4 ms·

Nokia buys Smarterphone, developer of feature phone operating system

17 points by jannes 15y ago

pavlov 15y ago
It seems that Smarterphone has the unique and HN-worthy feature of being the only mobile OS written in... Lisp! So sayeth Wikipedia, at least: "The user interface of Smarterphone OS is programmed in a scripting language, which is a variant of Scheme with object-oriented extensions." [1] It's hard to imagine that Nokia will use this OS unless it's extremely lightweight and can fit on their supercheap 40 USD dumbphones (in which case it would be a replacement for the ancient Series 30). A talent acquisition, I think. (Edit -- Smarterphone's news page claims that their software is for the 25-75 USD price segment [2]. So maybe this actually has a shot of becoming Nokia's lowest-range OS to replace Series 30.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarterphone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarterphone [2] http://www.smarterphone.com/news.php http://www.smarterphone.com/news.php
- stcredzero 15y ago
  It's hard to imagine that Nokia will use this OS unless it's extremely lightweight and can fit on their supercheap 40 USD dumbphones If you know a little about Lisp/Scheme, it's easy to believe that it could be lightweight and fit on such devices. Properly structured, I wouldn't be surprised by 2 or 3 times more compact code than another OS written in C.
  - pavlov 15y ago
    I wasn't putting down Scheme's efficiency, but pointing out that there's not much room for another new OS in Nokia's software lineup. Nokia is known to be already working on a new cheap Linux-based featurephone platform, "Meltemi". If Smarterphone is to live on at Nokia, it needs to be so simple that everyone can be convinced that it has no overlap with Meltemi; otherwise Nokia's corporate immune reactions will destroy Smarterphone soon enough.
    - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
      Why can't Nokia just kill off Meltemi and adopt Smarterphone's system? It's not like Nokia's previous smartphone OS efforts have gone anywhere (Maemo, Meego, Symbian^3, etc). I honestly thought, when Nokia and Microsoft announced their deal, that Nokia would finally give up on making OS software. I guess they'll have sink a little lower still.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
shareme 15y ago
Signs of Nokia idiot strategies... Android devices selling for under $50..check check MS attempting to buy Nokia check check Nokia attempting another separate OS strategy check check Nokia fast heading towards webOS fate..
martincmartin 15y ago
So what's the deal with Nokia these days? Android, iOS, Samsung, etc. are the new hotness, is Nokia a dinosaur who doesn't get that the world has changed? Or do they have a potential to be an A player? Or are they an A player that just doesn't get as much mindshare?
- nuttendorfer 15y ago
  I think Nokia will once come out as the winner in this. Instead of putting all their eggs in one basket they try to diversify their lineup. While a lot of other companies focus on Android they work on the next thing. Sooner or later consumers will shy away from Android because "everybody has one" or whatever reason they might have - Nokia will then step in and cater to these people. Nokia, especially in Europe, has a lot of satisfied customers(The dumbphone market). If they manage to create a good blend of smart and dumbphones they will have the market.
  - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
    "Nokia, especially in Europe, has a lot of satisfied customers(The dumbphone market)." In a couple of years, there won't really be a dumbphone market in Europe, except for drug dealers and the poorest of consumers. Already, more than half of all cellphones sold in Europe are smartphones, and it increases by 10 percentage points a year. Nokia's future lies in selling dumb phones to third world countries, and that's already where it makes its money. Nokia was smart to have Microsoft fill their coffers, but in the end, smartphones will never be Nokia's core business.
- gahahaha 15y ago
  "are they an A player that just doesn't get as much mindshare?" I think so. Via @mikko: Mobile web access marketshare changes in 2011: iOS: 25% -> 23% Android: 15% -> 22% Symbian: 30% -> 34% For real.
  - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
    Those are numbers from Statcounter [1] and not conclusive by any standard. According to another web analytics company, Hitslink [2], Symbian mobile web usage share went from 8.9% to 5.8% in the last year. Also, even in Statcounter's numbers Symbian has little usage share to speak of in first world nations (6% in N-America, 10% in Europe, 4% in Oceania). [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201012-201112 http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201012-20111... [2] http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=9&qpcustomb=1 http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-shar...
teyc 15y ago
Could it possibly be a talent acquisition? After all, they have demonstrated ability to put FB and Twitter on a feature phone. Furthermore, one of the problems with Symbian is entrenched management issues. By getting rid of the entire Symbian team, they get another shot at getting feature phones right. In any case, running a Lisp allows rapid iteration. This is great news for developers. Have a look at their video channel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPjjU_Ftd2Y&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPjjU_Ftd2Y&feature=mfu_i... Its scrolling is silky smooth. Better than my android.
pagehub 15y ago
Looks to me like they have made this acquisition to give them a talent pool and OS for the new featurephone strategy once they have offloaded the Smartphone biz to Microsoft?
colinm 15y ago
"Some of the wilder speculation we've heard has the company buying Smarterphone in preparation to sell its smart phone line-up to Microsoft, then focusing entirely on feature phones." Now THAT would surely be business suicide.

17 points by jannes 15y ago

It seems that Smarterphone has the unique and HN-worthy feature of being the only mobile OS written in... Lisp! So sayeth Wikipedia, at least: "The user interface of Smarterphone OS is programmed in a scripting language, which is a variant of Scheme with object-oriented extensions." [1] It's hard to imagine that Nokia will use this OS unless it's extremely lightweight and can fit on their supercheap 40 USD dumbphones (in which case it would be a replacement for the ancient Series 30). A talent acquisition, I think. (Edit -- Smarterphone's news page claims that their software is for the 25-75 USD price segment [2]. So maybe this actually has a shot of becoming Nokia's lowest-range OS to replace Series 30.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarterphone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarterphone [2] http://www.smarterphone.com/news.php http://www.smarterphone.com/news.php

stcredzero 15y ago
It's hard to imagine that Nokia will use this OS unless it's extremely lightweight and can fit on their supercheap 40 USD dumbphones If you know a little about Lisp/Scheme, it's easy to believe that it could be lightweight and fit on such devices. Properly structured, I wouldn't be surprised by 2 or 3 times more compact code than another OS written in C.
- pavlov 15y ago
  I wasn't putting down Scheme's efficiency, but pointing out that there's not much room for another new OS in Nokia's software lineup. Nokia is known to be already working on a new cheap Linux-based featurephone platform, "Meltemi". If Smarterphone is to live on at Nokia, it needs to be so simple that everyone can be convinced that it has no overlap with Meltemi; otherwise Nokia's corporate immune reactions will destroy Smarterphone soon enough.
  - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
    Why can't Nokia just kill off Meltemi and adopt Smarterphone's system? It's not like Nokia's previous smartphone OS efforts have gone anywhere (Maemo, Meego, Symbian^3, etc). I honestly thought, when Nokia and Microsoft announced their deal, that Nokia would finally give up on making OS software. I guess they'll have sink a little lower still.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

shareme 15y ago

Signs of Nokia idiot strategies... Android devices selling for under $50..check check MS attempting to buy Nokia check check Nokia attempting another separate OS strategy check check Nokia fast heading towards webOS fate..

martincmartin 15y ago

So what's the deal with Nokia these days? Android, iOS, Samsung, etc. are the new hotness, is Nokia a dinosaur who doesn't get that the world has changed? Or do they have a potential to be an A player? Or are they an A player that just doesn't get as much mindshare?

nuttendorfer 15y ago
I think Nokia will once come out as the winner in this. Instead of putting all their eggs in one basket they try to diversify their lineup. While a lot of other companies focus on Android they work on the next thing. Sooner or later consumers will shy away from Android because "everybody has one" or whatever reason they might have - Nokia will then step in and cater to these people. Nokia, especially in Europe, has a lot of satisfied customers(The dumbphone market). If they manage to create a good blend of smart and dumbphones they will have the market.
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  "Nokia, especially in Europe, has a lot of satisfied customers(The dumbphone market)." In a couple of years, there won't really be a dumbphone market in Europe, except for drug dealers and the poorest of consumers. Already, more than half of all cellphones sold in Europe are smartphones, and it increases by 10 percentage points a year. Nokia's future lies in selling dumb phones to third world countries, and that's already where it makes its money. Nokia was smart to have Microsoft fill their coffers, but in the end, smartphones will never be Nokia's core business.
gahahaha 15y ago
"are they an A player that just doesn't get as much mindshare?" I think so. Via @mikko: Mobile web access marketshare changes in 2011: iOS: 25% -> 23% Android: 15% -> 22% Symbian: 30% -> 34% For real.
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  Those are numbers from Statcounter [1] and not conclusive by any standard. According to another web analytics company, Hitslink [2], Symbian mobile web usage share went from 8.9% to 5.8% in the last year. Also, even in Statcounter's numbers Symbian has little usage share to speak of in first world nations (6% in N-America, 10% in Europe, 4% in Oceania). [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201012-201112 http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201012-20111... [2] http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=9&qpcustomb=1 http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-shar...

teyc 15y ago

Could it possibly be a talent acquisition? After all, they have demonstrated ability to put FB and Twitter on a feature phone. Furthermore, one of the problems with Symbian is entrenched management issues. By getting rid of the entire Symbian team, they get another shot at getting feature phones right. In any case, running a Lisp allows rapid iteration. This is great news for developers. Have a look at their video channel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPjjU_Ftd2Y&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPjjU_Ftd2Y&feature=mfu_i... Its scrolling is silky smooth. Better than my android.

pagehub 15y ago

Looks to me like they have made this acquisition to give them a talent pool and OS for the new featurephone strategy once they have offloaded the Smartphone biz to Microsoft?

colinm 15y ago

"Some of the wilder speculation we've heard has the company buying Smarterphone in preparation to sell its smart phone line-up to Microsoft, then focusing entirely on feature phones." Now THAT would surely be business suicide.