Nokia heading for another change in strategy?

In the weeks leading up to Mobile World Congress (MWC), there have been flurries of rumours around Nokia and the MeeGo-Harmattan device. Following Stephen Elop (Nokia CEO)'s Q&A during their results' presentation, rumours have increased about whether or not Nokia may largely abandon MeeGo and concentrate on something with a pre-built ecosystem (such as Android). Talk stalwart, benny1967 adds a note of caution about getting carried away with such rumours: The current strategy (S40/Symbian/MeeGo, with Qt being the common platform for Symbian and MeeGo) is relatively new and was expensive to follow, wasn't it? The new Symbian, making Qt what it is today, developing MeeGo, Qt-related changes to Ovi and so on...

If Elop changes it yet again, it's like burning money. No matter what he changes. (Some say MeeGo remains, but they will kill Symbian. Others say changes are for the US market only. Then there's those who claim to know it's MeeGo they'll let die...)

Besides, comparing Nokias offerings with those of its competitors, it's not the OS of any single phone out there (except the N97) that's bad. What they have a problem with is a) marketing and communications; b) services and integration (including things like the infamous Ovi Suite and various Ovi services). These things wouldn't change really, would they? Buried within the thread there is a link to the full transcript of the call. Nokia say they'll "share the next step of their journey with us" on February 11th. The transcript refers to it as a "strategy and finance" briefing where "we will provide a comprehensive update on the key decisions and changes relayed to Nokia's strategy going forward."

The N9 is dead? Long live the N9?

Has the polishing and revamping of Nokia's high-end user interface (which *has* to impress on launch) had its first casualty not be the mighty iPhone or an Android device, but... itself? Eldar Murtazin, a Russian blogger with a track record of inside connections, claims the N9 is cancelled, and a new N9 will be released in its place. The delay has not been good for the hardware; in today's market an OMAP3 (such as the OMAP3630) is just seen as yesterday's news for a high-end device. As Neil MacLeod says: The RM-680 specs are hardly cutting edge in today's market, and they were barely cutting edge assuming it was meant to be launched 6 months ago. Nokia would run the risk of becoming a laughing stock if they launched the RM-680 in another one, two or three months time and tried to claim it as their flagship MeeGo device when everyone else is (or has already been) shipping dual core devices with more memory and higher resolution screens. I wouldn't be surprised to discover the RM-680 also lacks something like NFC which is becoming de rigueur on high end devices. If true, and the new device was in a state to be released relatively soon, the delay could mean a move to MeeGo "proper", rather than the hybrid MeeGo-Harmattan/Maemo 6 (although there's literally *no* evidence of this). This would almost certainly be beneficial to the developer ecosystem, although a risk from what Nokia engineers have most expertise in managing in a consumer device.