So we’ve heard what Nokia’s Stephen Elop and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer have to say, but we’ve cut through the business jargon, to look at how this partnership will pan out. Who’s doing what, and what’s getting canned? Click through to find out everything you need to know about the Nokia Windows Phone partnership.
February, 2011
Nokia’s official line today is that MeeGo, the smartphone operating system it’s been developing with Intel, isn’t dead, and that at least one MeeGo device is coming this year. But we’re getting some mixed signals from Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop at its Capital Markets Day event in London today.
When asked about MeeGo in a Q&A session following the announcement of the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, Elop told press that Nokia “will be shipping our first Meego device this year as an opportunity to learn. We’ll learn from that first device and then we’ll ask that team to change that focus into a team [that is focused on] the longer term planning horizon.”
When asked if a MeeGo Phone would simply then be a handset “orphaned at birth” by a journalist, Elop replied: “if in fact something is dead, then it’s not worth shipping”. MeeGo’s future appears to be very much up in the air still.
HP is on the move right now with the HP Touchpad, HP Pre 3 and HP Veer outed this week and now it’s hired a former Apple exec to head up its developer relations team.
Richard Kerris was Senior Director at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Relations team and is now HP’s VP of Worldwide Developer relations. He joins another former Apple exec, Jon Rubenstein, in the Palm team at HP. Kerris was previously CTO at Lucasfilm so he’s well-connected. The big question is: can he get the WebOS world up to speed in the battle with Android and iOS?
Out now | £NA | HP (via Loop Insight)
No surprises here but Nokia CEO Stephen Elop just went on the record to say that Nokia “explored the opportunity with the Google ecosystem…there’s some attractive elements but our fundamental belief is that we would have difficulty differentiating.”
The Nokia and Microsoft partnership has only just been announced, but both are already hard at work on the new hardware. Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer just said at Nokia’s Capital Markets Day event in London that “We’re already working together to create the first Nokia Windows phones and you’ll hear more from us in all of those areas in the next weeks and months.”
When Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was asked when the first Nokia Windows Phone handsets would ship, he declined to comment, other than saying “We will not be making an announcement on when that will be…we can move faster through this partnership than what we’ve ever done before.”
Stay tuned.
We’ll be reporting from the front line at Nokia’s Investor event this morning in London, where we’ve already heard that Steve and Steve will be teaming up to bring Windows Phone 7 to Nokia smartphones. Keep tuned in for more news from the event. We’ll be updating here as and when. Presentations kick off in half an hour.
UPDATE: We just bumped into Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in the corridor, so expect plenty of sweating and shouting from him when the ceremonies kick off in 10 minutes’ time.
Could Nokia drop more surprises in our laps today? Shout out in the comment and tell us what you want to see!
The Blackberry PlayBook could arrive with the Android Marketplace according to Businessweek, which says its talked to several well played sources about RIM’s upcoming slate. how the Android apps will make their way to the Blackberry PlayBook’s QNX OS isn’t clear.
The move may be made possible with a virtual machine like the Alien Dalvik solution we saw earlier this week but that would mean apps would run noticeably slower than apps on a native Android tablet. The other issue is whether Google will actually certify the Blackberry PlayBook to place nice with the Android Marketplace. This one could get interesting…
Out TBC | £TBC | RIM (via Businessweek)
As the Design Director and public face of Unreal Tournament and Gears of War developer Epic Games, Cliff Bleszinski is somewhat of a celebrity on the gaming circuit. Now back on it as the studio looks to crank up the hype machine for Bulletstorm we met up with the man often known as Cliffy B to talk about what makes Bulletstorm different, how it was inspired by Mega Man, how to prevent games from ending up in the bargain bin and more.