Bonum Certa Men Certa

Nokia-Trolltech: the 'Vacuum Cleaner' Deal

It is hard to be the ones who spread negative news [1, 2, 3], but as we continue to explore the Trolltech/Nokia marriage we find that not only was Trolltech underpaid, but Nokia's motive were probably anti-completive too (as we had initially suspected). For backing, consider this BusinessWeek article (interestingly enough, BusinessWeek recently asked people not to link to them).

Nokia's Trolltech Grab Hurts Rivals



The software acquisition bolsters Nokia's perch in the mobile device arena, could further dismantle Motorola, and puts pressure on Google

[...]

But analysts hailed the €104 million ($153 million) acquisition of Oslo-based Trolltech as a kind of strategic hat trick. In one stroke, Nokia has managed to defend itself against incursions into the mobile-phone business by Apple and Google, while potentially further accelerating the meltdown of rival Motorola. "Nokia is responding extremely quickly to what Google and others are doing," notes Ben Wood, director at British mobile consultancy CCS Insight.


It seems like a monopoly defending itself, which brings back memories of Radu's own analysis at Planète Béranger.

We have just found another telling announcement. Several days ago, Red Bend unleashed a press release bearing the headline:

Red Bend Software and Trolltech to Bring Over-the-Air Software Component Management to Linux Mobile Phones



"Mobile phones have become sophisticated communications and multi-media devices. As functionality increases, so too does the amount of software inside mobile phones. Operators, manufacturers and software developers need the flexibility and control to update, add, change and remove any software component inside the mobile phone at any point during the device's lifetime."

A few days later (yesterday) the company issued another press release. Mind the change in the headline:

Red Bend Unveils Linux Mobile Phone Software With Over the Air Updates



"Red Bend Software has unveiled a Linux mobile phone with software that can be fully customized over the air. Red Bend has partnered with industry-leading companies — including Digital Airways, Opera, Synchronica, Trolltech and Zi — to showcase a new concept in customizing mobile software where features, applications and services can be deployed and updated easily and securely over the air on consumers' handsets using Red Bend's vRapid Mobile."

Watch our previous analysis and mind that BusinessWeek article again. It seems more or less clear what is happening here. Is Nokia doing this to defend Symbian and protect itself against giants like Apple and Google?

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day