Nokia Windows Phone on the pipeline
The target release date of the first Nokia smartphone to use
Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system could be set within days,
with the company aiming to have it on the market this year, senior
executives said Sunday.
Speaking on the eve of the mobile phone industry’s annual
get-together in Barcelona, Nokia chief Stephen Elop defended the tie-up
with the US software giant, saying it would bring billions in value to
the Finnish company, which has seen its market share squeezed by Apple’s
iPhone and phones using Google’s Android operating system.
|
Nokia and Microsoft technical teams
“are working together next week to solidify the timing of
the first Nokia Windows Phone product,” said Jo Harlow,
Nokia’s executive vice President in charge of smart devices.
Reuters Photo |
Nokia and Microsoft technical teams “are working together next week
to solidify the timing of the first Nokia Windows Phone product,”
Nokia’s Executive Vice President in charge of smart devices Jo Harlow
said.
Speaking two days after the announcement of the smartphone tie-up
between the two IT giants, Harlow told journalists she could not yet
name a date for handset’s release. “But my boss has told me he would be
much happier if that time was in 2011,” she said alongside Elop. The
world’s top mobile phone maker unveiled on Friday week a radical new
strategy by partnering with Microsoft, under which Nokia smartphones
will be adopting Microsoft’s phone platform and its own Symbian
operating system will be eventually phased out.
Nokia has been unable to respond to the rise of Apple’s iPhone and
Google’s Android operating system on its own.
Technology research firm Gartner said Wednesday Nokia’s global market
share had tumbled to 28.9 percent in 2010 from 36.4 percent in 2009,
having once topped 40 percent.
Elop said that by passing up Google for Microsoft “we create an
environment where now Windows Phone is a challenger. “We have created…a
three horse race” in the smartphone operating system marketplace. He
said Nokia would provide a “swing factor” to encourage developers to
create applications for Windows Phone and they would seek to manage the
transition to bring its massive base of satisfied Symbian customers to
the new devices.
More than 1.5 million smartphones running on the latest version of
Windows Phone, WP7, were shipped in the six weeks after the launch in
October but Microsoft’s share of the market was only about 3 percent at
the end of the year. Elop said Nokia also had the specific technical and
hardware and differentiated capabilities that will ensure Nokia Windows
Phone products are great products.
Had Nokia opted for Android then a duopoly of Android and iPhone
would likely have developed, said Elop, adding that all players in the
market would benefit from having three competing operating systems to
drive innovation.
He said that being part of a large, competitive smartphone
“ecosystem” would bring incredible value to Nokia.
“For all the unique elements that Nokia is contributing including the
swing factor, including the decision to make Windows Phone a challenger,
Microsoft is contributing to Nokia substantial monetary value,” said
Elop.
This “value transferred to Nokia is measured in the B’s (billions),
not M’s (millions),” he added.
A former Microsoft executive, Canadian Elop took over as the first
non-Finnish CEO in September and was at pains to insist “I am not a
Trojan horse.” He said the company’s management team took the decision
on the partnership with Microsoft and the final go-ahead was given by
Nokia’s board of directors.
Elop also said a possible takeover of Nokia by Microsoft was never
discussed.
Dawn
|