Nokia opts for Windows Phone, explains the death of Symbian and Meego

Stephen Elop = Trojan horse from Microsoft.

Even if Nokia fails badly in the upcoming months... he'll still keep his job. But with a modified title.

Stephen Elop, Head of Nokia mobile devices division, Microsoft.

When Nokia's share price goes to hell, Microsoft will simply buy over Nokia at a fire sale price. Mission accomplished.

Heads Microsoft wins, tails Nokia lose.

To be honest so much of this stuff is about vested interests, it's hard to tell what's going on. Certainly turning Meego into a competitive smartphone OS should have been very possible, given the right technical management and a moderate team of about 50 engineers.

Given the amount of R&D spending Nokia were doing, you would have thought there was very little beyond their funds. Perhaps some of those resources should have been diverted from less immediately relevant enterprises (nanotech much?).

"Developing Meego or Symbian into an OS that could compete with Android and IOS was viewed as beyond Nokia's funds."

I'm convinced that as little as 4 capable guys/girls and 6 months would give you a decent OS, one that even had copy-paste.
But it's true that it's hard to find such people and then to convince them to work for you, so perhaps that is what the 'funds' remark is referring to.

Nokia is following Lotus-123, WordPerfect, D-Base III/IV, Netware, ..., which at some given moment were the best but did not evolve and were crushed to oblivion by the might of MS.

I (like most people) have a choice of what products I buy, and whose services I patronize. I choose to deal with companies with integrity. Microsoft has proven by their history of business practices they have none. Now Nokia, in giving up and embracing this "former foe", has shown that they have similarly given up on any semblance of integrity or innovation.

Both companies are in a death spiral, IMHO.

Nokia is getting desperate man!

Anyone else think that there might be another reason for the exodus of execs from Microsoft, with this "deal" happening? I wonder if Elop might still be getting a check from Microsoft as well as Nokia.

Nokia is now burning.

Other OEMs dipped their toes into Windows Phone 7, and got burned (go back and read LG's comments).

Having already seen that Windows Phone 7 has failed, Nokia's Elop decided to destroy the company by adopting Microsoft's failed OS for all its high-end smartphones.

Never in the tech world have I witnessed an act so foolhardy and reckless. In an instant, the once great Nokia has been reduced to a distribution channel. It's insane and sad to see Nokia fall.

@Shane M:

OK, Shane - you say you're a serious Android fan so I'm inclined to cut you some slack on this issue. Please take this post in good humor; I'm less upset than I am merely a bit confused. But, seriously, do you really think we can compare HTC's G1/Dream phone with the first WP7 phones? Even if we dismiss the fact that one was made in 2007 while the others date from late 2010 (!), how can you even suggest that a direct, head-to-head comparison might be considered reasonable…much less, worthwhile or fair?

Microsoft has 30-odd years of experience in OS construction, with about 20 of those in the mobile field. Sure, Windows Phone is a new branch on the MS tree, but surely you wouldn't suggest that it stands alone, divorced entirely from the umpteen Microsoft-made operating systems which preceded it? Heck, even an IT newbie can tell WP7 is a MS product by a simple 3-points test: (a) WP7 needed 3 years before RC1, (b) which was missing promised features, and (c) at least 6 months behind schedule.

Now, just for sake of argument, let's review what what we saw with the first-ever Google Phone, the G1. Built by HTC, it was their first foray into Androidland after many years of being the biggest licensee of (wait for it) Windows Mobile. And it ran Android v1.5, the very first release to vendors. BTW, how many years did Google have in the OS business? Zero. So, then, we have the first release of the first firmware from this maker, running on a phone from a company which had previously used a different OS on every handset.

Oh, sure - now that I see it all spelled out in print, it makes perfect sense to compare these products 1:1. In fact, I might even have to give those poor ignorant jerks at Microsoft a nice little bump, what with them being the clear underdogs and all. Heck, I bet those fellows from Redmond didn't even have their own 'puters to work on -- probably had to hitchhike themselves down to the town library or maybe drop a bunch of quarters at some smoke-filled internet cafe, pecking away at all hours on nights and weekends, no doubt.

Sheesh! LOL Hey, Shane - enjoy that DX, man. It's a sweet phone and my personal fave. :-)

Just curious - how many Android phones had sold after 3 months after the G1 was released on T-Mobile?

I got my G1 a few days before it was launched on T-Mobile. I also got a WP7 phone from Microsoft a week or two before they launched. I must say that the WP7 OS was TONS more mature than the Android OS that the G1 came with. Less flexible but more user-friendly and tons less laggy.

In fact, Android has always kinda sucked, just sucked with lots of potential, until 2.0 came out. Since then is when it has really been a consumer-friendly OS. That said, WP7 is already a consumer-friendly OS (something that took Android nearly a year to do). For that first year, let alone the first 3 months, you didn't have people all over clamoring about how big of a failure Android was. In fact, everybody sat back and took a wait-and-see approach because they desperately wanted an alternative to the iPhone. Now that there's an iPhone alternative, nobody is willing to give WP7 a chance and is quick to drown it out because they don't want it to hurt their knight in shining armor, Sir Andy.

My thoughts are this. WP7 is not the crap phone that all say it is. Does it have it's problems? Definitely! Did the first version of the iPhone and Android have their problems? Well, hell yes! WP7 is just a toddler right now while the iPhone is a college kid and Android is a high school kid. Let WP7 grow up and reach puberty before you start talking about it being trash. If you seriously expect WP7 to be where the iPhone and Android are right now, then I will tell you right now - you are an idiot but please have fun with your fellow fanbois.

All this said, I am a strong fan of Android, run my Droid X as my primary, and am active in the Android hacking community. I've ran Android as my primary since 3 days before the G1 was released and I'm very excited about the next Android phone that I'll be getting this year (perhaps tablet as well). I donated my free WP7 phone to a friend who is doing some WP7 development, and I regularly help him with his development since I am a .NET developer myself. This background is just to show that while I'm slapping you Android fanbois around, I'm a fan myself. I just want you to use your brains and put things into perspective so you make judgments with better expectations.

It reminds me of the old mainframe days joke that the IT Manager was paid by the company but worked for IBM...perhaps Mr Elop is paid by Nokia but works for Microsoft... but seriously, it will be very interesting to watch how well it works. The low end of the market will face fierce direct competition from Chinese manufacturers, and the high end seems to be in love with Android, Apple and Blackberry, indeed it is a shame that Android didn't change its name to Mango to complete the set.

And perhaps Windows 7 could be Raspberry?

Time will tell.

Will this mean other phone makers, Samsung, HTC, Sony Ericsson lose interest in Windows Phone and if so isn't that counter-productive for Microsoft?

Don't want to sound like a parrot but again "two turkeys don't make an eagle."

If Microsoft and Nokia continue losing market share the same rate as last year, a reasonable assumption in my view, the alliance may be in serious jeopardy by the end of the year.

What happens when two blind persons try to lead each other. They both end up in the ditch.

Next: funeral arrangements.

Nokia should have used Meego, they could easily have set up access to the Android marked (these app markets will eventually merge), and had full control over their own future. Now they are doomed.

... and i bet none of them have used the device. The software is truly remarkable and is so much better than iOS and android. For such a new-commer to the market I was seriously impressed with it when I first started using the phone. Thus I went out and bought myself a HTC mozart instead of a samsung galaxy.

way too much anti-ms drivell on here it's starting to get a bit tired. I've been reading the inq for years and it has never been this bad before, change of management that we didn't know about maybe?

... something like: all the cheap nokia phones based on S40 could dissappear and replaced by symbian S60 only, while the high end ones will be based on WP7.

Okay Im just starting to wonder if all the WP7 bashers here have actually used a device or are just iPhone whores. I had an iPhone 4 and didn't think it was anything special. I kept an eye on WP7 through out its infancy and looked at how Android was doing. Having used all three I CHOSE the Samsung Omnia 7 Windows Phone and its great, fast and most importantly its refreshing. So try something before you ditch it instead of looking at biased Apple whore videos comparing the two.

What if... this is not quite what we think it is. What if it is actually Nokia snuggling up close to Microsoft before a planned buyout? Maybe this is Nokia's strategy - it doesn't think it can weather the storm, so heads for a big tree? Also, MS knows that if it bought Nokia straight up, the publicity would be just too bad, like Prince William marrying Paris Hilton, so they are trying to get us used to them together before foisting the wedding on us.

Just a thought.

Seriously... If things were at least a little blurry, were you couldn't forsee what a flop WP7 will be, then I'd give this guy some credit for at least wanting to change the path the company is been on.

But as we've already seen how awful WP7 has performed, one has to wonder if this guy is a trojan horse waiting to make MS acquire its own handet maker.

I mean, these measures are pathetic, and everyone can see it... So how is it that this is coming to pass without the slightless shareholders revolt at nokia?

It just doesn't make sense. it's a sign of the times. crazy times indeed.

You can't just say you can see how Nokia can control WP direction better than Android and not justify it with something, because to me that statement makes no damn sense. I happen to own the HTC Desire, with Android 2.2, and HTC has always made Android look a lot like their own system with their own HTC sense.

But you know why this is so damn stupid? Windows Phone 7 will never be on the same rise as we see with Android, what Nokia could have done is do like Samsung, or even HTC, make phones with different OS's and not just bind yourself to one OS that is almost destined to be mediocre at best.
Under that policy they could even release Meego to see how it would manage.

I never gave much thought to the CEO change, but it's easy to see now it was a bad choice, Nokia has pretty much gotten used by Microsoft to try and promote their crap phone OS.

I'm actually not a Microsoft hater, but it pains me to see Nokia, a company once known to make great phones, being a pawn like this when they could have brought some real innovation to the market.

Android being open source does NOT give any control over the direction that Google decides to take it. Third parties can either skin a version of Android, or fork it and create something which will get progressively more incompatible with the majority of Android apps.

With WP7 Nokia can get a say in the design decisions of future versions and what features they want building in to it. There are too many other companies clammering for Google to do what they want (if Google pays any attention at all) for Nokia to have much say.

"hang out a bit too much there Rob. I'm not a WP7 fan, but even I can see that Nokia will have more influence and control over the direction that it moves than if they'd gone with Android."

Hello? Android is completely open source: they have as much influence over it as they care to have. Sheesh: such schoolboy errors!

In order to make this inspired strategy progress even quicker, I think they should adopt a new company slogan:

"9 out of 10 Paedophiles prefer Nokia!"

In a years time there will be no point in replacing him, they might as well leave him there until the movers come to take the furniture away.

Typo in article strap :-)

Aside from my local newspaper, this must be one of the worst-written pieces of journalism I have ever read.

hang out a bit too much there Rob. I'm not a WP7 fan, but even I can see that Nokia will have more influence and control over the direction that it moves than if they'd gone with Android.

Having to pay Microsoft a royalty for the OS has nothing whatsoever to do with wether Nokia can make money selling software and services for its phones. It reduces the margin on each phone a little, but as WP7 uses the MS Visual Studio platform it potentially gives them access to a much larger developer base.

Whether or not it is a good idea to drop their existing platforms is a fair question (their existing development teams and management needed a good kick up the backside, which at the very least this will deliver) but shifting to WP7 instead of Android isn't nearly as irrational as you're trying to make out.

Wasn't there a push somewhere that MS had to acquire it's own cellphone hardware? A virtual takeover, a substantial stake, a partnership, but unlikely an actual takeover.

Elop will still be the CEO but Nokia won't be an independent company. I am guessing it will be a part of Microsoft actually.