NOKIA needed change. And change they did. Stephen Elop took charge in Sept. 2010. Elop is an ex-Microsoft and the first winds of change he brought to NOKIA – shut their ailing Symbian Platform down (Meego too) and a partner with Microsoft to produce WP phones. That NOKIA’s sales have only declined since Elop took over is not quite a surprise. Let me start by saying that NOKIA-MS deal cannot possibly turn Espoo’s fortunes around. First off, WP7 donot have a substantial market share. Mobile OS is soon becoming a personal brand people have started associating with. Its difficult converting an iOS or Android user to a third platform. Plus, as is generally believed (and supported to an extent by Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility), people want to have an ‘under the same hut’ HW/SW integration now. Maybe MS has a long term plan of buying NOKIA out, but that is pure speculation at this point.

Having worked with their Telecom unit for a while now and at their offices for a few months, I understand the employee predicament to an extent. The development talent is second to none. There cannot possibly be a reason why Espoo cannot churn out a frontline Mobile OS. But Alas ! The last thing NOKIA needed was a guy from Microsoft to show the way. The general feeling towards Elop’s directions are far from being positive, not only in the offices but even amongst general population. NOKIA was in a management mess before Elop came in. The big company ‘process’ syndrome had taken roots. Top line developers had decided to put their time and energy to where it was worth. While this deal makes sense for Microsoft (in that they will have one of the top HW makers to ship their WP7 with), it hardly has much for NOKIA.

NOKIA have just come out with the Belle update for Symbian. Not that its great or something – at best a copy of Android’s swift Notification slider and yes an NFC incorporation. But if the way ahead is with WP7, why still keep bringing the Symbian updates ? To maintain a pool of faithful current Symbian users ? Get real ! Somehow Android was never an option in Elop’s mind. Wonder if that has something to do with his roots ! It just feels bad to see a giant going down the path of mediocrity. With the kind of R&D investment in their own platform, wonder what was so luring about a billion MS dollars ! How the first shipment of this partnership holds up, will be clear by start of 2012. And so will be the verdict on whether a snub on Intel was right in favor of a handshake with MS. But for now, as I see it, Management, poor planning and lack of a killer instinct were central to NOKIA’s woes before Elop came in. And guess what, they have just made it worse !

Readers can put in their views in the comments section. I can be reached at vikashbitmesra@gmail.com. My twitter feed – _Vikash

MS [and for that matter Google too] have made their respective failed attempts to buy out both Twitter and Facebook. While both Twitter and Facebook decided to thrive on their own then, they didn’t mind the cash inflow this time around by making available the vast real time updates they have at their disposal. Even as Twitter CEO Evans Williams humorously downplayed questions regarding this deal (a day earlier at the Web 2.0 summit), Microsoft’s online services group President Qi Lu went on to explain the deal, a deal that MS likes to call “Bing Wave 2″.  Lu said the deal with their other prospective partner, Facebook, will come in at a later point. Excerpts from his interview here and a conversation with ‘O Reilly here.

The official Bing-Twitter Integration is up and live at http://www.bing.com/twitter, for the US only (so change your country preference to US  to check it out). It has a tag cloud showing the hottest topics on twitter (similar to Twitter’s trending topics) and also sample tweets on each of them.When we actually make a particular query, we get the tweets in two categories ‘Most recent’ and ‘Best match’. The Tweets corresponding to the search tag are supposedly updated in real time (but when we checked it out, didn’t quite find it to be so!!). This is just a basic setup live and should get more compact/trendy and feature laden with time. A snapshot :

The deal in itself is huge (and we are not talking in just financial terms here, infact Qi Lu passed the question when asked about the Financial terms of the deal), taking ‘Search’ on to the real time corridors.The deal gives MS, the access to full (public) Twitter data feed. This, for sure, is a formidable blow to its arch-rival Google. Twitter too has been looking at options recently for some revenue generation. This deal (and the upcoming one with Google) should suffice for some time now. The other options (read ads) is a scary one in itself.!! If the deal with Twitter is big, that with Facebook is going to be bigger, what with the 45 million status updates per day from 30 million unique visitors.

While all this does sound great, the question to be asked is : “Isnt this at some point the invasion of  user privacy?“. The question holds less of a significance with respect to Twitter (considering that its user’s tweets are more in the public domain), but gets pretty significant in the context of Facebook (whose users want to share those updates only amongst their friends). News has it that Facebook is going to provide its users with options in this regard. Wonder how this entire deal looks  in the light of Twitter’s user friendly TOS (Terms of Service) that says – users very much own their Tweets. So what if MS starts Archiving these tweet streams. Facebook have anyways a non-friendly TOS (as per which, Facebook can use/modify/publish  your status updates and that too even after you terminate your account!!). Probably the Bing-Facebook integration will further fuel the issue. So are the users ready to let these giants invade their privacy (read status updates) for the sake of a perfect real time search? Readers’ opinion solicited.

Before MS could soak in what had just hit them, people were already talking: the name is Wave – Google Wave. At the end of the 80 mins DEMO, 4000 developers stood up and cheered like anything. The applause was compared to the legendary Keynote Address from Jobs himself! Google had so very meticulously planned the Day 2 of its IO – planned to the very exact minutes. And when you declare in a developer’s forum that the product is going to be Open Source, the applause gets manifold. Wave is developed by a Sydney based Google team of Lars and Jens Ramussen (brothers of the startup Where 2 Tech fame, that later became Google Maps) – Lead Developers and Stefannie Hannon, Lead PM. At the IO, it was mostly Lars and Stefannie who went through the most of Google Wave. Lars and Stafannie explained Wave in terms of  3 Ps – the Product, the Platform and the Protocol. Wave the Product Google Wave is supposedly a game changer in the current context of online communication, so much so that the very existence of email as a service is under threat. Wave is a real time Communication platform that combines the email, IM, web chat, social networking and project management. The concurrency in IM/chats is such that you see things appearing character by character! People can join wave midway and still see what the original thread was, thanx to a cool feature like ‘Playback’. Google Wave made simple (watch video)Wave as a product can be embedded in games/blogs/social networks (one can only imagine the impact it will have on the Social Media as a whole). For example a wave embedded in Twitter is a Twave. Every facet of Wave -  the product is sure to mesmerise you. Wave the Platform – Wave Extensions This is the aspect that the developers were waiting for at the Google IO. And Wave did not disappoint. Google Wave is packaged with a host of APIs like Spelly, Linky, Searchy, Tweety. And the rest are open for the developers to build. This is the aspect of the Wave that is critical to its success. If Wave goes a HIT, it becomes your Twiter/Facebok/gaming client all in one, subsequently opening up the possibility of a whole new application boom in future. Wave the Protocol Google Wave Federation Protocol is an extension to XMPP – the internet messaging protocol, that has taken the real-time communication to a whole new level. Google Wave as a product is Open Source. Google believes making Wave open like email will only further its cause. Anyone can have their own wave client and still communicate real time to any other Wave network. With a product as ambitious and breathtaking as Wave, either its a total HIT or a bomber. There is no middle path here. Consider when all your friends switch to wave, you simply dont have an option not to. Google has got its first steps right. Now the World awaits its developer’s launch on September 30th. If Wave turns into what it claimed to be at the DEMO, the world is going to change, and change for good. We shall keep you updated with the latest on Wave. And if things go right, we shall give a developer’s perspective to Wave in due time.