News · 11 Feb 2011 · MTW Editorial Team
Today is a big day for the mobile industry and will probably remember as the beginning of a new three horses races or the end of an empire (Nokia), depending on the future outcome of Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft. Instead of posting every single piece of news about today’s announcement I will simply direct you to the on-demand webcast of the event. I’m already seeing badly reported news popping up on some news sites so please check out the whole event to get all the relevant info. The important things that I want to highlight are the info that I posted on Twitter earlier during the meeting:
1) According to the NY Times, Nokia’s CEO had talks with Google and Microsoft which then led to a short bidding war to secure the deal (hundreds of millions of dollars) Google is obviously the loser today and now we kind of to why Vic Guntodra was so happy about it.
2) Nokia’s value proposition in terms of hardware compared to other Windows Phone 7 OEMs will come in the form of better or more innovative hardware design, better imaging technology (Nokia has the best camera phones around) end integration of its Nokia Ovi Maps and NavTeq assets into Bing Maps. The Ovi Marketplace will be transitioned into the WP7 Marketplace (similar to the OEM section in there right now). Microsoft will also leverage Nokia’s marketplace expertise, infrastructure and billing system.
3) Nokia will help Windows Phone 7 go down the price continuum which means that new chassis will probably be announced shortly.
4) Nokia is not a regular Windows Phone 7 licensy like HTC, LG, Samsung, Dell. Because they are going to exclusively use WP7 as their smartphone OS and share assets with Microsoft the phone maker will have greater access to OS customization and a degree of control over the future of the platform. Nokia can alter the indows phone 7 but Stephen Elop cleary said that they won’t do it.It’s a three horses races: Android, iOS and Windows phone 7 (RIM was never mention today for some odd reason..)
5) Because of it’s closer relationship with Microsoft and its greater insight into the Windows Phone platform Nokia is willing to share it’s technology with other Windows Phone 7 OEMs to help the growth of the ecosystem. This is a team play and the more OEMs the bigger the Windows Phone ecosystem will be. So even though Nokia will have a preferential treatment they don’t want other OEMs to jump ship because of this.
6) Symbian is as good as dead and Meego is also going the way of the Dodo. Nokia is expected to ship 150Millin Sybian devices in 2011 but once the transition to Windows phone 7 is done the OS will be gone and oall that will be left is WP7 as the smartphone OS and the regular dumb-phones (running S40 or an evolution of it) at the lower-end). As for Meego, only one device powered by the OS is scheduled to come this year and after that all work done on it will be R&D for futur Windows Phone technology.
7) Nokia is expected to start shipping high volumes of Windows Phone 7 starting 2012 at different price points.
That’s all for now..
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