This week's special guest was Mark Guim from The Nokia Blog. He joined us to discuss Nokia's future with Windows Phone. Before that, we talked about whether or not HP's new CEO will overturn any decisions its previous CEO made, namely, those regarding webOS. Most bloggers tend to not believe what HP says about not making any radical changes and sticking to the course that former CEO, Leo Apotheker, set the company on. However, the fact that the board just fired Apotheker makes it obvious that they feel otherwise.
The HTC Rhyme was also a hot topic. A lot of women in tech seem to be upset about a phone that's catered towards women, or at least upset about the way HTC is handling it. I, personally, don't see what the big deal is. We discussed that towards the end of the show after drooling over the Epic 4G Touch for about ten minutes.
It's clear that HP wants and needs to go in a different direction. With Leo Apotheker at the helm, HP's stock dropped 47 percent within 11 months. He made several decisions that seemed to not make a lot of sense to bloggers and investors. HP's acquisition of Palm was a smart move but with HP announcing that it had no plans to enter the smartphone business when they had just purchased a company whose most popular current asset was a smartphone OS, most of us were confused about the logic behind the purchase. Surely HP wasn't planning on taking a full smartphone OS and sticking it on printers, right?
HP maintains that it agrees with the decisions Apotheker made, but no one actually believes that. Why would you fire your CEO if you agreed with the moves he was making? It appears that the board does want to revisit some of the decisions made by Apotheker. The fate of webOS is certainly going to be on the agenda. Will the board overturn the decision to halt hardware development for webOS? We're not sure about that right now. It would certainly make sense. Palm's second-greatest asset outside of webOS was its numerous mobile patents, but, again, why would HP need those patents if it wasn't planning on entering the smartphone market? If it doesn't sound like a good idea, it's probably not. The question is, Is it too late for webOS?
I wanted to get a little perspective on the Nokia/Microsoft partnership so I asked Mark Guim from The Nokia Blog to come on the show and share his point of view. For those of us who aren't intimately familiar with Symbian and Maemo, the only thing we appreciate about the partnership is that Nokia makes great hardware. But there has to be more to it than that. What do Symbian loyalists think about the move? Which OS is better? Is it a good choice for Nokia? Mark and I discussed these topics.
Mark mentioned two things that he is looking forward to in Windows Phone after using Symbian: an improved browser and e-mail experience. He said that the newest Symbian Anna update brought improvements to the browser but it still can't compare to his experience with Android and iOS. He also mentioned that, despite the lack of widespread support for Symbian in the States, there are a lot of readers who hate the mention of Windows Phone. There are loyalists in each camp and I'm sure the Symbian fans will be sorry to see it go. However, Windows Phone is an excellent OS and the support of an established hardware maker like Nokia will help it grow even more.
There seem to be a lot of female tech bloggers who are upset about this so-called "woman phone". They say, "If it's made for women, why do the specs have to be less than other superphones on the market?" I've also heard some say they don't like being pandered to, as if they aren't capable of choosing their own phone or knowing that another phone is better. It seems that HTC feels they can just make a purple phone and women will automatically clamor for it.
As a female tech blogger, I can understand their point of view; however, I also think that a woman who is a tech blogger is a unique individual and not every woman is the same. Yes, we've decided to make our own decisions; we don't "need" people to cater to us; we got into a field that is predominately men and determined that we would be successful anyway. Not every woman is like that and that's okay. There are women out there who do like cute things. There are women who do like being catered to. There are women who will see a purple phone that's clearly made for them and will love it. Why did HTC not put a dual-core processor in the Rhyme? Probably because they know that most women won't know the difference so why spend the extra money?
Now, you can go on some rant about women taking care of themselves and not letting men tell them what to do, but that's a different story. For the time being, it's a phone for women, some women will love it and they'll buy it.
45:35 - Apple to unveil iPhone 5 on October 4th?
45:41 - T-Mobile "not going to get the iPhone 5 this year," says CMO Cole Brodman
45:50 - Motorola Atrix 2 poses for some photos in the wild
47:18 - Samsung accuses Apple of "free riding" on its patents, promises to be more aggressive going forward
If you'd like to watch PhoneDog Live, we broadcast every Friday at 5 p.m. ET from our Ustream channel. You can watch it directly from Ustream or from our Facebook page. This week's show is available to watch on our YouTube channel.
