Nokia And Microsoft Join Forces

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Remember Nokia? You must remember. My memory captures Nokia as one of the very first cellphones that I ever encountered (trying to be careful not to expose my age here). Those phones were the coolest. Not necessarily for the applications, or the capabilities, (I don’t remember these phones doing anything but making calls and maybe there were texting abilities) these phones were awesome because you could change the colors of the casing! This was the first venture into cellphone personalization. Wait, I almost forgot. If I remember correctly, Nokia was also responsible for the first compact cellphone. Before Nokia, cellphones were still microwave sizes, right? Either way, this is to the extent that my Nokia knowledge goes. After the colored cases, Nokia, as far as I noticed, faded into oblivion. That is, until now.

As of today, Nokia has joined with Microsoft in hopes of gaining a significant stance in the succeeding smartphone business. “Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward,” states Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop, ...
... “Today, we are accelerating that change through a new path, aimed at regaining our smartphone leadership, reinforcing our mobile device platform and realizing our investments in the future.” Smart move.

Windows Phone 7 will now be Nokia’s primary smartphone platform. Mr. Elop is proposing a strategy that would extend beyond simply using Microsoft phone software on Nokia smartphones. The company will also become part of Microsoft’s Marketplace application and services platform. Not sure if you are concerned about (or even aware of) the standing of Nokia’s Symbian with the new alliance, but Symbian (Nokia’s smartphone platform) will become a “franchise patform, leveraging previous investments to harvest additional value.” Symbian has been largely blamed for Nokia’s declining market share. I can just imagine considering I’d never even heard of the platform before today. Nokia claims it still expects to sell approximately 150 million more Symbian devices in the future before completely stopping development.

Ultimately, when learning of this new alliance my first reaction leaned toward “why, Microsoft?” Why join forces with a sinking ship when you seem to be doing so well on your own? Connecting with sinking ships can result in one of two ways. Either the ship is sinking too rapidly and you drown with it, or you’re strong enough to pull it out of the water. This was my initial opinion until I further researched. Apparently, this alliance could be a good thing; even greater for Microsoft than for Nokia. This is proof of my ignorance. According to analyst Pete Cunningham, with Canalys “It’s a big win for Microsoft today…windows Phone 7 is no one’s priority. But now Microsoft has a leading vendor committed to use the platform,” Leading vendor? Really? Did I miss something?

Now it’s all a matter of execution. When are the benefits of this merger reaped? When does Nokia and Microsoft sweep far past Android, Blackberry and iPhone and take over the smartphone world? When will any of us see a person with a smartphone that has the Nokia logo on it? Only, time will tell.