Qt does not sell mobiles. As a consumer, Qt is a technicality. Right now, the experience and availability of apps sell phones. Qt is just a tool for us developers to implement those experiences. Despite this, it is interesting to compare the Nokia N9 and the new WP7-based Lumia handsets. The market’s reaction to both, and the irony of it all.
Sweden is a highly developed smartphone market. Almost everyone has a smartphone. Flat rate data subscriptions are cheap. Both N9 and Lumia are sold here, and are advertised.
The reviews are interesting. In mobil.se’s comparison, the N9 lose out because the platform is bound to die, thus have fewer apps. In the same organisations yearly awards, the N9 win three out of four applicable categories (the Sony Ericsson Mini Pro won the value-for-your-money-award). The N9 also went straight to the top of the selling charts at katshing.se, and in the telekomidag.se review of Lumia, the final words praise the N9 “Sister model N9 with MeeGo was a (albeit late) eye-opener, for Lumia is feeling more of oh well-character. Skilled in every way – but we have seen most things before.” (google translation of “Systermodellen N9 med Meego var en (om än för sen) aha-upplevelse, för Lumia blir känslan mer av jaha-karaktär. Kompetent på alla sätt – men vi har ju sett det mesta förut.”)
Following this trail, the latest sad figures from Nokia report that things aren’t going that well. Telling your customers and employees that your current unique product is dead, then delivering a mainstream product later does not help improve business. Bloomberg has looked at various analysts’ estimations of sales figures, and they estimate 1.4 million N9 where sold 2011, while the Lumia is estimated to have sold 1.3 million (estimates range from 800k – 2M).
The interesting part in all these comparisons is that the N9/MeeGo platform is not being pushed by Nokia. They do not want to sell it. The Lumia, on the other hand, is being pushed by the biggest marketing budget Nokia ever has spent on a single product. The Lumia series is being expanded, apps are emerging.
I am sure that Nokia/Microsoft will succeed. I had a VHS system at home, even though Betamax was technically superior. The cost for success will be to turn Nokia from a leading brand into a mainstream supplier, no more important than HTC or Samsung. Sad for Nokia, sad for Finland, sad for what could have been for Qt. Launching N950 alongside N9 and following up with multi-core models would had been great. Also, seeing that MeeGo Harmattan more or less was Maemo with Qt, Intel’s drop-out would not have been the end of the world.
Still, from a Qt developer, this, in combination with the openly governed Qt Project means that Qt will stay a cross platform tool. The risk of seeing it being sucked into a life as a (great!) single platform is no more. Qt/iOS, Qt/Android and Qt/MeeGo give a bigger target area than WP7 has. And if the WP8 platform is to follow desktop, Nokia just jumped from one burning platform to another, since they are going HTML5.