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China Handhelds Linux Business Linux

Nokia Abruptly Closes Application Store In China For N9 66

Posted by timothy from the none-for-you dept.
jppiiroinen writes "It seems that Nokia is slowly killing existing applications for their Linux based N9 mobile phone which are available through their store. As a developer who has published paid (and free) apps, it appears after their final blow of killing the support for paid applications in China, where the main revenue came from, there is not any means to make money, and no reason to maintain apps anymore. What this means also for the end-users: no premium apps, like Angry Birds. There was no heads-up or anything, just a single email without any means to make a complaint. Nokia, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish." Also being discussed at Maemo.org.
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Nokia Abruptly Closes Application Store In China For N9 More

Nokia Abruptly Closes Application Store In China For N9

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  • That email is suspect (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's poor english, and the posts on Maemo are event worse. I'd actually think this was a scam unless someone can post a link to a real news source.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dupple ( 1016592 )

      The only link I could find (3.00 pm UK) was back to this on /. There is no mention of it on Nokias web site or any press releases

      http://press.nokia.com/category/press-release/?tpage=100 [nokia.com]

      • Well, I'm sure Nokia isn't pleased with reports from analysts saying how Symbian-based phones are still doing better than Microsoft Windows Phone 7/8-based phones...

    • It's poor english, and the posts on Maemo are event worse.

      You mean, all posts from random developers from China are reviewed by someone with a stellar knowledge of English before going live?

      It's not something from an official channel, but language alone is not enough to dismiss this. And it's not in Nokia's PR interest to announce things like this prominently. Don't expect any press releases or such.

      • You mean, all posts from random developers from China are reviewed by someone with a stellar knowledge of English before going live?

        No, I don't think that's what he meant at all. Why so quick to jump to the conclusion of racism?

        It's pretty clear that he's suggesting that there is something lost in the translation because the source is not a native English speaker.

        More and more people today are so willing to just jump right on the "offended:" train, and spout indignation. This is the same sort of nonsense that has led to the world being a general Nanny State, after all God forbid (can I say "God"?) that someone might get their feelings h

        • No, I don't think that's what he meant at all. Why so quick to jump to the conclusion of racism?

          ??? Sorry but I fail to see any references to racism either in GP or my post. Or is my knowledge of English that bad? (A dirty Polack here.) The only party I'm offended by is Nokia, may Elop get eaten alive by dire tardigrades.

      • but language alone is not enough to dismiss this.

        Indeed. If it is real, and I don't know if the N9 was jailbroken, but closing the only way for people to legitimately purchase software will only result in more piracy. That will bring on more malware and all the headaches many sides suffer from infected hardware.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )

          Indeed. If it is real, and I don't know if the N9 was jailbroken

          The entire point of things like the N900 and presumably the N9 is that you don't have to jailbreak it, it's yours to even boot off a minisd card into a completely different OS if you want to.

    • Yea, I can't see that getting through the Corp Filters/Marketing for a company like Nokia, unless it's a Google translate.

    • A "Scam"? Seriously? People with 600+ posts on forums don't post lies for fun, and the 2nd guy replying stating that he got the same email pretty much proves he's not the one getting the email.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Nicros ( 531081 )
      I think it's a hoax as well. Imagine you live in China, and somehow got the emails of a bunch of developers. You don't have much money maybe and you just LOVE the N9! Might you not send such an email to try to fool the devs into providing their apps for free? Just saying.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If you look at the name, it's obvious the poster is Finnish, and as Finnish people aren't native English speakers and don't generally use pronouns well, the grammar isn't all that surprising.

  • Yeah... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Now what did we learn? Ohyeah, don't buy closed/DRM'd shit.

    • As opposed to....? Remember, the n9 and its predecessors are probably the most open smartphones phones in history. The only alternative is to buy a phone and install something like mer on it, but the list of supported phones is quite limited.

  • Jolla mobile? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by staltz ( 2782655 ) on Thursday December 13, 2012 @11:01AM (#42272931) Homepage

    Is this somehow related to Jolla Mobile's strategy to launch Sailfish (MeeGo improved since N9's Harmattan MeeGo) mainly in the chinese market? Don't know, just speculation.

    I own an N9 and am absolutely convinced it had the opportunity of being the best smartphone ever. On the other hand, I am getting more convinced that Stephen Elop is the world's most idiot CEO for "selling" Nokia almost completely to Microsoft, his ex-employer.

    • I am getting more convinced that Stephen Elop is the world's most idiot CEO

      What do you get when you spell Elop backward [wikipedia.org]?

      • What do you get when you spell Elop backward?

        Racism!

        • mod parent up, plz

        • Seriously? Isn't that called 'nationalism' ? Are all people living in Poland their own genetic race, too? And no replies about inbreeding because we all know that causes both mental and physical maladies (and would be offensive to all the truly stunning women that are all over Poland these day).

          • Are all people living in Poland their own genetic race, too?

            You know who thought so? Nazis. That's right Nazi, I've got my eye on you.

            Freaking Nazis.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      To be fair it's the other way around, Elop was hired just after the all-to-Microsoft decision was taken, most probably to make sure that it's enforced and maybe to make the contact with Microsoft easier. The fact that he was already in the place when it was publicly announced does not mean he took these stupid decisions which were taken months before.

      • Of course. The board surely knew what they hired Elop for. Its not like you hire someone to run a company and not even ask him what direction he is going to take.

    • I own an N9 and am absolutely convinced it had the opportunity of being the best smartphone ever.

      You mispelled "N900". N9 has no keyboard.

      • You mispelled "N900". N9 has no keyboard.

        An included keyboard is automatic disqualification for best smartphone, since it ads bulk and/or reduces screen size.

        You can always add a keyboard to any smartphone for the times when you need one. You can't remove an integrated one when you don't.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Hand in your geek card NOW!

          A keyboard is *the* most essential feature *ever*. No respectable geek (or any human with a working brain for that matter) would prefer a shitty touch screen over a real keyboard because of such a ridiculous reason as “it ads [sic] bulk". And nothing takes more screen space away than a fucking *touchscreen* "keyboard".
          Ever tried using PuTTY like that? Or a CLI shell? Or to chat over IRC or XMPP?
          Seriously: FUCK TOUCHSCREEN "KEYBOARDS"!

          And: How the hell do you "add a keyboard"

  • In general, I'd like to make a 'complain' about this submission's diction and spelling.

  • Time can't pass fast enough (Score:3)

    by gmuslera ( 3436 ) on Thursday December 13, 2012 @11:31AM (#42273469) Homepage Journal
    N9 users in China will have to wait till next year to use Sailfish OS [jollausers.com] store.
  • Glad I didn't buy a Nokia phone...

  • Whether this turns out to be true or not (Score:3)

    by Rob the Bold ( 788862 ) on Thursday December 13, 2012 @12:11PM (#42274237)
    Whether or not this is a legit story, if you've got an N9, you might want to get MeeCatalog just in case as a hedge against Nokia's eventual demise, Store and all. At least you'll have some community support.

  • This is why I make sure my devices allow 3rd party application stores. I won't buy any hardware or software that overtly allows the sellers to force obsolescence by pulling the plug on the market to make you to buy the new shiny. I learned my lesson with always-connected-to-internet DRM in games. I don't care if it's an iOS, FPS, or MMORPG. If it doesn't support private servers, I will not buy it.

    See also: Closed source OSs ending support for updates, and hardware manufacturers not re-compiling drivers for a new OS (should be open sourced, we buy hardware not drivers), or even UEFI secure boot coded to only work on select OSs by name string... I think it's horrible that software creators are adopting the common engineering practice of purposefully shortening life span of the products.

    • its the people, that demand as little priceas as possible.

      if you get a TV for 300€, cou cant expect it to live loger than a TV with the same feature set that costs 1000€.
      But buying 300€ products and crying when the lower quality components die is somehow ... funny

      • if you get a TV for 300, cou cant expect it to live loger than a TV with the same feature set that costs 1000.

        Assuming there's any difference between the cheaper and more expensive TV.

        If that notional TV was a Sony, you might pay 3x the price for something which isn't better.

        Cost doesn't always equate to quality nowadays. Just what people are willing to pay -- like Monster Cables.

    • This is why I make sure my devices allow 3rd party application stores.

      Then the N9 would have been just fine for you. http://www.allaboutmeego.com/features/item/13179_N9_FAQ.php#4.15 [allaboutmeego.com]

  • Love QT (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 ) on Thursday December 13, 2012 @02:13PM (#42276533)
    First I love QT, Second I hate QT. If I am developing a desktop application tomorrow for anything I am using QT, full stop. The QT people seem to fully understand 50% of my C++ needs. But they fully ignore the other 50%. There are huge massive holes in QT for developers that if filled would have developers flooding to use QT. Two simple ones that would probably take a week to solve is that when I used eclipse on a mac QT was a huge pain to integrate and by huge I mean nearly impossible in that even if I got it working with all the debugging and whatnot functioning there was a risk that when I upgraded eclipse that poof it would all break. The same story for XCode. QT on xcode could be set up but to get full functionality was a pain and the same upgrade risk was omnipresent. You might argue that if developing a desktop application I should be using windows but my personal route is to go with Mac and then port to windows.

    The next hole was this whole maemo crap. The only way I was developing for some oddball Nokia thing was as an afterthought to the bigger platforms. So here you have QTs strength that I can develop for the big 3 desktops which is a huge benefit for Linux in that people can develop for Windows and then Linux gets the easy port so why not keep that train of thought going and say we should make QT for iOS and android and get people doing easy porting to Nokia. But no I see more and more maemo and this stupid QML thing and a custom IDE just for QT which must have all been a massive effort for a zillion programmers which could have been, instead, spent porting QT to iOS and android.

    So now we have maemo basically dead, I have put QT into my own personal terminal ward, and even Nokia is now in the ditch bleeding out. None of this need have happened.

    If I had to guess they made QML because it made for awesome presentations for MBA types. But these same MBA types rejected making it easier to make iPhone apps as a business model. Then the MBA types had no idea the massive effort being wasted on an IDE and didn't understand what the hell QT really was.

    I will give one other example of how QT didn't seem to get how off base they were. There are two things I read in QT related question forums over and over. One is "Is there a iOS QT Port?" and the other was "How do I use QT for the command line only?" Creeping in was "Can I use QT for android via the NDK?" I never once read "Wow the QT IDE is the best!" and I basically never saw questions about Maemo. I am not saying they don't exist but that out side of the work-a-day questions about programming details that was the trend. I'll even say that the QT creator wasn't too bad; but it just wasn't the effort that I think they should have prioritized.

    Lastly there are other attempts at ports and some claims that QT might support iOS and android in the future. Very cool if they do. But in the context of the original posting of Maemo and generally the Nokia linux effort being a dud the above promises are probably too late. But if QT does pull an iOS and Android support out of their ear I will be first in line to try them out and bye bye Objective-C.

    • The only good IDEs in the world are vi and emacs with GNU make. Qt works great with them. The rest are mostly useful as crutches for people who can't document their interfaces, but can tolerate working in one editor window, surrounded by thousand little barnacle-windows with useless lists and references.

  • Read their Privacy Policy http://www.rovio.com/Privacy [rovio.com] and know that you agree to all
    third parties, like Flurry.com (Google analytics), as well as your data being sent out of county.
    Astro file manager read the same way,

    I had to root for a HOSTS file and firewall.

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