In just three days, the Nokia and Microsoft partnership will be one year old. A lot of good things have come out of it already, like the three (official) Lumia Windows Phones from Nokia.
However, it might be working a little too well. Nokia VP Victor Saeijes told a Swedish newspaper that the only future option for the company is Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. In fact, Nokia doesn't even have a true plan B! "Plan B is that Plan A must succeed," said Saeijes.
Here's more of the interview, which gives a good, in-depth look at how Nokia views Windows Phone:
“It’s like starting all over again. But we must succeed in the U.S. if we are to succeed in the world.”
Granted, Nokia is still dishing out Symbian updates for existing phones, but this is a pretty clear indication that it's a platform that will be abandoned quite soon. In any case, I'm happy that Nokia has a set path that it's going to take for the foreseeable future, as I'm a huge Nokia fan and I would hate to see the company perish.
Even if somebody is a Nokia fan, they must see, that choosing WP7 was the worst decision they could have made. They had ready a great OS MeeGo, which could have been also used on UMPCs, tablets and netbooks. They simply scrapped all the effort, including Qt.
The consequences for whole UMPC market, which this site used to be about, were tragic. Intel lost it’s main partner in development of MeeGo and mobile processors. After a year of stagnation, Intel finally said that MeeGo is dead and the whole UMPC market too.
The partnership between Nokia and Microsoft is the worst thing that could happen to all UMPC fans and also to Nokia. I hope they will bankrupt soon and other companies will now see more clearly that partnership with Microsoft is a highway to hell. Viliv is another example…
IMHO – I think the iPhone owners will be hard to budge (because they are a religious crowd) but Android phones are kind of uninteresting now. I think the Android folks will be tempted by NokiaSoft. I am personally very interested in the Lumia 900 as I am in Windows 8. I have been a Microsoft office user forever. How refreshing it will be to sync my email, documents, music, etc.
I think the NokiaSoft offering will have a near immediate appeal for the enterprise for the the whole desktop/Microsoft Office tie in. (Keep in mind Lumia will have BitLocker and likely other enterprise grade security features.)
I don’t see NokiaSoft grabbing much of the iPhone sales but I can easily see 50% of Android sales defecting to MS Phone 8 and Nokia.
I have a droid now, but I’ll be trading up to a Lumia 900 as soon as I can.