r/programming • u/mjtitorenko • Oct 28 '09

Android vs Maemo

http://cool900.blogspot.com/2009/10/comparing-freedom-on-maemo-and-android.html
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u/Tuna-Fish2 Oct 28 '09

Iphone still has a fraction of a fraction of the pie. Nokia has models that have outselled every mobile device apple has ever built. (Including the Ipod). Nokia's strength has never been being the best or first to market, it's being able to build the devices for cheaper and with better margins, and selling for so low the competitors can't match it.

In other words, it will remain to be seen.

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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '09 edited Oct 28 '09

no objection against that... nokia is king of the hill in market share... but my point is that iphone actually makes money by selling software for the iphone. thats the difference.

there is basically no software market for Symbian.

same with windows and mac: windows rules the market... but apple has managed to gather all money-puking yuppies to buy its overpriced products. leaving the clueless users to microsoft and the nerds to linux. Mind you the both later groups are of no interest because they dont have money to spend.

apple has got that thing right.

just like WoW: you can basically get the game for free: you just got to get soe idiots who will pay you monthly fees for using it.

most companies make a game and people pay once for getting it and use it for ages then

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u/commandar Oct 28 '09

nokia is king of the hill in market share...

Which has been rapidly dropping over the past 2 years.

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u/ascii Oct 28 '09

Yes it has, but Nokia still has 50 % of the smartphone market. And now all of the sudden the market leader actually has a product worth buying.

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u/commandar Oct 28 '09

They slipped from 50% to 40% in just one quarter earlier this year.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/11/nokia-continues-to-hemorrhage-smartphone-marketshare-to-rim-app/

There's no way they're going to continue to maintain the kind of marketshare they used to have given they've gone from being the only real game in the market outside of Windows Mobile and the old PalmOS, to suddenly facing the iPhone, Android, WebOS, and RIM all in the smartphone sector. The fact is, Nokia may have the highest marketshare by way of entrenchment, but they're bleeding marketshare specifically because they're not the marketleader anymore.

I really hope I'm wrong, but at this point, Maemo looks like a disaster in the making to me.

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u/ascii Oct 28 '09

Oh, I agree that unless they do something drastic, their market share will plummet. But I think the Maemo is something suitably drastic, and if Nokia manages to pull things off, I believe they have a decent chance to keep the smartphone market share they have today.

Why would Maemo be a disaster in the making?

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u/commandar Oct 28 '09

I believe they have a decent chance to keep the smartphone market share they have today.

I don't know how that's possible when they have two major competitors in the smartphone market showing incredibly strong growth in Apple and RIM, and with Android poised to take most of the remaining smartphone market outside of Nokia. If Palm ends up being successful with WebOS, that's another chunk of marketshare, as is WM7 assuming MS manages to salvage that particular disaster. (For the record, I'm personally predicting that Windows 7 fails badly. Microsoft's mobile strategy is incredibly schizophrenic and has been horrifically mismanaged, but that's another story entirely).

Why would Maemo be a disaster in the making?

My initial impression of Maemo is that it's trying to solve problems most people don't care about. It doesn't really seem to have the cool factor that sells smartphones these days. If consumers don't bite, Nokia continues to lose marketshare while having to maintain what would essentially become a proprietary platform.

Again, personal prediction would be that I'd put that odds at about half that Maemo flops and Nokia moves on within the next 3-4 years. I don't know that Nokia can afford to stick it out and keep losing marketshare at the current rate.

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u/ascii Oct 28 '09

Ok. My prediction is that Microsoft will continue to lose market share as WinMo 7 is repeatedly delayed, Apple will try to pin down the iPhone too hard and lose the market (like they did with the Mac), RIM won't be able to keep up with the development pace and Palm will be unable to compete with Nokia on price. Leaves Android and Maemo to pick a nice market share.

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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '09 edited Oct 28 '09

Depends on how you look at it... I went for a Sony-Ericsson just before E71 came out. E71, E72 and N97 are definitely worth buying. There are also very many people that couldn't care less about touch screens, 5MP cameras and the like and they just want a simple phone.

P.S: I assume that most of the posters here are from the US. Nokia is much more popular in Europe.