Qt the "primary vehicle" to reach people all over the world

@nokiadeveloper just tweeted that Stephen Elop noted in a session for the developer community at Nokia World said that Qt  will be 'primary vehicle' to reach people all over the world.


Not to reach "the next billion" alone, but people all over the world. For me, this includes smartphones to the same extent as the new feature phones. Smartphones would be the Symbian phones, also the ones still to come, the N9, but most of all also Windows Phone, as this is the primary smartphone platform for Nokia in the future. Mango doesn't have a Qt port, and probably never will have.


But as Niklas Savander said Mango on Nokia is just the beginning, as Mango was pretty finished when Nokia jumped on board. In Apollo, Nokia will have way more to say about Windows Phone development, so there still is the possibility for Qt being included in Windows Phone. Microsoft wants it to succeed. And I think Microsoft needs Nokia for a real success of Windows Phone. So Nokia should have a pretty good position for negotiations here.


And who knows, maybe there will be another Qt flagship after the N9?


Sources:


http://twitter.com/#!/nokiadeveloper/status/129543030402322433


http://www.intomobile.com/2011/10/27/nokias-niklas-savander-if-you-like-we-did-mango-just-wait-until-you-see-apollo/

Nokia Lumia series heading out to conquer... the world?

The Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 701 were officially announced today at Nokia World, to be available in November in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, across 31 operators.

        

The Nokia Lumia 800 looks a lot like the N9 (aside from the additional camera button, the Windows buttons and the missing front cam) and will be available in all markets where the N9 won't be. These are highly developed markets, yet with a high amount of non-tech-savvy people. Pair this with massive marketing from operators (T-Mobile in Germany just put up their Lumia 800 offer today) and the really nice build quality (it's still somehow sad that the 800 is basically just a copy of the N9, however that proves that Nokia is confident in its chassis design and construction).

Given these facts I really think many people will actually get these Nokia Windows Phones when they are extending their mobile contracts, because for the ordinary (read: not spending hours and hours in mobile forums and doing OS flame-wars) people, Nokia still stands for good quality phones. Albeit I don't like the Windows Phone OS and really love my N9, I think with the new Lumia series Nokia is on a good way gain market- and mindshare back.

Sources:
http://conversations.nokia.com/?page_id=44985

http://conversations.nokia.com/2011/10/26/nokia-lumia-710-easy-fast-and-fun/

http://www.t-mobile.de/windows-phone

First Nokia 800 (Sea Ray) ad leaked

On pocketnow.com, they have gotten their hands on an ad for the new Nokia 800, which is presumably to be announced at Nokia World end of October 2011. This is Windows phone which was already "leaked" by Stephen Elop just after the official announcement of the N9 and which just looks the same as the latter, just with the required Windows buttons.

Source: http://pocketnow.com/windows-phone/nokia-800-first-ads-images

Thoughts on the Nokia N9’s market positioning

The Nokia N9 is Nokia’s last MeeGo phone, so the official statement. It’s just being released and already compared to other high-end phones (which is no surprise, really). In those comparisons, one thing is always being pointed out:

The N9 is beautifully designed and crafted and the Swipe UX is something that wasn’t seen before and is a real joy to use.

However, if you look then on the inner hardware compared to other “high-end” phones, you’ll note the following: The N9 uses only a 1 GHz OMAP3630 (single core) and a PowerVR SGX530 GPU, which were top notch in 2009, and among the highest in 2010. But in 2011, others rule the hardware race: Dual-Cores (Tegra2, OMAP4, Apple A5) with GPUs beating everything that was before by a large margin.

Also, older Nokia “high-end” phones, such as the N900 and the N8 had a bunch of features, which are not anymore included in the N9. The FM transmitter, USB on-the-go (though the N900 had it only inofficially) and the absolutely stunning camera of the N8, to which even today no other mobile seems to come anywhere close to. All these are missing in the N9.

But then you look at the software. You have a deep OS-level integration for so many social services which are to be found on other phones yet, be that Windows Phone, Android or iOS. This means, whether you are looking for Facebook, Twitter, Skype, even Flickr, Picasa and YouTube, you don’t need to download an app for this. You just enter your account information in the N9 and you are good to go.

Then there are the rumours of the Meltemi project, supposedly a Linux with Qt and Swipe on top of it, heading to replace S40 somewhere in the future to feed the next billion. Nokia even just released a Qt API mapping tool, which shows you the equivalents of your iOS, Android and soon even Windows Phone API calls in Qt to make porting from these to currently Symbian and the N9 even easier.

When I see all these developments, one big thought comes to my mind:

What if the N9 is not the last MeeGo phone by Nokia? What if the N9 is the first phone for the next billion?