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Mozilla The Internet Businesses The Almighty Buck

Nokia Invested In Mozilla? 193

Posted by CowboyNeal from the dial-m-for-money dept.
Pine UK writes "The Register, is reporting that Nokia has invested in the Mozilla Foundation. This news should come as a shock to Opera, who in recent times have had a very large market share in the area of portable device browsers. Opera has also been the browser choice for Nokia, who ship it with all their Symbian 'smartphones.' Nokia have not yet confirmed nor denied their investment in Mozilla."
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Nokia Invested In Mozilla? More

Nokia Invested In Mozilla?

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  • Slashdot crisis! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) * on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:27AM (#9471951) Homepage Journal
    Oh no! Mozilla versus Opera, on /. that is almost as bad as Galdalf versus Arthur Dent or Apple versus Linux!

    Expect to see large parts of the Internet go down as slashdotters everywhere spontaneously combust due to an inability to reconcile two opposing knee-jerk reactions.

    • Oh no! Mozilla versus Opera, on /. that is almost as bad as Galdalf versus Arthur Dent or Apple versus Linux!

      Actually, I was under the impression that there isn't such an extreme pro-Apple sentiment here...
      And Arthur Dent would beat Galdalf any day of the week... :)

      • Re:Slashdot crisis! (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Any day of the week except Thursdays, he's still getting the hang of them.

    • Re:Slashdot crisis! (Score:2, Informative)

      by bhtooefr ( 649901 )
      Actually, it's not that bad. I'm predicting that 7.51 might be one of the last Opera versions though, or maybe one of the last good ones. Unless, of course, they can get 7.51 over ODIN runing on eComStation, and convince them to bundle it, and 7.51 on a theoretical BeOS Winelib port, and convince YellowTab to move to them. It'd be VERY hard though, seeing as both of those OSes use Firefox...

      It's the bundling thing. Here's who's bundled with who:

      MSIE: Windows, and it's the biggest because of this
      Firefox: e
      • As an insider, I can tell you Opera v8.x series is currently under development.

        Opera is not going away.

      • Errors in your logic - please get informed. (Score:5, Informative)

        by hkmwbz ( 531650 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @01:23PM (#9472993) Journal
        I'm sorry, but your arguments are flawed, and so is your logic.

        Do you really think Firefox is popular because it's bundled with an OS hardly any end-users use?

        Also, Opera is not available for only one Nokia phone. It's available for Symbian Series 60 phones, and there are more than one Nokia phone based on that, as well as phones by other manufacturers.

        Your list of "bundles and browsers" is basically seriously flawed, and your entire post falls apart. Firefox does not rely on eComStation to survive, and Opera does not rely only on Nokia.

        So 7.51 being one of the last Opera versions unless it gets on eComStation(!) is pure nonsense and wishful thinking on your part. Why would Opera go away when its user base is growing and they are making more and more money?

        Your post sounds a lot like a karma whorish post with some vague points that make sense unless you know a lot about this, in which case, it just sounds like nonsense.

        Unfortunately, you managed to fool a few moderators...

        • OK, have those mod points removed. I've got near 50 anyway.

          I'm just thinking that mobile is where Opera's got their biggest market, and it just got ripped away from them.

          I'm not saying that eCS and Zeta are the ONLY things that'll make it survive, but that many more users will help. Also, I know it's AVAILABLE for almost every Symbian phone, but it's not bundled with many (I found out it is more than one, though).

          BTW, don't take this as an anti-Opera flame or a pro-OS/2 flame - I'm running 7.51, and my m
          • How did Opera's market get ripped away from them?

            In case you didn't notice, Minimo is far from ready for production use, and Opera's far below the projected minimum requirements for Minimo (which Minimo might be able to do some time in the future).

            And Nokia is not Opera's biggest market. It is not the only mobile vendor out there!

            It happens to be quite big in Europe, but its market share is falling rapidly [msn.com], and Asia is a huge market as well, where Nokia is not currently very strong in. And of course,

            • You are also forgetting that Opera is already becoming a household name on mobiles, which means that it is turning into a well known and popular brand. Nokia recently ran ads bragging about how they had Opera on their phones!

              Where is this, though? I haven't seen any of this in the US, but over here you buy a phone from the provider, and it is locked onto that provider forever. Also, they don't WANT you using their wireless web services - Sprint, for example, charges more for Vision service on a Pocket PC

              • "Where is this, though?"

                Recently, a new phone featuring an Opera button was made available in Japan. Hundreds of people waited in line for hours to get their hands on one.

                "Where are you getting these statistics?"

                From various statistics sites. Example from Poland [ranking.pl].

                "However, why is there ~90% usage of IE 6"

                Because IE is bundled with Windows. Other bundles are unlikely to matter, because only Windows relies on user ignorance to keep its market share. Someone who chooses an alternative OS is like

    • Re:Slashdot crisis! (Score:5, Funny)

      by The Lynxpro ( 657990 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [orpxnyl]> on Saturday June 19, 2004 @11:19AM (#9472369)
      "Oh no! Mozilla versus Opera, on /. that is almost as bad as Galdalf versus Arthur Dent or Apple versus Linux!"

      What are you talking about? Arthur Dent would crush Gandalf with his, uhm, no, not with his logical skills. Maybe matching up Galdalf vs. Marvin the Paranoid Android would be a better cage match.

      And no Linux vendor makes as pretty of hardware as Apple, so there's no comparison. Maybe so after Alienware puts out a distribution...

      • Falcon Northwest [falcon-nw.com] make some very pretty PC systems that far outmatch anything Alienware puts out. Granted you have to pay for it, but you get a custom paint job that's unmatched.

        Voodoo PC [voodoopc.com] is also a manufacturer that puts an Apple-sized amount of detail into their systems. While they may be expensive, I would like to point out that they are priced very competitively with the G5.

        As for me, I built my own system and made it pretty (without obnoxious windows and lights).
    • Mozilla versus Opera

      ANSWER: Mozilla (Firefox)

      Galdalf versus Arthur

      ANSWER: Galdalf

      Apple versus Linux

      ANSWER: Apple

      EXTRA ANSWER: vi

  • Memory footprint. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:29AM (#9471954)

    Umm.. this chart [mozilla.org] is in bytes, right? Right?!

    • compounding this, there seems to be an annoying leak in firefox 0.9... leaving it open overnight resulted in usage reporting as 160+ megs for me, personally. this is in addition to previous reports of leaks on all platforms, though admittedly some were regarding the javascript console which wouldn't be a factor in most installations. firefox will eventually replace the browser in the mozilla suite.
      • I've had 0.9 open for a few days on my XP box right now. It's currently using 101MB, but that's understandable, as I have about 40 tabs open. What's odd is the Peak Mem Usage: 472MB!! Ouch! But at least it cleaned things up afterwards. (Or did it?)

    • Re:Memory footprint. (Score:4, Informative)

      by rasz ( 788512 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:50AM (#9472041) Homepage Journal
      Currently minimo takes up about 25 mb of RSS. This graph show the memory usage while running the browser against the page loader test.
      LOL no :), its in kBytes, minimo takes ~12MB for itselfe + another 24 for the data from Pageloader :)

      Somehow doesnt sount as minimal as it should be, I'l stick to Opera.

      PS: Anybody got Opera Pageloader stats ?

      • Code bloat arguments for idiots by idiots (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @01:58PM (#9473205)
        Why stop at Opera? Run lynx! Dillo! Hell, I scoff at any browser over 1MB!

        Mozilla is not bloated code - everything in there does something. Bloat refers to useless code.

        • btw links-hacked (Score:2, Interesting)

          by rasz ( 788512 )
          some feauteres :
          • Tabbed browsing - you may use tabs either in graphical or even in text mode.
          • Lua scripting - ported from Links-Lua, not from current ELinks code, but the differences are not so sensitive, I hope.
          • HTTP Auth - stable, ported from Elinks
          • HTTP Proxy Auth - ported from Elinks, need to be checked.
          • Blocking of selected images - my own code ;-). You may block images containing given substring (of course, it is better to use regexps, but this way is more portable). Just press '-
        • > Why stop at Opera? Run lynx! Dillo! Hell, I scoff at any browser over 1MB!

          Dillo was heinously crashy for me. links (not lynx) is now a graphical browser, and it's actually very damn pretty -- only *nix browser where the fonts don't look like ass out of the box. Out of the box is important, since most people won't or can't change it.

          Doesn't do cookies tho, so it was unusable for the web app I was trying to use it for. Or slashdot logins for that matter.

    • So it's pretty big, but on the plus side... no licensing costs. You picks your down sides and you lives with them.

  • Which is better.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JoeShmoe950 ( 605274 ) <CrazyNorman@gmail.com> on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:30AM (#9471958) Homepage
    I always found Opera fast, and much lighter than Mozilla. But, with the advent of Firefox, I'd have to say theres not much reason to stick with Opera. I just don't see very many advantages (plus, Firefox is open source).

    • Re:Which is better.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by bhtooefr ( 649901 ) <[gro.rfeoothb] [ta] [rfeoothb]> on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:36AM (#9471982) Homepage Journal
      Opera's still half the size of Firefox, and it's got an e-mail client, IRC client, RSS reader, etc., etc. in there. It's got a Mozilla-like feature set, with a smaller-than-Firefox footprint, and it's one of the fastest full-featured browsers there is (non-full-featured being stuff like Lynx, Links, Dillo, etc.)

      Also, I like that I don't have to install 10 extensions to get Opera to behave the way I want it to...
      • OK, so I didn't realize that 0.9 got smaller (I read another article). It's just a meg bigger, and I have heard that Firefox has gotten faster, especially in UI (however, it was rendering speed that seemed slower to me).

        I'm certainly going to try out the new Firefox, but I don't think I'll stick with it if it's much like 0.8 (or Firebird 0.7).
        • Typing in here as I go along:

          Imported Opera favorites, history, passwords, etc., no problem. My homepage was set to /., and my favorites bar was the same as Opera's. THAT is slick.

          It seems slower, though...

          The new theme feels TOO XPish, but this box has XP, so...

          While looking for Qute, Firefox disappeared. I've seen this in Opera FINAL versions, and this is a beta, but I'd still like to see it fixed.

          Rendering seems a bit off...

          I'm going to stick with Opera, but FF does have a couple of advantages othe

      • Re:Which is better.... (Score:4, Informative)

        by CeleronXL ( 726844 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:46AM (#9472025) Homepage
        Where are you getting this? Firefox is 4.7 MB (actually with the latest nightlies, there was yet another size decease to 4.4 MB) and Opera is 3.4 MB. Firefox is twice the size? Hardly.
        • Read my post above yours. I hadn't played with FF for a while, and didn't know the size dropped with 0.9.

          However, FF with all the Opera features (that are available as Moz projects) IS twice the size, if not more - that includes Thunderbird, and a bunch o' extensions.

        • It's the mem footprint, not download/binary size (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ultrabot ( 200914 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @12:05PM (#9472597)
          Firefox is 4.7 MB (actually with the latest nightlies, there was yet another size decease to 4.4 MB) and Opera is 3.4 MB.

          Inspired by this article, I just downloaded Opera for my #2 computer (Debian Sid, w/ 96MB of RAM, somewhat taxed already by other services). The overall experience is quite a bit snappier than with Firefox 0.8. Firefox seems to choke on memory quite a bit more than Opera, even when I have image display enabled on Opera, and disabled on firefox. The playing fields is level in the sense that I'm running Ion3 display manager (which rocks BTW, all resource-starved should check it out ASAP!).

          The memory footprints as reported by 'top' don't appear all that different - both have 20MB resident (firefox a bit more), Opera has 22MB shared and Firefox has 29MB (well, that's 8MB difference).

          OTOH, on my main machine with abundant ram and other resource, I would never use a non-OSS browser. There it's Firefox all the way.

      • I found lots of extensions to make FireFox do things that Opera does, such as the unified Stop/Refresh button and the image toggle.

        However, I find it hard to track down extensions sometimes. I want toolbar buttons to toggle on and off document styles (user stylesheet only) and a three-way button to choose between all inline images, no inline images and cached images only. The latter is useful when you're refreshing a page a lot since it prevents the browser from reloading (or attempting to reload) the imag

      • Opera is not free in any sense of the word. There is an adware version, but who wants an extra banner ad on their screen? This alone is enough incentive to me to use Mozilla, which I am relatively certain will not employ some new more restrictive licensing scheme. Meanwhile, I already don't like Opera's license.

        You may not have to install 10 extensions to get Opera to be what you want, but on the other hand, with Mozilla or Firefox, you can install those ten extensions to get it to be what you want. You'r

  • Was on CNet yesterday (Score:5, Informative)

    by anandpur ( 303114 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:31AM (#9471961)
    Also repoted by CNet [com.com] yesterday

  • Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pranjal ( 624521 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:32AM (#9471968)
    Why invest and not just take the source and fork Mozilla for use on their cellphones? I thought this was perfectly legit in the open-source world.

    Unless of course the are donatin to the Mozilla foundation for helping develop such an excellent browswer package.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ianoo ( 711633 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:35AM (#9471980) Journal
      If you fork, you have to pay developers. If you invest and make the Mozilla Foundation (works for other OSS organisations too) see what you need and rally to your cause, you get them to develop for you .
      • True, either way you pay. But if you fork and pay your own developers then you have much tighter control over what is produced, whereas if you simply invest, then you can only hope that the Mozilla Foundation agrees with the direction you want to go.
    • Just what makes you think the source for a desktop browser with an appetite for memory is a suitable starting point for a cell phone browser ? What makes you think Nokia want to develop a browser ? They build phones, not software.

      Mozilla does have an embedded project underway with minimo but it lags Opera by a long way. This is probably just a not so subtle hint from Nokia to Opera , not to rest on their laurels or take Nokia for granted.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)

      by vondo ( 303621 ) * on Saturday June 19, 2004 @11:16AM (#9472361)
      They have three choices:
      1) Hire new developers to learn the mozilla code and make the changes, then release them to the public (since it is GPL)
      2) Hire existing mozilla developers to work for Nokia to make the changes
      3) Contract with the existing developers to get what they want done.

      3) is the perfectly logical choice. 1) involves a lot of start-up time. 1) and 2) involve a commitment by Nokia to keep those people on the payroll or severance if they don't work out. In 3) Nokia just drops the contract if it doesn't get the results it wants.

  • Whoa, I thought for a minute that Nokia was adding special features [sybian.com] to their smartphones. Makes the 'vibrate' ring setting take on a whole new meaning!

  • Mozillazine &c (Score:5, Informative)

    by sepluv ( 641107 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <yelsekalb>> on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:34AM (#9471977)
    This was also reported [mozillazine.org] on Mozillazine [mozillazine.org] (were they are putting up a fuss that the Mozilla Foundation did not report this funding on their site [mozilla.org] first).

    Also on many other news sources [google.com].

    There is also more info about the nice little Minimo project [mozilla.org] (to produce a Gecko-based browser with a tiny footprint).

  • inaccuracies in blurb.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:37AM (#9471986) Homepage Journal
    they DON'T ship opera with all their symbian phones.

    however, it could have just been easier/cheaper for them to buy opera than to invest in minimo.. though this shouldn't be SHOCKING to Opera, if they thought they would just own the market forever they didn't think very clearly.

    Opera is still the best browser for s60 though, it won't be easy getting to the same level quickly.
    • Another interesting angle is that Minimo will offer a XUL engine on-board, which means you could develop applications using XUL instead of the Symbian SDK.
      • for quick'n'dirty app development there's already few ways to develope applications for symbian(opl, j2me, whatever).. and soon will be more once they get some more libs to python.

        I'm not sure if including a xul engine is that good(It's supposed to be small, very lightweight after all).

  • Why should it be a shock? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:37AM (#9471988) Homepage Journal
    I don't think it would have been a shock or anything. Anyone who thinks they are immune to competition will quickly perish. Obviously opera is a great product for cell phones, but the mozilla guys have been doing consistent work reducing their memory footprint and increasing speed, and with some more focused work they could be as nearly as good as opera. A cash infusion could help them do just that. And Gecko's rendering is at least as good as Opera's.
    • In addition, it sounds like one of Opera's primary advantages over Mozilla in this market is compactness and efficiency. If the technology industry has taught us anything, it's that hardware is constantly improving. Sure Mozilla doesn't sound like they could compete now, but with hardware improvements and some encouragement in the direction of embedded devices, I can't imagine why they couldn't be a feasible browser in that market within a short period. And completely free competes very well with not so
      • Except both Opera and Mozilla will need to support more things in the future, maybe things like SVG, which is potentially huge. So even if you have more powerful hardware, you will need small and tight programs, because they need to support a lot of things.

        And claiming that Mozilla is "completely free" is not exactly the case. It will cost money to integrate Mozilla into an embedded device. Maybe it will be the least expensive in some cases, but maybe in other cases, they want a commercial product and a c

  • nokia probably is (Score:1, Redundant)

    by lpret ( 570480 )
    I wouldn't doubt it. One of the biggest problems I see with open source is that if you have a legit product, you can be taken advantage of very easily. Nokia may be investing in Mozilla because they can give donations and then get the product with no strings attached. Giving donations and entering into contracts are two very different things and it's a lot easier to have your way with an organization that you donate to than dealing with contracts.

    So in the short run, it's great for open source, however

    • Re:nokia probably is (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:59AM (#9472075)
      That's no worse than not giving money and taking the product, which they could also do. As long as Mozilla is getting a fair deal in return for adding the features Nokia wants, I don't see a problem with it.

    • Re:nokia probably is (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jazzer ( 732722 )
      I wouldn't doubt it. One of the biggest problems I see with open source is that if you have a legit product, you can be taken advantage of very easily.

      ? If you are developing for anybody/everybody to use freely than how can someone using it for free be taking advantage of the orgranization? Considering if they didn't want anybody and everybody to be able to use it they would've licensed it differently.

      Nokia may be investing in Mozilla because they can give donations and then get the product with no s

  • Nokia has confirmed the deal (Score:5, Informative)

    by amacedo ( 779821 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:39AM (#9471997) Homepage
    Well, sort of. Check out this article at News.com [com.com]

    It comes as no suprise since Nokia's strategy has clearly been one of standardization.

    And what better way to standardized than to support an open source project?

  • Nokia's day has gone... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lewko ( 195646 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:42AM (#9472008) Homepage
    I loved my first Nokia when a phone was a phone. Now that my phone needs to be a PDA/browser etc. (AKA Smartphone) I'm not interested in any of their current products.

    It seems I'm not alone [msn.com].
    • Nokia sees where future is and concentrated to that point. YOU aren't interested in their current products as I , as a Siemens C55 user which has java (with 320kb of ram!), gprs and midi etc not interested in new Siemens models too. In fact, I plan to use it until 3G stuff becomes standard.

      What I try to mean is, 99% of population is not like us nor reads slashdot etc. For some, taking stupid lo res pictures and sending to their friends for a real stupid expensive rate (mms) is fun for them.

      I really wonde
    • You're saying you DON'T want all these things to be always available to you, no matter where you go?
      • Google
      • Worldwide Phone Directory
      • Worldwide Maps
      • millions of online Recipes, while you shop at the grocery
      • etc...

      No? You think that whole thing in the late 80's, the "oh my god, computers are ACTUALLY USEFUL for a lot of things, but ONLY IF YOU CONNECT THEM TO A NETWORK" thing that spread like wildfire among teenagers and grandparents alike, all that was overblown?

    • I absolutely love my Nokia 3310, but it's "just" a phone of course.

      Most of my friends doing the Smart Phone thing have indeed opted for other brands lately (except for one guy who swears by Nokia and doesn't mind a little sidetalkin' [sidetalking.com]).

      But now I'm working for a startup that wants its website to eventually be Smart Phone compatible, and so I've started looking into what I should have them get me.

      And the new Nokias look very promising. [geekzone.co.nz]

      So - our Finnish friends have definitely heard the criticism, and I'm v

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Hello? Microsoft, wake up call!! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lispy ( 136512 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @09:42AM (#9472011) Homepage
    Hmmm...I really wonder how Microsoft will respond to the recent movement in the browser market. Of course they are still market leaders on the desktop but have you ever used their stripped down version of IE on a PocketPC? It's just a joke!

    I wonder where Microsoft will turn in the near future since all work on IE seems to be on hold up until Longhorn and their smartphones never really took off. If I were in their shoes I would start acting. I always considered Microsoft as a serious competitor but lately they haven't made any real progress and seem to fall behind in a lot of markets. Not that they will be gone anytime soon but I wonder if they really are asleep or if they are up to something big nobody has thought of yet. This silence is suspicious...
    • if they are up to something big

      DRM?

      IE seems to be on hold up until Longhorn

      Wait until XP SP2, and you'll get a new IE. Pop-up blocking and download managing are the only new features, AFAICT, though.
      • Wait until XP SP2, and you'll get a new IE. Pop-up blocking and download managing are the only new features, AFAICT, though.

        That will be enough the please the masses. The only thing Aunt Tilley complains about really is "I can't stand those stupid popups!". IE users will revere Microsoft for installing popup blocking into the browser so they don't have to bother with inconsistent third party apps to do so without ever realizing there is was an alternative to begin with.

        It's the truth, plain and simp

    • This silence is suspicious...

      Calm before the storm, perhaps?
    • "Hmmm...I really wonder how Microsoft will respond to the recent movement in the browser market. Of course they are still market leaders on the desktop but have you ever used their stripped down version of IE on a PocketPC? It's just a joke!"

      I would seriously laugh if FireFox was ported to the PocketPC and SmartPhone platforms - and I'll laugh even harder if it already exists.

      What I'm really surprised over is that there hasn't been any news about hacking FireFox onto a modded Xbox. Now that would be uber
    • I really wonder how Microsoft will respond to the recent movement in the browser market.

      Microsoft failed to gain control of the Internet, so they've walked away from it.

      They're far more focused on DRM now, and it looks like there's a chance they're actually going to take over that market. Gah.

  • Torn (Score:4, Interesting)

    by levell ( 538346 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @10:04AM (#9472090) Homepage
    I've always liked Nokia phones but I wasn't going to get another one because of their stance (and their campaigning) on software patents [ffii.org] but if they are investing in Mozilla - I'm really torn.

    • Re:Torn (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Halo1 ( 136547 )
      Also, Opera is a very active supporter of the fight against software patents in Europe and Mozilla isn't (probably not because they are in favour of software patents, but more likely since it's a US foundation instead of a European company like Opera that stands to lose a lot of money from the legalisation of software patents in Europe).

  • Not the first time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @10:07AM (#9472097)
    Nokia had a TV console some while ago based on Mozilla. There are probably engineers in their group who are familiar with it and know what it is capable of.

  • All in the Details. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mikedaisey ( 413058 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @10:07AM (#9472100) Homepage

    Without knowing the size of the investment and circumstances, this could be a non-story. I believe that the Mozilla Foundation is a 501(c)3 now, and as such corporations can donate to them for tax relief--that may be all that's happening here, with a sprinkling of business sense that it's important to keep browser alternatives alive.

  • There's life beyond smartphones (Score:5, Informative)

    by vesuri ( 162076 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @10:15AM (#9472117) Homepage
    Even though Nokia is widely known as a mobile phone manufacturer they do have other products as well. Their plans to incorporate Mozilla into their DVB products (the Mediamaster product line [nokia.com]) as the web browser component have been public for a couple of years now.
  • as you can see heise.de [heise.de] which is very reliable posted this story yesterday.

    Nokia wants to use Minimo [mozilla.org] in their smartphones.
    • Nokia wants to keep different options open. They have Opera, which they will continue to work with, they have their own browser, and they have Minimo. It's a business move. They aren't putting all their cards on one horse.

      It's not like Minimo will be the only browser used. After all, Opera is considerably smaller and faster.

  • Opera is not shipped with all Nokia smartphones (Score:3, Informative)

    by Piic ( 146932 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @11:14AM (#9472356) Homepage
    ...unless that's new. Opera didn't come with my 3650 phone.

    You have to buy Opera for a Symbian OS phone like mine (Series 60) but it is very nice. It's one of the best browsers available that I have seen.

    I would have been MUCH happier if there was something loaded in the thing when I got it... which may be the thoughts Nokia is having. If they included a sweet little browser based on Firefox, it would really round out the apps in the phones of this class... actually, I think it was a mistake not to include a decent browser in the thing in the first place.

  • Nokia's strategy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The Lynxpro ( 657990 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [orpxnyl]> on Saturday June 19, 2004 @11:23AM (#9472379)
    Nokia is simply keeping its options open for its phones. They didn't want to back just one browser (Opera) only to possibly see it be run out of business and then Nokia would've been left with no viable option. Strengthening Mozilla helps them not only on the phone platform but it also aggrivates Microsoft in its home industry. Smart move, Nokia. Now work on getting the radiation levels lowered on your products...

  • Companies like Nokia spread investments (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gupg ( 58086 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @12:24PM (#9472708) Homepage
    Companies like Nokia, Intel etc have a fairly independent investment (or venture capital) fund that makes investments in a very broad portfolio of companies. They spread their bets so that whichever horse wins, they win. Its called the spray and pray strategy. As a result, they will frequently make competing investments.

    The interesting thing is that just because they invest in a company does not mean that the business units interact with those startups.
    • Companies like Nokia, Intel etc have a fairly independent investment (or venture capital) fund that makes investments in a very broad portfolio of companies.

      Mozilla can't be an "investment" in the sense you are talking about, because they are not-for-profit.

      Essentially they are giving money to get some development work done. That's an ethical investment if there ever was one!
      • oh - it very much is an investment. Nokia is in the business of selling phones - any software that helps them send more cell phones is useful to them - so any money they put into such software -- even if it is open source -- is an investment as far as they see it.

  • This makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jsebrech ( 525647 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @12:29PM (#9472732)
    This does make sense to me:

    - no licensing costs (fixed costs like this investment you can make up for in volume, but per product licensing costs are a constant drag on profit)
    - no need to wait for a port from the browser maker, you can do it yourself, or have the user community do it for you (very few phones have opera ports currently)
    - tied into that, user community assistance in general browser development
    - the pda opera is not a full browser, minimo is (by full I mean complete css, dom and js support)
    - open source (though from a corporate pov this is a tiny benefit)
    - better/easier customization than a proprietary product could hope to deliver
    - minimo picks up improvements to the mozilla trunk automatically, opera's ports need actual porting effort for updated features (afaik)
    - and in the future: possibility of running xul apps remotely on the phone, making developing/offering/selling new features for old phones a doable proposition

    Ofcourse, maybe nokia just wants competition in the pda browser market, and opera's steadily climbing marketshare worries them.
  • Everyone benefits from a free embeddable browser being available. It only makes sense for hardware makers to invest in this. Mozilla is currently somewhat far from that goal, footprint wise (I guess that's where the name Mozilla came from!) but sooner or later, some free browser (maybe Mozilla-based, maybe KHTML-based, maybe something else) will be there to topple Opera's throne.

    (Afraid this'll get modded "Duh, redundant" but didn't see something like it posted, so I hope it'll be fine.)
    • You aren't getting modded up, thankfully, because you are jumping to conclusions and forgetting that Opera is under active development. Even if something is free as in beer to begin with, it takes time and money to do something sensible with it. Mozilla will never be as small and fast as Opera, obviusly. Opera was written from the ground up with size and speed in mind. Mozilla is a development platform.

      So Opera will continue to be smaller and more efficient, even in the future, and on embedded devices, th

      • I'm not saying that whatever free browser replaces Opera will necessarily be based on Moz. Just that one will eventually emerge because everyone would win out that way.

        • "I'm not saying that whatever free browser replaces Opera will necessarily be based on Moz. Just that one will eventually emerge because everyone would win out that way."

          One will eventually emerge? And how does this mean that Opera is "doomed"? In case you didn't notice, closed-source software is alive and well, and won't go away any time soon. Maybe if all closed-source companies die, Opera will die or go open-source too, but we are talking about a company which has been around for nearly ten years. Op

          • We're also talking about a market niche (web browsers) that's in very high demand; this is an area where a commodity solution makes even more sense than usual.

            Hardware makers investing in free browser technology definitely makes sense at this time point. Maybe it'll take another ten years for Opera to go away (or shift its business model) but I can't currently see a sustainable developement in it's longterm future.

            I'm not suggesting that Opera voluntarily roll over and die - far be it from me that I'd giv
  • Why should be it a shock to Opera? Why do people assume that Nokia should invest in Opera just because they're from the same country?

    Worldwide economics are way past that reasoning. Editors should take a course in contemporary economics...

    • Re:A shock to Opera?! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Xuri ( 755951 )
      Ehm. They're not from the same country. Nokia is from Finland, Opera is from Norway. Now, while both Norway and Finland are part of "Scandinavia", to suggest it's the same country is stretching it a bit far.

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