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Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announce their companies' partnership. Photo courtesy of Nokia.Nokia on Friday announced it was putting the decade-old Symbian operating system to rest, and future Nokia phones will ship with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 software.
The decision will be famously remembered as the time Nokia jumped off what its CEO called a “burning platform” to reverse the company’s downward spiral in the phone market.
Nokia’s Top Smartphones Nokia dominates the world of feature phones: the cheap, basic, low-end handsets used around the world. In fact, the Nokia 1100 is the world’s*most popular phone ever, with 250 million sold since its launch in 2003.
But the company is no slouch when it comes to smartphones, which often have stunning design and a rich complement of features. With the right OS, these phones would rock.
Nokia N8
The N8 delivers most of what we’ve come to expect from a flagship smartphone: a bright touchscreen, 12 megapixel camera, video recording, sleek design and a host of ports. Too bad no U.S. carrier offers it.
Nokia E73
For those who prefer their phones with QWERTY keyboards and tiny screens, the E73 offers plenty: Wi-Fi, GPS, 5 megapixel camera, Adobe Flash support (take that, Apple fanboys!).
Nokia N97
The N97 exemplifies Nokia’s ability to cram everything you might want into a single device: 3.2-inch touchscreen, slide-out keyboard, GPS, and even an FM transmitter.
Nokia 5230 Nuron
Nokia’s Nuron is available in the U.S. from T-Mobile, which pitches it as a smartphone with multimedia, gaming and GPS chops. You can get it for free with a 2-year contract.
Nokia*N900
More “mobile computer” than smartphone, the N900, has a small but devoted following. It runs Maemo, Nokia’s first attempt to create a brand-new OS. The company now plans to make the next version, MeeGo, totally open source. But maybe the N900’s*successor, the N9, will use Windows Phone 7 instead. We can hope.
— Dylan Tweney
It was a radical but necessary move for Nokia. Although the company is still the world’s top seller of phones, its marketshare is rapidly declining in the wake of more modern handsets offered by Google and Apple, which are iterating and expanding their mobile platforms at blazing speeds.
“Nokia and Microsoft will combine our strengths to deliver an ecosystem with unrivalled global reach and scale,” said Stephen Elop, Nokia’s CEO. “It’s now a three-horse race.”
The benefits are obvious: Nokia gets brand-new phone software to replace the broken, outdated Symbian OS. And Microsoft, which has seen only tepid Windows Phone 7 sales so far, gets the huge springboard offered by Nokia and its enormous customer base.
But if executed poorly, the new partnership will be a fruitless effort to catch up — a failure for both companies.
“Out of the fire and into the water,” said Michael Gartenberg, a Gartner analyst. “Now what? Next step is to get out of the frigid waters before the sharks eat you.”
Both Nokia and Microsoft have their work cut out for them. Here’s what they have to do if they ever hope to stand a chance.
Ship a product — fast
Nokia said 2011 and 2012 would be “transition” years, in which Symbian will gradually be phased out, and it won’t be until 2012 that a large number of Nokia Windows phones will ship.
That seems too late. By 2012, Apple and Google will probably be shipping devices with substantially more powerful processors and features than the phones we’re familiar with today.
If Nokia and Microsoft hope to catch up, they have to ship sooner.
“They have to ship,” Gartenberg said. “That’s what it’s all going to come down to. The market is moving at such a rate and pace that they’ve got to execute against this very, very quickly.”
Differentiate
Not only do Microsoft and Nokia have to ship fast; they have to ship a compelling product that stands out from the rest of the phones licensing Windows Phone 7, along with the huge crop of Android devices, not to mention Apple’s iPhone.
Manufacturers shipping Android continue to make their hardware stand out with muscular features such as dual-core processors and even dual screens. What will Microsoft and Nokia do to compete? They’ll probably have to offer several hardware variations — something Nokia’s pretty good at — and Windows Phone 7 needs some exclusive killer apps.
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