo and nokia) while google and apple no longer in ally which only benefit microsoft.
So i'll just side with Axis rite?
btw - they are dumping Zymbian (yes, I know symbian).... it doesn't work with anything outside its box, anyway...
Is this a Jim/Dwight kinda alliance?
Say wha now?
Empires strike back baby!
...and strikes back the empire lol.
Windows Live services?
inb4appleshitsthemselves
Or may be Silverlight support in Nokia's Symbian devices? My head goes ringing in that direction......
Hasbeen, meet Hasbeen.
Has-been meet Has-been?
----------------------------------------
They've both seen better days but
* WinMo is still an awesome platform
* Nokia still makes great hardware
* Microsoft has zillions to sink in R&D
* both companies want to regain their lost marketshare....
should be cool.
S40, S60(SF) and Maemo coming to take the high end with fremantel( maemo 5) and harmattan later... so if this announcement got something to do with OS it will be about Nokias netbooks.
I mean they bought world dominant mobile OS last year turned it open, doubled their workforce for Maemo and made new division called Maemo Devices, bought trolltech for 400 million that's about xplatform, turning symbian for full Qt support and same for maemo... and now they would start making phones with OS that got about 10% of smartphone marke and Nokia got no experience with it and don't have the Qt pridge they are building for Maemo and future Symbian Foundatin OS. Just wont happen.
Two evils teaming up togther. Oh crap. End of the world.
...by 2012. ish.
At the moment they seem like the good guys compared to Apple...
"they seem like the good guys compared to Apple..."
wow, somebody does really have to bring up that name in the comments, eh?
"Apple is the most evil company, they stole my ice-cream!!!"
And you have nothing better to do than troll around defending them?
Who's a bigger loser?
Come on.
This is Engadget, the fun blog.
looks like someone here is too serious.
They are my two favorite evils! Well, along with Google, IBM, and the McDonald's.
I'd hardly consider Nokia "Evil" by any stretch of the word. Nokia's mindset is very much towards collaboration and "open source" with their users rather than dictation.
MS, evil? I think they're less evil than they used to be and some less evil companies have become even worse than MS... I shall not name names.
i know the name.
it's COW, right?
Thot is was that Office will run on Nokia phones or some such
Looks like u got it right.
Hasbeen damn every where i go i see 1 mac 4 every 30, 000 pc. Im loving the sound of this.
Windows 7 Nokia netbook. Maybe Non Intel processor
If Nokia is providing the tech.
Please God let them use an A8 Cortex and OLED screen. They seem to be hanigng back to old tech these days.
That's rover aka N900 that got exactly that spec. It's just 5th edition haven't really been worth that hw, but maemo 5 seems to be.
:D So it seems saying rover gets apple fanatics all defensive currently
Yes it got omap3, but that's just my point. It makes no difference to the ui speed really and the ui takes no use of the possible 3d hw acceleration like osx, webos or fremantel.
Hmmm... I can't make anything out of this... we'll see...
an alliance not to poach each others employees?
Holy overreaction batman. Conspiracy theories notwithstanding (and positively ignoring the stupid flames) I'm with the author on this. Don't think there's anything that revolutionary to be had from a teleconf.
I hope this isn't true I've been wanting a Nokia phone with Android for a while now.
If this comes to fruition I won't be buying anymore Nokia smartphones. Their market share for smartphones is already faltering as their profit margins plummet and the reason that is happening is due to the operating systems they are using on their smartphones.
Now they announce an alliance to put that same operating system on even more of their smartphones?
All this while you can get the superior Android or free and your own in house development team can rebuild the OS to suit your own devices?
Nokia profits fell by a massive 90% just a few months ago. Next time somebody is curious why this company is finished at least we have a conclusive answer.
Android being superior? Hmm. Android still has downfalls just like any other smartphone OS out there.
Anyway, many people use and buy WinMo smartphones, and many will continue to. There's already a couple of Android phones out there that you can buy.
They are pretty far from finish as their phone division still made 600 million profit while other big guys like se and moto have been doing negative numbers for long time already. They have at least managed to stop the market share shrinking, plus the Nokia has been one of world most profitable companies for years.
You can throw that android idea out of the window. Nokia isn't part of open handset alliance and only linux you will see Nokia using in it's future high ends is maemo. Starting from ”N900”. Nokia needs it' own unique OS as before to keep the position they once hold with Symbian. Maemo (fremantel and harmattan) high end and SF mid like it has already been moving for awhile.
At last. Snake on the ZuneHD.
They've reached a deal in a mobile version of Office that's all
www.firesuite.com
WinMo 7 will be a game-changer. Nokia knows this and is jumping on board now. Microsoft knows they need Nokia's hardware background (not to mention distribution channels). Early 2010, WinMo 7 on Nokia phone. Sweet.
Game changer? You mean it might allow Microsoft to actually be an active participant in the smartphone world in 2010?
My guess? A new WinMo handset from Nokia called Alliance, just to screw with everyone.
Probably Nokia releasing some phones with Windows Mobile 6.5 and 7.0 or maybe a Windows Touch tablet or maybe some of the tame things Engadget mentioned.
British papers were reporting earlier today Nokia is set to drop Symbian in favor of Maemo.
Several weeks earlier, it was reported that the new version of Symbian will drop backward compatibility with apps for previous versions of Symbian, making Symbian a very unattractive platform for 3rd party vendors to develop on until the new version is released next year.
This significantly raises the possibility that Nokia is chucking Symbian altogether and adopting Windows Mobile.
As a developer it hasen't really been hard to see where Nokia is moving. Qt is the key word.
Symbian^4 will be build around Qt and suprise suprise maemo 5 supports qt toolkit already and the next maemo version harmattan was announced month ago to only support Qt . Combine this with crossplatform Nokia has been hard on work(like buying trolltech mentioned earlier).
Nokias future is on Symbian Foundation and Maemo. You can decide wich will be high and mid end or what.
Scene: Four people sitting around a resteraunt patio having drinks.
Person 1: Hey, look I got my iPhone today. Love how smooth it scrolls.
Others: Wow, cool.
Person 2: Hey, look I got my Android phone today. Google Voice is amazing.
Others: Wow, cool.
Person 3: Hey, look I got my Palm Pre today. I like the interface much better than the iPhone's.
Others: Wow, cool
Tard: Hey, look I got my Zune Phone today.
Others:
You really showed yourself to be a hip and knowing genius by posting this twice.
i put the whole hell into my freezer.
so there u have it.
It's just an Office Mobile deal guys http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2009/08/12/microsoft-and-nokia-to-announce-office-mobile-deal-tomorrow/
Nah, it's just Nokia entering the netbook business.
I agree, its an alliance for MS Office apps on Symbian platform.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE57A60P20090811
pity; a WM6.5 E55 would make alot of people hot and bothered
"we're guessing the real announcement will be something more pedestrian, like native Exchange support on Symbian"
Why would they announce something that happened two years ago?
Scene: Four people sitting around a resteraunt patio having drinks.
Person 1: Hey, look I got my iPhone today. Love how smooth it scrolls.
Others: Wow, cool.
Person 2: Hey, look I got my Android phone today. Google Voice is amazing.
Others: Wow, cool.
Person 3: Hey, look I got my Palm Pre today. I like the interface much better than the iPhone's.
Others: Wow, cool
Person 4: Hey, look I got my Zune Phone today.
Others: Gawk in silence and drools over the screen resolution while putting all the other phones in pocket.
FAIL
Scene: Four people sitting around a restaurant patio having drinks.
Another scene: You alone in your parents basement posting pointless fanboish screen plays about the mythical phone that will make everyone admire you.
woohoo.
S60centric comment: I bet Quickoffice are shitting themselves.
WinMo is dead! That's the reason MS is moving their Office apps to other platforms! Nothing more!
Well, I think this will definitely boost Nokia's E series platform for business users. I wonder what MS will charge?
Andrew,
Like talking out of your ass much?
The non-pro version of WM works well on non-touch screen phones.
WM runs on a wide variety of hardware, from lowly qualcomms to Snapdragons and Tegras.
How slow (or fast) it runs is dependent on the hardware.
So besides some subjective complaints, you stated nothing substantial about why Symbian is better than WM.
Lame.
OK: Let me try...Winmo is a dying software platform, iPhone high end, Android low-end, pre is DOA along with anyone else not Apple or Android. All Apple has to do is move beyond ATT and keep marching out devices/lowering prices on last years hardware, and the 2012 phone market looks a lot like the music player biz circa 2002, e.g. Apple owns it. Now Nokia, here's a company that just can't get much right lately...coasted forever on low-end dumbphones and too wed to a "third wheel" OS. But hey Nokia has some eyeballs and market-share, so its time to port android to Nokia device and lever that into a deal with Microsoft to pull nokia into winmo. MSFT pays all development costs and perhaps some cash to Nokia and Nokia ditches their truly worthless OS which they would need to scrap in a year or two anyway, and MSFT gets to stem their massive negative momentum in the marketplace.
Nice try Alex, but it fell short!!
MicroNokia Z series Zune HD phone with Windows mobile OS so confusing I have a landline and a portable cd player
What's missing from this picture is the 'why' of why Microsoft is doing this. The answer is Google Chrome OS; more detail here: http://bit.ly/XhN1R