If your carrier offered to take a hefty chunk of change off the cost of a mobile handset be it that you let them put advertisements on the home screen, would you take the deal? Nokia thinks you might.
Our source deep within Nokia’s headquarters has just leaked us a bunch of information about the company’s future operating system release, Maemo “Harmattan”. It’s jam-packed full of unexpected twists, including their new-found love for home screen ads.
Update: We’ve got a screenshot of Maemo Harmattan now.
For the sake of everyone unfamiliar with Nokia’s wares, a quick overview: though they primarily use S40 and Symbian S60 across their mobile handset line, Nokia has been working on an operating system called “Maemo” for a few years now. Thus far, Nokia’s reserved it exclusively for their Internet Tablet line, though recent rumors have indicated that they are considering bringing it to mobile phones. Sometime soon, Nokia is expected to launch the fifth iteration of Maemo, codenamed “Fremantle”. Following that build will be Maemo “Harmattan”. Beyond that it would bring support for the Qt development framework that Nokia acquired in 2008, little is known about this build – until today.
Right off the bat, our source confirmed that Maemo was indeed headed for at least one Nokia phone. In fact, they say the eventual plan is to use Maemo to phase out S60 all together – though they do admit that based on Nokia’s history, this is unlikely to happen any time soon.
Here’s everything we know so far:
- This build of Maemo is a fairly dramatic shift from past releases, having been largely rebuilt for the jump to phones
- The home screen (”Harmattan Direct UI”) is essentially one big vertically scrolling page on which users can add widgets. We’ve seen a few widget examples so far, and they all appear to take up the full width of the screen.
- These widgets are tightly tied to the rest of the phone. Imagine, for example, that your home screen is made up of a calendar widget and a map widget, along with a handful of other widgets. If you make an appointment with one of your contacts, the appointment will automatically load into the calendar widget, place an icon in the right location on the map widget, and tie itself into any of the other widgets where appropriate
- Home screen ad widgets would be tucked between these other widgets. Unlike the other widgets, ad widgets would not be user removable or customizable.
- The current plan is for Nokia to give control of these ad units to the carriers, presumably taking a cut of the ad revenue.
- Nokia’s goal with these ad widgets is to make them incredibly context sensitive based on behavioral data. GPS placing you near a K-Mart? Bam! K-Mart ads. Browsing history showing you’re a peruser of Hello Kitty fansites? Sanrio ads might
embarrass the hell out of yougrace your homescreen. - Our source indicates that this is all part of Nokia’s larger goal of conquering the cell phone cloud services market.
- Maemo Harmattan’s tentative release date is Q4 2010/Q1 2011.
Would carriers play along with this idea? Perhaps. While we were digging for independent confirmation of these details, another source pointed out that Pekka Ala-Pietilä, President of Nokia until 2005, left the company to start Blyk. As it just so happens, Blyk is a mobile operator in the Netherlands and UK which gives customers free texts/minutes each month in exchange for ad views. At the very least, this shows that there are carriers out there willing to experiment with the concept.
We are expecting to have at least one shot of Maemo Harmattan to share within the next few hours – so check back soon. (Note: The UI shown in the shot up above isn’t Harmattan – just a concept that trickled out from a Nokia presentation a few months back.)
[Thanks, Sirm!]
makes sense if they hope to compete with Microsoft and Google but someone has to tell them that they do NOT have the right people in place to pull off this strategy. Sorry guys but you’re recent mobile acquisitions were weak. Try again.
Could work very well in developing countries like India. We already have websites like 160by2.com that offer free SMS (supported by ads) that are a rage here..
No thanks. I don’t think the plan/phone could save me enough money to pay for my eye surgery after being blinded from flashing ads on my own cell phone. Call me old fashion, but it’s my phone.
Cost of the handset is a very small fraction of the TCO.
There is the math.
Iphone. $199 to buy. But the service costs $1800+ over two years. Nothing will change if Apple reduced the iphone price from $199 to $99. That’s hardly a 5% cut masquerading as a 50% cut.
Same thing applies to Nokia. The acquisition cost of the phone is usually less than 10% of the TCO of owning the phone. Most of the Nokia phones are already given away. A $49 price cut on the phone is less than a 2% price cut. Nobody will put up with ads for a 2% price reduction.
Now if they managed to work with the carriers to reduce the monthly payment by half, then the ads might be worth it.
I agree if its half or more i’m for it; if its less nope.
I like Maemo.
I don’t like adds.
I’d pay for a phone with Maemo, minus the adds.
Makes Nokia’s investment in Kyte.tv even more interesting.
I have been hearing about this mobiles with Ads in it and the plan would much cheaper but yet to see one!
If the plans with ads are cheap enough then why not? But yes the ads need to be text only and should create any noise/sound!
What if I don’t have a data plan? What if I have a limited data plan?
What if the data downloaded while in another country takes up 64,000 dollars? (thanks, AT&T).
In any case, the ads should be plain text-only and it should not have any visual/aural/vibration or any other input or output. Hmm … sounds like the job might be best served by AdSense. (but how much will you make if no one clicks on your ads?)
The email on my phone stops running in the background when im roaming by default, I assume this would do something similiar
That sounds logical.
Yeah, because this strategy worked so well for NetZero
Did they have a mobile ad strategy? Must have missed that
It only makes sense if my phone bill is now free. Let me pay the $199 one time fee for the handset, but make unlimited data, sms and mms free on the device. Then, you get to place an ad.
It makes no sense for Nokia to spend all the money and effort of acquiring and open sourcing Symbian to also be thinking that Maemo will be their OS. Wishful thinking by the Maemo team perhaps?
As long as i can buy an unbranded / unlocked version, get root and all like on the current version and that I’m able to remove this ad software… It’s all fine be me to want to sell this to carriers catering to the sucker crowd.
But please, don’t force this down everyone’s throat or i think that the Linux community will backfire at you… Just a thought… Go Maemo go until we know! ;-)
It’s like getting paid for advertising on your personal car. I’m sure there are plenty of people that could use the money, but how many is actually willing?
Probably not too hard to hack it so it doesn’t show any ads.
Perhaps it won’t be too long until you have no say about the ads.
Also location targeted ads really make sense
Looks cool!
S40 is not Symbian
Exactly, S40 IS NOT SYMBIAN, it is based on a proprietary OS of Nokia. What a shame from such a portal.