August 10, 2010 at 19:02Nokia Vice President of the company's immediate plans
Engadget interviewed Nokia's executive vice president, Niklas Savander. I translated the main issues related to Meego and Symbian. The main topics of the interview:
- about N8: the smartphone will occupy a niche between medium and high-end models. Will go on sale at the end of the 3rd quarter.
- about MeeGo: the first smartphone based on the new OS will be announced at the end of 2010.
- about Android: no plans to use Android on your devices. And the point.
- about tablets / smartphones with huge displays: the company decided not to produce tablets. Savander believes that smartphones with large displays will look awkward.
Engadget: The new N8 flagship is coming soon, how much trust do you have on par with MeeGo? Will Symbian and MeeGo get along in the high-budget model market?
Savander: N8 is the first model with an updated system. No doubt, it will be an attractive, upscale, successful product. We do not position the N8 as a high-budget device, but the middle one, between the high and middle class. This segment is huge and we plan to produce more than 50 million devices on this Symbian platform.
In parallel, we are working on MeeGo. This is our main priority development and we are preparing to meet the demand for MeeGo devices in the high-budget segment. MeeGo is more a product for our portfolio. One team deals with Symbian, is promoting smartphones on Symbian to the masses. And Meego is a new level, innovation.
Do not forget the developers. The main development tool will be Qt, it will be used in both Symbian and MeeGo. This will help in application compatibility for two platforms.
E: Choosing Qt means that cross-platform development is your top priority. Do you hope that the average developer will pay attention to all platforms or specialize in only one?
S: We thought about it for a long time, we wanted to please everyone. Using Qt on Symbian and on MeeGo, we can reduce the differences between the platforms. We want to create a predictable tool that simplifies the interaction of two platforms.
We want to create a tool that allows us to supplement applications with our plugins without changing the code of the main application.
E: Should we expect tablets, for example, on Nokia's MeeGo?
S: I think the smartphone market is becoming more popular, many companies will try to produce them. Big phones are interesting, for example, to see how big your hand is. And at some point the device will be too large to be comfortable to hold in your hand. Our pockets won't be anymore! With a large screen and battery consumption will be sensitive. And buyers do not want thick phones. Of course, a niche of such phones will exist, there will be a certain zone between smartphones and tablets.
We will be in this niche, but we understand that we must take into account many aspects: the device should be convenient, with a large screen, but fit in your pocket, otherwise you can forget about mobility. But no tablets. This market will be crowded. Tablets on Android, MeeGo, Windows - all and sundry, will release them.
E: Back to MeeGo, we saw some photos of the GUI for smartphones and various Intel implementations. How important is it to keep the interface similar and look between MeeGo and Symbian?
C: Future versions are always better than previous ones. We will make efforts to make our products on Symbian and MeeGo look related. Of course, MeeGo will be different. If Symbian was originally menu-oriented, then on touchscreens you need to get rid of such a concept, multi-level menus will not be convenient.
E: We cannot but ask a question about Android. What do you think about using this OS?
FROM:We are not going to use this platform. Why? We fundamentally believe that we can be on top, just producing good iron. This is just a technical question, compare Android and MeeGo on our hardware, see which of them is better.
Well, the second factor, Android is Google’s development. We do not want to be dependent on them. The company accounts for 40% of the smartphone market share, we believe we should use our best practices.
As a separate point, I want to note that the company does not intend to use Wimax in its devices and considers LTE a more promising technology for wireless data transfer.
upd Full article on the original here .
- about N8: the smartphone will occupy a niche between medium and high-end models. Will go on sale at the end of the 3rd quarter.
- about MeeGo: the first smartphone based on the new OS will be announced at the end of 2010.
- about Android: no plans to use Android on your devices. And the point.
- about tablets / smartphones with huge displays: the company decided not to produce tablets. Savander believes that smartphones with large displays will look awkward.
Engadget: The new N8 flagship is coming soon, how much trust do you have on par with MeeGo? Will Symbian and MeeGo get along in the high-budget model market?
Savander: N8 is the first model with an updated system. No doubt, it will be an attractive, upscale, successful product. We do not position the N8 as a high-budget device, but the middle one, between the high and middle class. This segment is huge and we plan to produce more than 50 million devices on this Symbian platform.
In parallel, we are working on MeeGo. This is our main priority development and we are preparing to meet the demand for MeeGo devices in the high-budget segment. MeeGo is more a product for our portfolio. One team deals with Symbian, is promoting smartphones on Symbian to the masses. And Meego is a new level, innovation.
Do not forget the developers. The main development tool will be Qt, it will be used in both Symbian and MeeGo. This will help in application compatibility for two platforms.
E: Choosing Qt means that cross-platform development is your top priority. Do you hope that the average developer will pay attention to all platforms or specialize in only one?
S: We thought about it for a long time, we wanted to please everyone. Using Qt on Symbian and on MeeGo, we can reduce the differences between the platforms. We want to create a predictable tool that simplifies the interaction of two platforms.
We want to create a tool that allows us to supplement applications with our plugins without changing the code of the main application.
E: Should we expect tablets, for example, on Nokia's MeeGo?
S: I think the smartphone market is becoming more popular, many companies will try to produce them. Big phones are interesting, for example, to see how big your hand is. And at some point the device will be too large to be comfortable to hold in your hand. Our pockets won't be anymore! With a large screen and battery consumption will be sensitive. And buyers do not want thick phones. Of course, a niche of such phones will exist, there will be a certain zone between smartphones and tablets.
We will be in this niche, but we understand that we must take into account many aspects: the device should be convenient, with a large screen, but fit in your pocket, otherwise you can forget about mobility. But no tablets. This market will be crowded. Tablets on Android, MeeGo, Windows - all and sundry, will release them.
E: Back to MeeGo, we saw some photos of the GUI for smartphones and various Intel implementations. How important is it to keep the interface similar and look between MeeGo and Symbian?
C: Future versions are always better than previous ones. We will make efforts to make our products on Symbian and MeeGo look related. Of course, MeeGo will be different. If Symbian was originally menu-oriented, then on touchscreens you need to get rid of such a concept, multi-level menus will not be convenient.
E: We cannot but ask a question about Android. What do you think about using this OS?
FROM:We are not going to use this platform. Why? We fundamentally believe that we can be on top, just producing good iron. This is just a technical question, compare Android and MeeGo on our hardware, see which of them is better.
Well, the second factor, Android is Google’s development. We do not want to be dependent on them. The company accounts for 40% of the smartphone market share, we believe we should use our best practices.
As a separate point, I want to note that the company does not intend to use Wimax in its devices and considers LTE a more promising technology for wireless data transfer.
upd Full article on the original here .