Nokia and Microsoft - Everything in Detail..

The rundown to Nokia’s announcement of partnership with Microsoft is nothing sort of “ripley’s believe it or not”. If last year, anyone would have told me, I wouldn’t have believed him at any cost. But with change in leadership, it’s all about profits rather than maintaining what Nokia’s values were in past. There were already rumors of partnership, but many found it little hard to swallow.

When, Google’s VP of Engineering tweeted “two turkeys do not make an eagle” in reference to Nokia and Microsoft, it was evident that Google knew something was cooking between Microsoft and Nokia and it was also in the open that Google’s Android has been taken out of that recipe.

Now, With the announcement that Nokia is to adopt Windows Phone 7 as their primary smartphone operating system leaving Symbian, we thought let’s take a look back at developments. Rather than making seperate smaller posts dealing with each aspect of the announcement or every reaction we thought we’d collect it all together so you have an overview of what’s been going on.

The first thing to look at is exactly what the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft actually means in practical terms. From the Nokia press release the main points are as follows:

Nokia would adopt Windows Phone as its principal smartphone strategy, innovating on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader.
Nokia would help drive the future of Windows Phone. Nokia would contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies.
Nokia and Microsoft would closely collaborate on joint marketing initiatives and a shared development roadmap to align on the future evolution of mobile products.
Bing would power Nokia’s search services across Nokia devices and services, giving customers access to Bing’s next generation search capabilities. Microsoft adCenter would provide search advertising services on Nokia’s line of devices and services.
Nokia Maps would be a core part of Microsoft’s mapping services. For example, Maps would be integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and adCenter advertising platform to form a unique local search and advertising experience
Nokia’s extensive operator billing agreements would make it easier for consumers to purchase Nokia Windows Phone services in countries where credit-card use is low.
Microsoft development tools would be used to create applications to run on Nokia Windows Phones, allowing developers to easily leverage the ecosystem’s global reach.
Nokia’s content and application store would be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for a more compelling consumer experience.

The main things to take from these ‘talking points’ is that Nokia is making some sacrifices by partnering with Microsoft, a strategy that in the past would have perhaps been unthinkable. For instance Nokia will be adopting Bing as its default search option on its products. That’s just the tip of the iceberg though as Nokia’s own content store will be integrated with Windows Phone Marketplace, presumably Ovi store may still remain operational for Symbian s40 as Windows Phone 7 had strict hardware requirements for performance.

Nokia will allow its use of billing mechanism for purchase of Windows phone 7 applications, which is of great advantage to Microsoft. Nokia has payment mechanisms, already placed in developing worlds where credit card is still a little distant for common use. Nokia is big in world of Mobile phones and the sheer volume of phone that Nokia produces can produce galloping results for Microsoft. It can make Steve Balmer dance big time. Microsoft also gains access to a manufacturer that can target products at all price points and market segments, a major advantage for the nascent Windows Phone platform.

Here, it seems all gain for Microsoft but Nokia didn’t had many choices. Nokia was unable to concentrate on one thing for a certain period of time. It was just scratching it’s head all over the place. Seriously, firstly Nokia launched Maemo and after it found a place among few niche tech guys, Nokia just scrapped it and announced MeeGo with Intel. MeeGo is now a product of more than one year of coding with Intel, but MeeGo seems to have already shown the door or sooner than later, it will be done. Then, there was QT framework which was building of a solid foundation for developers to code software simultaneously, both for MeeGo and Symbian, but it too will be scraped later. Now, Microsoft will be providing some developmental tools to Nokia developers, whose functionality are of anyone guess.

Nokia also went for services such as mail, music and so on, but it failed big time owing to lack of vision for future. Then, there was Symbian with lots of issues, Symbian ^3 taking new start and getting released with Nokia N8 and later Symbian ^4 to be released. Numbering of versions complicated the scene further and later, they scrapped that numbering with just Symbian, which I thought was a wise move. Nokia was failing to consolidate its position, and as I stressed earlier, it was just scratching its head all over the place.

A strategy of this nature in the past would have perhaps been unthinkable, here comes in Mr. Stephen Elop (Earlier head of Microsoft’s Business Division), who in the past struck deals between Microsoft and Nokia and this time he hadn’t had to negotiate with anyone from Nokia, he was himself the commander and there were shareholders who were backing him to drive shares of Nokia up to make money quickly, rather than concentrating on values of Nokia and build on foundations of company. Insiders say, there are many who are against this coming together within the company, but are unable to do anything at present. There is a clear division among workers of Nokia regarding this announcement.