Microsoft and Nokia voiced a partnership Friday that will span Microsoft's less-than-successful Windows Phone 7 OS with Nokia's flagging handset business. The pierce is a thespian change is to Finnish handset maker, that is entirely abandoning what is still the market-leading, despite declining, mobile phone working system. But it is not surprising: In his now-infamous " Burning Platform " memo two days ago Nokia CEO Stephen Elop " a one-time Microsoft senior manager " betrothed to share a new plan on Feb. 11 that would "transform the company."
And what a plan it is. The greatest phone creator in the world - 28.2 percent of the marketplace at the finish of final year - is ditching its whole smartphone working network and replacing it with program from Microsoft. This, you'll remember, is at precisely the same time as other long-time Microsoft allies, similar to Hewlett-Packard, are ditching Windows for webOS and Android.
So what will happen?
Windows 7 will right away be Nokia's "principal smartphone strategy." In add-on to ditching Symbian as its flagship OS, Nokia is adding Bing as the default finding engine on Nokia phones. (Nokia Maps will continue, and will be folded in to Bing search.) Nokia's focus store will be swallowed whole by Microsoft Marketplace.
Finally, and not insignificantly, WP7 can right away use Nokia's conduit billing agreements. This will let people purchase services and products and have the cost updated to their cellphone bill. This will give Microsoft access to many who do not have credit cards.
The once strong Symbian is referred to usually once in the press let go - in a footnote - and references "our capability to go on to innovate and sustain the vibrancy of our Symbian-based smart-phones during the bargain of the Microsoft partnership and thereafter." This gobbledygook means a thing: Symbian will be around for precisely as long as it takes to obtain a operation of WP7 phones in to stores.
While that might not sound surprising, ponder what Nokia is throwing away. In the final entertain of 2010, Symbian was still the attention leader, with a marketplace share of 36.6 percent ( Gartner ). This was followed by Android (25.5 percent) and iOS (16.7 percent). By contrast, WP7 isn't even on the list.
So, when Nokia delivers its full WP7 lineup someday in 2012, The greatest OS will be wiped off that list. This will (using the 2010 numbers) flog Android and iOS in to initial and second place. Nokia is thus betting the maatila that it can someway spin a mint mobile OS in to the new marketplace personality in fewer than two years. And this is whilst Google and Apple (and may be even HP/Palm) have time for a couple of iterations of their own already developed products.
Despite this, the treat seems similar to a great pierce for both parties. WP7 is a great working network that has unsuccessful to take off, and Nokia's smartphone business is evidently dead. (You could dispute that in the United States it never got started.) Hooking up might just give the speed up that both need.
Not that this is an even-sided deal. For Microsoft, it's business as usual, putting its OS on third-party hardware. For Nokia, that has always taken caring of the program and hardware in-house, its a small more wrenching.
Imagine Apple putting webOS on its iPhone and you beginning to obtain the idea.
Nokia and Microsoft Hook Up [Microsoft]
See Also:
Sinking Nokia Prepares to Abandon Symbian for Windows Phone
Former Employee: Nokia-Windows Phone 7 Rumor Is ‘Loony'
Rumor: Nokia Might Make a Windows Phone
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