I’m looking forward to seeing what Nokia delivers to the marketplace today. I’m excited at the possibilities.
However I still retain a sad-reality-view.
Today, Nokia needs to deliver unmitigated brilliance.
It’s a binary situation. Either it’s brilliant or it’s not. It’s that simple.
I am quietly fearful that the company will vomit out a range of almost-nice devices, especially given that — as Martin Bryant at The Next Web tweets just now — today is ‘Symbian Day’.
Just last night I was talking with one of Symbian’s key employees.
“What are you hoping for?” I asked the chap, referring to NokiaWorld today.
“Continued existence,” he said.
Straight face. He wasn’t joking.
Today, I don’t want to see another S40 device with a slightly better this or a slightly enhanced that. I don’t want to see yet-another-6700 slightly modified device.
And I don’t want them to reveal the Nokia N8. It’s done. It’s out there already. By all means announce that it’s shipping today, or do an Oprah ‘look under your seat’ moment for the attending delegates.
But please don’t shovel us any more shit please Nokia.
You can follow all the joy at http://events.nokia.com/nokiaworld.
And the All About Symbian team will be live blogging every pico-second of the event over at All About Symbian right here.
The new devices are spectacular…AMOLED with Clear Back Diplay technology for outdoor viewing, USB On the Go, Bluetooth 3.0, Dolby Surround with HDMI output, Aluminum hi quality build, full QWERTY, great optics, etc. Unfortunately, the market wants to see the N9 Meego. The market, right or wrong, is not interested in Symbian^3. I think it is a myopic view that will play well with those who intend to cash in on short positions. My guess, Nokia will release the N9 at the first MEEGO developers conference in November…early enough to take advantage of the shopping season buzz. I am most interested in developer reaction to the Qt / Webkit approach taken by Nokia for both Symbian and Meego. If this is embraced…its the biggest news of all.
I guess I'm a bit shocked that I actually missed the event this year. Completely, didn't even managed to register it's planned for September. Sad, a little bit sad.
Looks like they're doing an impressive job of it so far. Very powerful, very attractive hardware offerings (getting a great response across the board, even from anti-Nokia types like Engadget). Free N8s to all developers at their dev event. Much improved Ovi Maps and Store. Lots of developer improvements making it really good to develop for Ovi now. Ex design VP of Palm hired for MeeGo UI etc. More aggressive stance towards Android and iPhone. And lots more to come.
I'd say Apple, Google and Blackberry are all very much on the backfoot now. A very rosy future ahead for Symbian and Nokia if you ask me (as expected!).
Hey Ewan – you haven’t written anything about Nokia World after the event! How was it? Is Nokia back, as they say themselves?
Nokia Is Back. In Time.
I’ve just done a new piece on NokiaWorld, Guest — it’s on the frontpage.