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Need’s a subsidy model to work. Hard to see it scaling to the volumes it needs as a consumer mass-market proposition otherwise. Consoles are subsidised by games, smartphones by carriers, even tablets will have some implicit subsidy from app store sales.

No subsidy no volume. No volume no ecosystem. No ecosystem no future.

Good to see Tegra 4 finally shipping tho! It’s been a long wait!

5 days ago on Nvidia Shield gaming handheld priced at $349, pre-orders begin on May 20th (preview)

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The source they want to refer to is slide 13 of this deck.
http://i.nokia.com/blob/view/-/164958/data/3/-/02-Timo-Ihamuotila-Webcast-pdf.pdf

Shows that that plan is to continue with mobile phone offering (separate from Symbian and WP) indefinitely.

10 days ago on Nokia hedges its commitment to Windows Phone with new Asha platform and $99 phone 1 reply 2 recommends

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To put it another way, if you are claiming:

“Nonetheless, the presumption has always been that Asha would be a stopgap solution — Nokia’s stated goal is to drive down the price of Windows Phone devices”

You are implicitly claiming that Nokia’s stated goal was to drive the price of WP down to featurephone/dumbphone price points. I don’t think they have ever said that or anyone has ever believed that.

11 days ago on Nokia hedges its commitment to Windows Phone with new Asha platform and $99 phone 2 replies 21 recommends

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Vlad I think you’re incorrect to paint Asha as a change of strategy.

Elop was very clear from the initial strategy announcement that Nokia wanted to continue to develop S40 as a low-end product. They said they were leaving Symbian but always said they were committed to S40. I never remember seeing any presumption this was a stopgap solution.

Anyhow, as you well know there is no way WP8 will be able to serve the $50-100 handset price point anytime soon, so I think it’s slightly disingenuous to claim they are somehow “hedging their bets” with Asha. Complaining that Windows 8 “isn’t flexible enough” to address the low end isn’t a valid crticism – its a category error. It’s a different product for a different value segment, pure and simple.

J

11 days ago on Nokia hedges its commitment to Windows Phone with new Asha platform and $99 phone 2 replies 25 recommends

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So why did he need to spend an hour wandering around outback Tennesee and building Tasers from spare parts… when he could have whistled up a fleet of remote controlled Iron Man suits at any point??? #trucksizedplothole

14 days ago on ‘Iron Man 3’ review: Robert Downey Jr. becomes the latest lethal weapon 1 reply 1 recommend

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I always thoughts that the set-top box business and experience about how to deal with (notoriously picky) broadcasters was a side-attraction for them. I used to cover Thomson (top-3 STB maker) as an analyst and you find that building this STB stuff is trickier than you think. If GOOG TV was the future surely the option of embedding that into future MOT STBs would have been an attraction.

Then of course they turned around and sold the sodding unit off (eventually)! Although I’ll warrant they’d have retained some of the key personnel and knowledge within GOOG post the disposal…

J

23 days ago on Does anyone know why Google bought Motorola? 1 reply 1 recommend