Microsoft enters "Strategic partnership" with Nokia

[dsavi]

Bad news today: Ex-Microsoft Steven Elop, now Nokia CEO, and Steve Ballmer announced today that Microsoft is going into a "Strategic Alliance" with Nokia. So Nokia will be moving their phone OS to Windows Phone 7. As someone put it, two blind people are talking about colors.

 

It has ended. It's been a nice eight years Nokia, since I got my first phone, a 3330 (A derivative of the legendary 3310), and since then I have owned sever others, a 5100, 9110i, 9210i, 6310i, and a 3110c. Good, durable, hackable phones that you charged once a week or so, were fine if you put them through the wash, and (In the case of the two smartphones on that list) allowed you to really play around.

 

The only redeeming thing I can think of here is described very well in this Dilbert comic from a bygone age:

 

OK this thread might be more for my own therapy than discussion value (Although I think that there might be a lot of that too). To think that I was thinking about how nice it would be to use a Nokia phone running Android just yesterday.

[Sbrideau]

What's wrong with this partnership?

[Guy]

I don't follow mobile OS trends too carefully but from what I have seen, I think Windows Phone 7 has just come in to the market too late. Who knows, maybe in the near furture it will skyrocket? Actually, thinking about it, with the rise of android I'm sure more competition will arise from WP7 and more - I think the era of iPhone dominated smartphone society has come to an end.

 

I don't see why this is a bad thing for microsoft or nokia. Nokia needs more sales, Microsoft needs more sales. Microsoft just need to market WP7 better and have it on more platforms so its actually worth bothering making apps for it (well, can you make apps for it? I'm not entirely sure)

 

Sorry if this doesn't make a lot of sense... it made sense in my head :P

[Will H]

As far as I'm concerned, it's a coalition of the losers. Nokia just didn't innovate where Google or Apple did, and their lack of a proper reaction to the booming smartphone market has cost them dearly.

 

Microsoft came into the market far too late on a OS model that really didn't have any benefits over Android (open source, tweaking and flexibility) or iOS (reliability and performance). It's a walled garden that still isn't reliable, the worst of both worlds. As much as I dislike Apple's philosophy and practices, at least they do it properly.

 

The two of them are going to have to come up with something revolutionary and new, and I don't think that either company is capable of that.

[dsavi]

I don't follow mobile OS trends too carefully but from what I have seen, I think Windows Phone 7 has just come in to the market too late. Who knows, maybe in the near furture it will skyrocket? Actually, thinking about it, with the rise of android I'm sure more competition will arise from WP7 and more - I think the era of iPhone dominated smartphone society has come to an end.

 

I don't see why this is a bad thing for microsoft or nokia. Nokia needs more sales, Microsoft needs more sales. Microsoft just need to market WP7 better and have it on more platforms so its actually worth bothering making apps for it (well, can you make apps for it? I'm not entirely sure)

 

Sorry if this doesn't make a lot of sense... it made sense in my head :P

This is one of the best deals Microsoft ever made, but probably the worst one ever for Nokia. The problem is that nobody wants to buy WP7- Compared to how many people want Android, although if there is one company that people would buy phones with WP7 from, it is Nokia. Part of the problem is that it isn't an open platform, part of the problem is that it has Windows in the name.

 

What's wrong with this partnership?

Pretty much what Will said. Nokia isn't good at software (Except for a few things), and they chose a software company that is sure to fail to help them.

 

Nokia does have great hardware, but it all goes to waste if they don't have great software to run on it.

[punk_]

Yeh this is real bad for nokia, nobody wants a windows phone lol.

Another loss is that they will be ditching all their open-source related work on projects such as meego ( http://meego.com/ )

 

It was a dual partnership project between nokia + intel to create a mobile (linux based) platform for anything, almost identical to android, however it was designed to run on anything from phones to in-car entertainment.

 

They also won't be able to use their Qt toolkit with windows, so it seems a waste for nokia to suddenly get in bed with microsoft.

 

I read somewhere they will be sacking over 1000 of their staff related to opensource work aswell. Sounds like they did the wrong thing....

[dsavi]

Yeah but when you get an ex-Microsoft CEO what can you expect. I don't think they're killing off Meego just yet, they've said they're going to release one Meego phone this year.

 

Some good news, though: Yesterday when the news was made public over a thousand people walked out of Nokia to show their disagreement with the change. :-D Really glad that they showed their opinion.

[Nadril]

Eh I don't really care too much about the news. Don't care about Windows Phone 7, don't care about Nokia. This is just a big alliance of who gives a [bleep] for me :P.

[Will H]

Eh I don't really care too much about the news. Don't care about Windows Phone 7, don't care about Nokia. This is just a big alliance of who gives a [bleep] for me :P.

 

I don't care about Windows Phone 7, but I do care about Nokia. They produced some fantastic hardware in their time, and they really should have gone with Android. The combination of the two would have been beautiful.

[jasignhagj]

Yeah, Android is really the way to go, especially if apple's competitors can make a touch screen that's as responsive.

[dsavi]

So Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO, is actually the 7th biggest non-institutional shareholder of Microsoft. Wow, this just reeks of an inside job.

 

Eh I don't really care too much about the news. Don't care about Windows Phone 7, don't care about Nokia. This is just a big alliance of who gives a [bleep] for me :P.

I don't care about Windows Phone 7, but I do care about Nokia. They produced some fantastic hardware in their time, and they really should have gone with Android. The combination of the two would have been beautiful.

The n900 is basically a Debian box in your pocket, one of my teachers overclocked his n900 to 0.9GhZ, pretty impressive. (Using CPU frequency scaling to save battery when it wasn't needed)

[jasignhagj]

The one market WP7 could go after is the business market, and if nokia can make a phone that rivals the blackberry and integrates well with windows, it could sell well.