Intel CEO: Nokia Should Have Gone With Android

nk497 writes "Intel CEO Paul Otellini has said Nokia made a mistake choosing Windows Phone 7, and should have gone with Android — but admitted the money on offer may have been too much to ignore. 'I wouldn't have made the decision he made, I would probably have gone to Android if I were him,' he said. 'MeeGo would have been the best strategy but he concluded he couldn't afford it.' Otellini said some closed mobile platforms will 'certainly survive,' but said open systems will 'win' in the end." Reader c0lo notes a followup to yesterday's news that open source software was banned from Windows Marketplace. It seems even Microsoft's own MS-RL open source license runs afoul of the Application Provider Agreement (PDF). The article suggests that these rules should give Nokia pause about their new partnership.

Pedigree speaks for itself

[Gopal.V]

The guy's more comfortable with Microsoft, he's got shares in it, he talks to the people, he knows Microsoft. Now, Google is a totally different beast there - they're doing exactly the same thing, i.e just make an OS, but they're not really Mr Elop's circle.

And oh, yeah ... it is also a very distinct conflict of interest when SEC stops him [yle.fi] from selling all his MS Stock and buying NOK instead. It's like the rules tilted this particular crusade to a windmill.

I love my Nokia phones and I've never bought any other. For the brief period I worked for Ericsson, I was shocked to realize the depth of their patent portfolio, especially when it comes to UX stuff. I can guess those guns will be aimed at Apple first, while it's leaderless without Steve, but eventually the aim's going to turn around and point at Android.

Re:Short Nokia stock

[hitmark]

Their problem is that the stock market, and the tech press, seems to see USA as the place to observe the future of mobile tech happening...

If one ignore Nokia's inability to get traction in the US market, they where doing fine.

Re:open systems will 'win' in the end."

[0123456]

Pundits like to state this, but I always wonder how Windows is an open system?

Compared to many of the alternatives it was: with Windows on a PC you didn't have to pay thousands of dollars for a development license to get API documentation and build applications as we did with some other hardware. The end result was cheap software on cheap hardware, at least when compared to paying $20,000 for a Sun workstation.

Today though, hardware is so cheap that paying $100 for Windows is starting to be a big problem on a $300 PC. Netbooks would be running Linux if Microsoft hadn't cut deals with OEMs to make Windows free or almost free.

Did Nokia choose M$ or did M$ choose Nokia?

[NtwoO]

The press round the whole move of Nokia to M$ is very focussed on Nokia's choice. It could also be that Microsoft chose Nokia as an attempt to obtain share with a reputable hardware vendor to gain some share in a segment that they clearly see themselves losing this time round. Who is the bigger party here? Who needs this most? Sure, Nokia is also falling around on its feet and had an eight count a few times in the last decade, but from the way I see it, this is a deal driven squarely by Microsoft.

Re:really intel?

[Candid88]

Making unprovoked personal insults is pretty moronic in my opinion.

I will never use Windows Mobile phones again...

[joocemann]

.. after years of experience with them.

I owned an HTC Mogul, HTC Touch Pro, and HTC Touch Pro 2 up until last December. All three phones ran Windows Mobile (which I kept updated). What I came to learn was that windows mobile is the best way to waste the great hardware that the phones were equipped with. All three of those phones were top notch upon release and could have been mind blowingly close to their advertised usability. Instead, and all because of the OS, they were so clunky and crippled it was (and still is for those using them) more of a bother to use than a pleasure. The only way I was able to rescue even *some* of the phone's intended power was to run custom roms that would remove unnecessary bloat-turd-services and provide some overclocking.

I ultimately gave the Touch Pro 2 to my father and I am astounded at what a piece of crap it is, all the while knowing that if the same hardware were running Android, the phone would be a pleasure to use.

And so while windows mobile 7 is the latest offering from microsoft, and I have yet to use it, I cannot and will not allow myself to support it with my dollars. I will not vote for more of their crap with my dollars. They (and Sprint) ruined my smartphone experience that I thought I was paying good dollars for. Instead my good dollars went to support an OS that cripples and ruins the phone experience, leaving the phone to not actually operate as advertised, or even comfortably.

In short: windows mobile is junk, and wastes the great hardware you pay for.

Not really

[Dcnjoe60]

Whatever operating system that IBM chose for the IBM PC and that Compaq would have chosen so they would have been compatible (along with all of the other clones) would have been the dominant operating system. It wasn't MS-DOS that caused the penetration of PCs, it was the penetration of PCs that caused the proliferation of Microsoft operating systems. And, IBM almost went CP/M which would mean there wouldn't be a Microsoft today, at least not the one we know.

As for settling on some other architecture, there wasn't one. The main manufactures pretty much used a 650x or an 808x processor. Sure there were a few z80s but not in the business world which is what drove pc adoption. You have to remember that the IBM PC/XT with it's 10MB hard drive was the price of a good used car. It wasn't until the clone makers drove the price point below $2,000 that the PC took off in other than business markets. The Apple II could be had for around $1,000 at the time, which is why schools sucked them up. But when the Mac came out, it was significantly more expensive.

Saying that Microsoft caused the market penetration is like saying gasoline engines caused the market penetration of the automobile. Henry Ford almost went with a diesel engine on his assembly lines. If he had pioneered relatively inexpensive mass produced diesel powered cars, that is what we would all be driving today. However, Ford standardized on a gasoline engine and so did everybody else to remain competitive.