So it’s time for today’s survey item and I’m taking a break from Vodafone 360 — this time we’re looking at Maemo. If you recall, we’ve been running a mobile developer sentiment survey as part of the report we’re writing for an investment bank. The survey is aimed at measuring sentiment, nothing more. (And the sample size is 500 — I forgot to mention that in yesterday’s Vodafone post).
To the question, then.
I asked the developers to complete my sentence, thus:
Nokia’s Maemo is…
The choices I gave:
– very exciting
– irrelevant to me as a developer
– the last gasp from Finland
Remember, we wanted to measure sentiment — back of the pub commentary, if you like — which explains the series of choices I’ve provided.
A reasonable 44% reckoned that Maemo is ‘very exciting‘. I agree with that. Provided they can get a good amount of developer attention, I think the device (and the platform) — with a fair wind — could eek out a nice percentage of the marketplace.
27% of respondents had next to no opinion of the platform, labelling it ‘irrelevant to me as a developer‘. I can understand that if you’re exclusively an iPhone Developer, with no plans to branch out to Maemo any time soon, you’d probably select this.
Finally, just under 30% declared Maemo the, ‘last gasp from Finland‘. I put this option in just to measure mobile developer bile — and the percentage opting for this surprised me. I thought the majority — the iPhone fans, for example — would select the ‘irrelevant’ one. But I had a suspicion that many developers actually had a derisory viewpoint of Maemo (and Nokia) — the ‘why bother, go home, you’ve had your shot’ opinion. I wonder if this percentage segment is explained by that.
So there you have it. Right now 56% of mobile developers questioned have a directly negative or irrelevant perspective on Maemo. That’s not as bad as I thought it could be.
Leaving aside criticism of the tiny poll size, why were people only given black and white options – “love it” or “crap” (ignoring the don't cares which are fair enough). Are people not allowed to be somewhere in between? How about other options for e.g. “I'll see how it goes, Nokia have lost my confidence a bit but I'm prepared to try them again” and “It's not VERY exciting, but I think it looks fairly promising and I'm fairly optimistic about it's chances and will give it a shot unless they do another big screw-up”.
> Right now 56% of mobile developers questioned have a directly negative or irrelevant perspective on Maemo.
May I dare to suggest if you'd added more options you would have got considerably less blatantly negative ones. Or possibly less blatantly positive ones. Either way, more accuracy = more truth.
I fear for any conclusions this investment bank makes on the back of your survey. Is it not somewhat your responsibility to not feed these blind people (i.e. lacking in knowledge of the subject area) skewed information?
Never fear Alex, they're absolutely delighted with the report and the workshop we delivered. The polarisation that you speak of is exactly what they specified.
that exciting number
I guess the majority of the developers being asked were from the US? Wasnt meant as a form of criticism in any way, just curious.
of course this figure is very exciting