One of the breaking news of the day is that Nokia has opted for Windows 7 platform; I usually don’t comment on these “platform changes” but Nokia is dying a slow death.

I had earlier written about owning a Nokia E63:

I own a Nokia E63 but that’s about it. It’s the “low end” of the smart phone because the screen sucks. Ovi store sucks. There are no apps to speak of. It has a weird “signed” and “unsigned” policy which doesn’t allow me to load in any kind of an application I need. Yet, the Wifi is a great addition even though it has a restricted range. My mail is configured; is a boon when I am not around my laptop. In general, it works the work but then there is nothing that I exude my enthusiasm about owning this

This has been prompted by is steady decline in the US market where it has been drubbed nicely.

So what does it do next?

It shifts to Windows 7.

Inquirer has hit the nail on the head.

Elop tried to answer the question the world had, why the hell not Android, and his answer was lacking. He explained that he had spoken to Google about Android but it was rejected as Elop felt that Nokia could not differentiate itself among the Android handsets.

Trust me. If Nokia had shifted to Android, I would have shifted to it immediately solely because of the quality of the hardware.

But then Windows has been screwed royally in the back by Linux.

Tags: android, Google, handsets, INQ, laptop, Linux, Media, Microsoft, Mobile, Telecommunications India, Wifi, Windows, Windows 7

I am not here to be a party pooper but if you look at the profile of the countries where broadband is a laggard, it speaks for itself. It only reflects a huge pent up demand for a “regular internet” than a crippled version of the mobile internet.

The beauty of Opera is that it’s available for a huge range of handsets; including java based crapware that is lowly bottom of the end stuff. Agreed that most people cannot afford a smartphone (it’s an overkill), still it reflects the pattern of usage.

This is bound to create a lot of interest for advertising which surprisingly Opera has been able to keep it as a free platform. Although I have tried the beta version of their mobile browser on Android, there is nothing to write home about; I invariably fall back on the Mini version. In case I have to tether my useless Docomo GPRS to my laptop, I use an emulator which makes checking email and going through some mobile optimized web site easily.

This also means that the desktop version is going to lag in “love”; something that Opera employees deny strongly. As a company, it has one of the worst outreach towards it’s customers; try getting the contact details of the key people. They seem to have “hired” forum trolls because any word of criticism is hushed up immediately or the forum thread locked up. Their extensions are bare bones (unlike the Chromium API which is fairly stable) and does not allow interaction with the key features of the browser.

This isn’t technical debate about how the browser wars play out in the real web but in my opinion, Chromium (on Linux) is perceptibly fast. Although Firefox Beta has seen a wonderful improvement over it’s previous versions but it’s useless implementation of extensions means that a bare bones browser is as good as useless.

Ironically, this post on Opera is made using Chromium; I use Feedly (intermittently for RSS Feeds), Google Reader with a focussed tab and souped up with wonderful extensions to make my life easier when going through over 500 articles per day. I have (yes, wonderful) Thunderbird for IMAP Access; although a bit of pain to focus on one window to another but Opera has screwed (and fucked) up it’s Mail implementation.

Hope that opera now implements it’s Fastmail acquisition properly. If I can read the tea leaves properly, Opera would want to leverage itself as a “leading brand for mobile applications/other than desktop” category. Primarily reason is that internet access is now moving away (slowly and steadily) from the desktop/laptop combination. With huge profit base in the mobile applications, I see that there is no reason to innovate on the Linux/BSD/alternative platforms over a period of time.

That’s where Chromium is slowly becoming the centre stage; with a slow but steady shift to cloud computing as a platform. Mobile access is one part of the key in this game.

Tags: Advertising, android, API, Broadband, Browser wars, Chromium, Computing, crapware, Google, GPRS, handsets, Internet, Java, laptop, Linux, Media, Mobile, Opera, Telecommunications India

I rarely cover the mobile Internet on this blog. Part of the reason is my antipathy towards a highly inefficient medium of communication that has been sold as “standard”. As well as persistent ad spends to try and increase usage. The real shit is in Broadband folks and we don’t see any action on that front.

Nokia India is seeing a decreasing market share because it is staffed up by inefficient morons who have no clue where the technology trends are heading for. Even on their “low end 3G handsets”, I don’t see mention of Opera Mini, a Java based browser, but their inane persistence towards technological harakiri. Hence the rise of alternative technological platforms to access mobile internet.

Even in the huge market, the per capita consumption is barely 7MB per month which may be true (reflects my own usage on Docomo that I have). The idea behind having Mini installed is that it efficiently compresses the page before it is rendered on your handset. Nokia has not been able to get ANY traction in this market and Opera is seeing millions of page views per month through it’s data centre.

This of course worries me as a Desktop user. Even though it grows in popularity in mobile space and earns revenue from Google for it’s searches, it does not seem to have a spill over in the desktop segment.

Although they have done everything to open up the extensions framework but it seems that it is bound to be doomed the way Opera Unite/ Opera Widgets were. There is no palpable excitement in the blogosphere about this.

Apart from this, IMHO, mobile internet has a huge potential to grow in terms of “apps”. These little widgets are a rage and out of all the mobile operators only Aircel seems to be doing something right. At least they have created a framework for the same to spur on internet usage. To be honest, I haven’t seen their application in real time but their advertisements are a pointer towards the same. Yet, if they were REALLY smart, they would open up their application framework

Tags: 3G, Advertisement, Aircel, API, Broadband, Google, handsets, India, Internet, Java, Mobile, Opera, Opera Mini, Telecommunications India