Windows Phone 7 to replace Symbian on Nokias

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Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, says it's slashing jobs and joining forces with US giant Microsoft in a major strategy shake-up that's left investors disappointed.

In an effort to radically change course and fight off encroaching competition from RIM, Apple and Google, chief executive Stephen Elop said on Friday that Windows Phone would now serve as the company's primary smartphone platform.

Elop - a former Microsoft executive who in September became the first non-Finn to lead Nokia - also announced changes to Nokia's executive board and 'substantial' job cuts.

'Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward,' Elop said.

'There will be substantial reductions in employment in various locations around the world,' he told a press briefing in London, without giving further details.

The announcements were met with sharp disappointment on the stock market, with investors expecting more and in more detail than they got. Nokia tumbled more than nine per cent and the Helsinki Stock Exchange was down 0.56 per cent.

The biggest change by far for Nokia is its tacit admission that its Symbian operating platform has failed to become competitive, illustrated by its bold move to take on Microsoft's mobile platform for its smartphones.

'I think there was a recognition that for something to effectively compete and ultimately win against Android and iPhone, it would require some big muscle,' Elop said at a joint news conference with Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer.

The choice to adopt Microsoft Phone is a controversial one as the platform has also not done so well against Google's Android or the iPhone.

Espirito Santo Investment Bank said the Windows' operating system had 'failed to gain traction' and that a partnership with Google - whose successful Android operating system had also been pegged as an option for Nokia - would have been a better choice.

But Handelsbanken analyst Martin Nilsson told AFP that adopting Android could have been too big a change for Nokia.

'I think Nokia feels that with Microsoft, they have better ability to put some input into the situation and development,' he said.

Nokia itself said the bold gamble would take some time before it pays off, warning in a separate statement on Friday that 2011 and 2012 will be 'transition years' as the company gets the strategy up and running.

'There are so many big questions still unanswered -- what's the timetable, for instance? Nokia is starting from pretty much zero ... I still wonder how quickly they can get the new strategy moving,' Pohjola Bank analyst Hannu Rauhala told AFP.

With Microsoft Phone as the primary smartphone platform, the Symbian system will become a 'franchise platform' as the company attempts to transition its 200 million users to the new system.

Nokia has over the past two years seen increasing competition in the lucrative smartphone sector from Apple's iPhone, Research in Motion's BlackBerry and by Android-operated phones.

Technology research firm Gartner said Wednesday Nokia's global market share had tumbled to 28.9 per cent in 2010 from 36.4 per cent in 2009, having once topped 40 per cent.

In a memo to staff that emerged on Wednesday, Elop warned Nokia was standing on 'a burning platform' surrounded by a 'blazing fire' of competition and that it needed to take radical action if it was to survive.

The company announced 1800 job cuts in October out of its workforce of more than 132,000 around the world, of which half are in the phone operations.

Source: BigPond

I guess Android has claimed its first victim.
 
ew, that is all.

Instead of moving to an OS they could tweak, they've moved to 1 cloud plaza
 
Its a pretty dumb move in my opinion, but I think they have chosen WP7 in order to avoid being seen as just another Android operator. Nokia will be Microsoft's biggest customer for WP7 and Nokia seems to think that will get them some sway over the direction that the OS will take in the future. This move will almost certainly see Microsoft overtake RIM and Apple in the mobile phone OS market, simply due to Nokia's market share.

I think that going with Android, but laying a custom user interface over the top of it like HTC does would have been the better option.
 
Its a pretty dumb move in my opinion, but I think they have chosen WP7 in order to avoid being seen as just another Android operator. Nokia will be Microsoft's biggest customer for WP7 and Nokia seems to think that will get them some sway over the direction that the OS will take in the future. This move will almost certainly see Microsoft overtake RIM and Apple in the mobile phone OS market, simply due to Nokia's market share.

I think that going with Android, but laying a custom user interface over the top of it like HTC does would have been the better option.

i doubt they will overtake so easily, android is growing fast and you cannot stick WP7 on every nokia phone, neither will nokia be dumb enough to peddle it as such. so far WP7, like most recent smartphones, has been touch centric and a majority of nokias phones are not touch candybars.
 
Android is growing fast and was expected to overtake Symbian sometime this year, but RIM and Apple are still way behind-

2010Sales.jpg


Keep in mind that chart is only smartphones, not all phones.

Presumably Nokia's new strategy will include making most of their new smartphone models touchscreen from now on.
 
Why no Android? :(

Double suck, since Nokia is the most important company in Finland. (tax wise)
 
Why no Android? :(

Because they want a point of difference between them and other smartphone manufacturers. They won't really get that with WP7 either, but even less so with Android.

Of course, the fact that Nokia's new CEO used to work for Microsoft probably has something to do with it.
 
Because they want a point of difference between them and other smartphone manufacturers. They won't really get that with WP7 either, but even less so with Android.

Only difference now is that their phones don't sell, and others do. (smartphones, S40 is still going strong)

Of course, the fact that Nokia's new CEO used to work for Microsoft probably has something to do with it.

Yeah. Why did you leave Ollila? Samsung does just fine with both Android and WP7. I'm sure Nokia with it's 30000 engineers would do just fine too. And wouldn't sell itself to Microsoft.
 
A lot of Xbox users get Windows phones because of WP7's Xbox features. Maybe that will appeal to people.

Microsoft have certain performance and design requirements of any phone that uses WP7, so Nokia will have to either redesign their range or come out with a whole new range as they switch to Windows.
 
I don't know, I'm sort of interested to see how it turns out.

When WP7 matures a bit, I could see myself get a Nokia with WP7. Nokia makes great hardware, but Symbian has been the dealbreaker for me.
 
Shame really, I really like symbian.
 
Have you ever tried Android Hidden_Hunter?

I'd be curious to know what your opinion of HTC's WP7 Mozart would be if you had also used the HTC Desire.
 
Have you ever tried Android Hidden_Hunter?

I'd be curious to know what your opinion of HTC's WP7 Mozart would be if you had also used the HTC Desire.

I've got a HD2 running Android ;)

To be honest, these days I find myself wanting to screw around with technology less and less so don't have any particular reason to go with Android. Love the speed of wp7
 
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Cnet's view-

Nokia-soft: cause for celebration?

Yesterday Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer joined former employee cum Nokia CEO Stephan Elop to announce a newly formed partnership between two of the world's largest companies, in which Nokia would adopt Windows Phone 7 as its primary smartphone platform. Smart move? Absolutely.

I don't approach this opinion as a business analyst, we know that Nokia's shares plummeted on the announcement of the decision and that redundancies at Nokia are an inevitably in the short term; the future is still shaky and unknown. This is me celebrating for purely selfish reasons.

From a consumer perspective this is a big win. There is a reason Nokia has managed to mantain its position as number one smartphone manufacturer despite its outclassed Symbian OS. In the last three years we've some truly beautiful phones came out of the Finnish firm, from the brushed metal of the E-series to the unique aluminium unibody of last year's N8. And let's not forget Nokia's excellent mid-range 6000 series. While most mobile makers turn to cheap plastic finishes for its under AU$500 phones, Nokia maintains sleek metal bodies with handsets like the 6700.

Then we have Windows Phone 7, and though there are a number of obvious and well documented shortcomings, this is a great system in its infancy. Without overlooking its lack of common features, like copy and paste, and internet sharing, Microsoft definitely succeeded in creating an attractive system which is fast and very easy to use ? everything Nokia's Symbian OS is not.

As part of this new partnership Nokia will contribute to the evolution of Windows Phone, offering the company's years of expertise to fill in the gaps and to hopefully mature Windows Phone quicker than if Microsoft was left to finish the system itself. We also can't forget that Nokia owns some very important assests. There's Nokia Music in amongst the rest of the Ovi suite and more importantly Nokia Maps. This certainly isn't a simple matter of copying and pasting elements of Symbian to Windows Phone (pun intended), but I'm looking forward to see what this new smartphone love-in can produce.

Finally, this partnership means that we, the smartphone lovers of the world, benefit from the continued innovations from two great companies. There was a risk of the mobile world being dominanted within a tug of war between Apple's iOS and Google's Android. Nokia and Microsoft together, alongside Research in Motion who continues to stand alone, guarantees that we will see new, competetive concepts from more than a few great minds.
 
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