Oracle's case against Android narrows

In a report that should surprise no one, the USPTO rejected 17 of 21 claims of one of Oracle's patents. Patent claims are a poor way to maintain competitive advantage in software, and are usually a clear indication that the agressor is losing the technology race. Groklaw has the details on how many claims were rejected. Given Google Android's open source nature, I expect Oracle's case will at best result in minor changes to the Android Dalvik VM.

I'd prefer that Google deprecate Java and switch to their concurrent, elegant language go, but I doubt Oracle can effect that change.

Obama's Infrastructure

Mike Tomasky presents a nice review of Obama's 2012 swing state infrastructure in Newsweek: Obama's 2012 Game Plan. Fear replaces hope, and the machine supplants enthusiasm. These are the details behind the optimism for Obama's prospects I discussed previously -- infrastructure, demographic shifts and Republican overreach and misgovernment. Tomasky closes with the Buckeye State:

And then there’s Ohio. Big numbers in Franklin County—home to the state capital of Columbus, Ohio’s largest city—are crucial to Democratic hopes. Again, the trend is evident: Al Gore won the county 49–48 in 2000, when 414,000 votes were cast. Kerry won it 53–45, with 517,000 total votes. Obama: a 59–40 blowout on the strength of 575,000 total votes.

It’s pretty difficult to imagine another nearly 20-point win. But Greg Schultz, the county’s Democratic chairman and the state director for OFA, says an on-the-ground network exists today in a way it didn’t even in 2008. “There’s a structure that remains in place today that is self-organizing,” he boasts, even in Republican-leaning parts of the county like Westerville.

Another factor that might motivate Democrats in Franklin, and across Ohio: the unpopular Republican governor, John Kasich.

Has Stephen Elop doomed Nokia?

Yes.

Obama's prospects

I've been pessimistic about Obama's prospects, largely because of his abysmal economic record. But posts like this from London's conservative Telegraph persuade me that he is in good shape:

But there is also the distinct possibility of an electoral rout of the president if the economy goes further south. “Hope and change” might have played well in 2008, but it is a message that will likely ring hollow in November 2012, with an American public that is deeply disillusioned with the direction Obama is taking the country.

Gardiner's economic argument has some weight, but his political argument is fallacious. The Democrats 2010 loss was not epic, it was a mid-term, low-turnout loss. It seemed bigger because of the success of Obama's 2008 turnout, i.e. the turnout drop-off from 2008 to 2010 was larger than usual. 2012 looks good for Democrats because the Democratic base is getting energized for a number reasons, while the Republican base is becoming discouraged. One reason is the extremism of Republicans, nationally with the Ryan Medicare voucher plan and locally with unpopular governors and state legislators. Another reason is killing Bin Laden, which improved Obama's approval among older voters. A third reason is the effectiveness of the Obama campaign infrastructure.

Paul Ryan and the Republican small government agenda are deeply unpopular in polls, even among conservatives. The opposite of what Gardiner implies.

The muddled and contradictory arguments, and either ignorant or disingenuous poll reading, show me that there is no strong argument for an Obama loss. The economy will get worse, and the election will be close, but the infrastructure Obama is building and the collapse of the Republican infrastructure under Steele mean Obama wins a close election.

Wall St. notices Nokia's problems

Via Forbes, Bernstein Research analyst Pierre Ferragu notices that Nokia is screwed:

In a fast changing market, Nokia is losing ground very rapidly. The profit warning for the second quarter provided evidence that the next couple of years will prove very challenging, with the gross margin and market share trends of the last 4 quarters continuing, if not accelerating even more. The collaboration with Microsoft now appears to us unlikely to be successful, as Nokia’s brand is losing ground too fast and the window of opportunity for an alternative ecosystem is vanishing rapidly. Even modeling a scenario in which Nokia stabilizes next year leads us to believe that the stock will under-perform over the next twelve months.

Nokia's window is closing and analysts are underestimating how hard it will be to put the pig of WP into a low end poke of a Nokia phone. WSJ sees the same thing, and realizes the problem is Android (an OS designed for the low end) on cheap Asian phones.

(to plug my day job, I found these via Trove.com)

Nokia goes backwards

Techcrunch reports that Microsoft will take over Nokia's handset manufacturing. Hard to see how that will end well, given Microsoft's track record on hardware. It is very odd to me that people think the Nokia brand can survive being run by Microsoft. The brand has a reputation for quality because Nokia made good phones, not because of a Job's-esque reality distortion field.

Mashable on the pros and cons.

Microsoft, Windows Phone and Nokia

Microsoft continues it's downward drift, wasting billions on poorly conceived, non-strategic online efforts while Apple eats its Personal Computing lunch with the iPad. Meanwhile Nokia's partnership with Microsoft Windows Phone looks increasingly doomed. I can't understand how a company that thrived on low-end phones could choose an expensive, untried mobile OS that requires the highest end hardware and plan to compete with Chinese manufacturers using a free OS that is known for running well on low-end hardware.

IDC and Gartner claim that Apple will drop behind Windows Phone in market share by 2015, but the signs I see suggest that Microsoft continues to make the same technical and policy mistakes it always has in mobile. Microsoft's proprietary developer efforts can't compete against a well funded, open and vibrant Android community, and their OS sucks compared to the Unix derived iOS and Android. There is no virtuous cycle of open development and user network effects for them to exploit, as they did with Windows. The desktop development models of Microsoft's ISVs don't translate to networked mobile platforms any better than they translated to the web. Apple on phones and tablets has the same advantages it maintained in it's desktop niche, obsessive control of all aspects of the user experience, software and hardware. Microsoft tried to split the difference with Windows Phone, ending up with nothing.