Qt does not sell mobiles. As a consumer, Qt is a technicality. Right now, the experience and availability of apps sell phones. Qt is just a tool for us developers to implement those experiences. Despite this, it is interesting to compare the Nokia N9 and the new WP7-based Lumia handsets. The market’s reaction to both, and the irony of it all.
Sweden is a highly developed smartphone market. Almost everyone has a smartphone. Flat rate data subscriptions are cheap. Both N9 and Lumia are sold here, and are advertised.
The reviews are interesting. In mobil.se’s comparison, the N9 lose out because the platform is bound to die, thus have fewer apps. In the same organisations yearly awards, the N9 win three out of four applicable categories (the Sony Ericsson Mini Pro won the value-for-your-money-award). The N9 also went straight to the top of the selling charts at katshing.se, and in the telekomidag.se review of Lumia, the final words praise the N9 “Sister model N9 with MeeGo was a (albeit late) eye-opener, for Lumia is feeling more of oh well-character. Skilled in every way – but we have seen most things before.” (google translation of “Systermodellen N9 med Meego var en (om än för sen) aha-upplevelse, för Lumia blir känslan mer av jaha-karaktär. Kompetent på alla sätt – men vi har ju sett det mesta förut.”)
Following this trail, the latest sad figures from Nokia report that things aren’t going that well. Telling your customers and employees that your current unique product is dead, then delivering a mainstream product later does not help improve business. Bloomberg has looked at various analysts’ estimations of sales figures, and they estimate 1.4 million N9 where sold 2011, while the Lumia is estimated to have sold 1.3 million (estimates range from 800k – 2M).
The interesting part in all these comparisons is that the N9/MeeGo platform is not being pushed by Nokia. They do not want to sell it. The Lumia, on the other hand, is being pushed by the biggest marketing budget Nokia ever has spent on a single product. The Lumia series is being expanded, apps are emerging.
I am sure that Nokia/Microsoft will succeed. I had a VHS system at home, even though Betamax was technically superior. The cost for success will be to turn Nokia from a leading brand into a mainstream supplier, no more important than HTC or Samsung. Sad for Nokia, sad for Finland, sad for what could have been for Qt. Launching N950 alongside N9 and following up with multi-core models would had been great. Also, seeing that MeeGo Harmattan more or less was Maemo with Qt, Intel’s drop-out would not have been the end of the world.
Still, from a Qt developer, this, in combination with the openly governed Qt Project means that Qt will stay a cross platform tool. The risk of seeing it being sucked into a life as a (great!) single platform is no more. Qt/iOS, Qt/Android and Qt/MeeGo give a bigger target area than WP7 has. And if the WP8 platform is to follow desktop, Nokia just jumped from one burning platform to another, since they are going HTML5.
Agree on everything posted here. What’s worse Nokia publishes rather misleading info that goes to many sites that over 1M Lumias 800 went to customers. But look at this to see how N9 beats Lumia (1.75M vs 0.6M)!
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/01/how-many-lumia-sales-as-nokia-and-microsoft-ashamed-to-reveal-number-lets-count-and-compare-to-n9-me.html
The MeeGo smartphone of your dream? $650 Nokia N9
Boycotting windows phones to get Elop fired? Priceless!
There is something money can’t buy… for everything else, there is Mastercard!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0XD1s6UmqE
“Qt/iOS”
Did I miss something?
@ben : yes. but there is nothing official, and not supported in any way. that is the dangerous beauty of Open Source Software :)
Please check this site (see 3. and 4. entries): http://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/110705-app-platform
WP might have a native SDK a-la Android NDK and Qt/WP might become reality. This would be a very very bitter irony.
@nils, @ben:
Actually, there is a South African company which has developed a full version of Qt 4.8 for iOS, including commercial support. It has not been publicly released yet, but it has already been shown at some conferences. Follow them in Twitter for updates: https://twitter.com/#!/Qt4iOS
Johan,
I agree with everything and I must add:
– In many countries, the N9 is not available at all (for instance, in Spain, one of the European countries with biggers smartphone penetration)
– It’s ironical that Nokia is paying for most of the development of Qt, yet it has relegated it to Symbian and (maybe) Meltemi. Meanwhile, developers are using Qt to develop applications on all the competitor platforms, some of them even officially: Android, iPhone, BlackBerry 10, webOS, etc
Johan,
many folks love the N9… including me!
But what does Ralph de la Vega think of the N9?
The reality of the mobile industry is that “ecosystem” is more than just applications.
In the long term, a healthy Nokia that is re-established in north american markets… is likely the best thing possible for mobile developers using Qt.
:)
>since they are going HTML5.
Nope, windows 8 supports XAML + C# alongside Html5 + js.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinRT
> The interesting part in all these comparisons is that the N9/MeeGo
> platform is not being pushed by Nokia.
This is really an understatement. In Germany, the N9 is a ghost. It’s not on the market at all, although it would be possible to import it. There are some tests around, but every one of them emphasises the “dead-end because nokia dropped it”-platform. The Lumia phones on the other hand receive a marketing hype. TV commercials during prime time in the prominent TV channels, etc. I really can’t imagine how the numbers would compare if the N9 received the same amount of marketing. And especially without the negative press about Nokias MeeGo drop-out. Obviously, I still don’t understand this decision.