10 February 2011

Nokia Is Said to Be Near Partnership With
Microsoft, But Will Not Start Using WP7?!?

According to Bloomberg, Nokia is close to announcing a partnership with Microsoft to adopt Windows Phone 7 for high-end Nokia phones. The Bloomberg report says that Elop talked both Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Google CEO Eric Schmidt about their phone platforms before deciding to go with Windows Phone 7.

Bloomberg’s Carol Hymowitz, Dina Bass and Diana ben-Aaron who report for Bloomberg also confirms that Nokia has already abandoned MeeGo, which was supposed to be its successor to the current Symbian platform for high-end phones.

Elop will unveil a new strategy for Nokia at an event in London tomorrow, laying out his comeback plan for the smartphone market. The partnership with Microsoft, if clinched, would be aimed at helping both companies claw back ground lost to Android and Apple’s iPhone at the high end of the market.

“Very few companies regain their leadership once they’ve lost it,” said Hakim Kriout, a fund manager at Grigsby & Associates in New York, who holds Nokia shares. “It’s a very difficult thing to do because their demise tends to originate from a combination of problems rather than one or two issues.”

From other hnad, Inderes analyst Mikael Rautanen thinks that Nokia isn't likely to use Microsoft's operating system Windows Pocket 7 in its smartphones!

"We do not believe that Nokia will start using WP7, because that operating system has nothing to add to Nokia's own eco system," Rautanen told Dow Jones Newswires. "It's quite likely that Nokia and Windows will start some kind of cooperation, but that does not necessarily mean WP7," Rautanen added

Laurie Armstrong, a U.S. spokeswoman for Espoo, Finland- based Nokia, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Dawn Beauparlant, a spokeswoman for Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, declined to comment. Mike Nelson, a spokesman for Google in Mountain View, California, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Nokia would prefer to have a strategic partnership with a software company, rather than just being one of the many companies that license Android software, one of the people said. The idea would be to wed Nokia’s market share, which is especially high in emerging markets, with Microsoft’s Internet and software know-how, the person said.

Android is licensed to dozens of companies, which use it for both smartphones and tablets. Samsung Electronics Co. and HTC Corp. are the two biggest makers of devices based on the software, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

Elop, 47, took the helm at Nokia in September after a stint as head of Microsoft’s business-software division. Taking on the competitive threats may require an overhaul of the mindset at Nokia, Elop has said. The company currently relies on a smartphone operating system called Symbian, and it’s developing another software platform with Intel Corp. called Meego.

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.:[ Read the full story at Bloomberg ]:.

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