To UIQ, this would be perhaps the best that could happen to the interface platform - for a change, to have a device in the market with a device manufacturer that sells a large number of units - contrary to Sony Ericsson and their P series or Motorola with their devices manufactured exclusively for operator 3 (Hutchinson). China is the largest market and the ultimate sales dream, so this is nothing but excellent news, the potential is enormous.
For BenQ, this would is also a good deal. The P31 was announced in the summer of 2004 and its based on the old UIQ 2.1, not UIQ 3.0 - if this is true, someone at BenQ will get a real promotion, its not common for Nokia to go out with products that are obsolete or dusting up in the ODMs shelves.
Why would Nokia accept to market a phone that is based on an interface that is old, or market a phone that is based on the same platform as the P900 or the P910 - Nokia doesn't have a record of being behind others, does it? Sure Nokia is UIQs big daddy (UIQ is a subsidiary of Symbian, therefore Nokia owns 48% of UIQ)...
To top it all, it was apparently Nokia China who made the deal public (or showed the device in a local trade show, which is pretty much the same). Corporate communications at Nokia is a VERY centralized function, there is simply NO way China can make an announcement before Helsinki issues a formal press release. Chinese is not my best language, but I cannot see UIQ mentioned anywhere in this PR - has Nokia compromissed to something?
Personally, I doubt Nokia has signed the UIQ P31 into their product range for free – or without any compensations.
As you know, BenQ acquired Siemens Mobile short time ago – you also know Siemens has developed a smartphone that includes S60, the SX1. If this was or not a move to buy BenQs future intentions to use the S60 instead of UIQ, we do not know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case. Neither Siemens or BenQ were very lucky with 3rd party Uis (both the SX1 and the P30 took way too long to produce), so Nokia may just be buying their goodwill and help BenQ get rid of a phone (read, supplier) that was on a shelf getting dust.
The Nokia N6708 is perhaps a compromisse solution to get a "new" S60 licensee :)?
2 comments:
Chinese market demands pen support devices (for example Motorola has sold millions of linux-based smart devices with pen support in China), because the Chinese typeset/alphabets are not very easily utilized from the simple phone keyboard. I don't know why Nokia China didn't decide to use their own Symbian Series 90 UI though.
True - the chinese keypad solution requires substantially more keys and its unpractical on models like for instance the Sony Ericsson P910. In other words, its just too many different charecters for a little piece of hardware. Pen imput devices are a more viable solution.
I think Nokia didnt develop a handset based on S90 for the chinese market for a very simple reason - too expensive. The chinese mobile market is rather different from the European or American - handsets are not subsidized (by mobile operators) and consumers pay the full price. Power of purchase is also much lower in China, entry level models sell millions, high-end models simply dont.
What is interesting on this case is that everyone is keeping Nokias adoption (of the UIQ based P31) a secret. If you look into Symbians (www.symbian.com) or UIQs (www.uiq.com) websites....they dont mention a thing. I am sure not because they (specially UIQ) dont want....but, because they cant.
This is a story that entails more than we can think of ;)
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