Nokia is doing so badly with WP8 even Microsoft doesn't want them. What does that tell you about their current strategy?<p>I've always believed, and I still think it would be true - if Nokia would adopt Android, they could probably even beat Samsung. It would've certainly been true if they did it 2-3 years ago, before Samsung got a chance to become the king of smartphones, but I think it can still happen if they do it now, and wait 2-3 years for it to happen. Obviously it won't happen overnight, but at least they have a shot at it with Android.<p>They'll <i>never</i> do it with WP8. The math just doesn't add up. They'll always be limited by the WP ecosystem and the WP market share. Samsung has 30% of the smartphone market, which is about 40% of the Android market share.<p>Nokia will have at most 50% of the <i>WP market share</i>. It only has more now because the market is very tiny, but that would change if WP market grew. That means that for Nokia to beat Samsung, WP will need to get to 60% of the smartphone market share, and it means beating Android in market share. WP will never get that much market share, and even the most optimistic (and I believe, unrealistic) predictions by research firms put WP at 20% - <i>5 years from now</i>.<p>So if Nokia wants to stop being more than a niche smartphone player in the future, they'll have no choice but to at least also adopt Android. It's the right strategy for the Nokia board to pick. They just seem to be very stubborn about it, just like they were too stubborn to fire the Nokia CEO before Elop, for <i>4 years</i> after the iPhone launched. The Nokia board needs to smarten up if they don't want to make an almost fatal mistake once again. Or the shareholders need to overhaul the board. One of the two needs to happen.
I'm pretty surprised by the fact that almost everybody in here is of the opinion that Nokias Windows Phone strategy is not working.<p>Last I checked, selling more and more smartphones per quarter while slowly growing marketshare, especially in Europe, is not the sign of a bad strategy.<p>It's amusing to me that people consider success to mean 50% marketshare overnight. It's equally amusing to me that people fail to see that Android is absolutley no guarantee of success either, see HTC for example.<p>Nokia made a bold bet, but because they chose a MS platform it's not surprising that the HN crowd see this as failure. I mean we have people in here saying they should even have gone with FireFox OS!<p>Wow.<p>My opinion, this is a slog, and Nokia is at least making a game of it and walking in the right direction.
The whole news about Microsoft buying Nokia is just a rumor. It's probably something that might happen but it's still a rumor that has been circulating since they announced their alliance in 2011.<p>So I think writing "And it explains so much about the disastrous strategic choices Nokia made for its mobile phones division over the past year." is pretty far fetched stuff.<p>The author also added "citations" from WSJ that don't appear in the original article (for example "... in part because of the price and Nokia’s own strategic predicament"). So I wouldn't give much weight on what this guy is writing.
As long as Elop (ex Microsoft) is there Nokia will not move to Android.<p>Nokia makes super hardware though, they could still turn the ship around if they wanted to and give Samsung and Apple a run for their money.<p>Microsoft got all the advantages of owning Nokia without having to pay for it, windows phone is so rare I can't even find someone that has one in my circle of friends. The only person that <i>owned</i> a windows phone received it from her employer, promptly bought an android phone and switched the sim over.
Nokia hardware is pretty legendary. I echo other comments that Nokia hardware combined with Android would give Samsung a good run for its money.<p>Still annoyed about the N900 and Maemo/Meego/whatever it is called now.
It looks Nokia is in the vantage position now. Nokia can afford walking away from Windows Phone. But Microsoft can't. Nokia accounts for roughly 80%* of all Windows Phones. If Nokia leaves, WP is basically doomed.<p>*<a href="http://blog.adduplex.com/2013/05/adduplex-windows-phone-statistics.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.adduplex.com/2013/05/adduplex-windows-phone-stat...</a>
I think most of the commenters in this thread are overestimating Nokia's capability to beat Samsung were it to switch to Android. Samsung's marketing budget is so huge that I don't see how Nokia could ever compete, unless they would release a phone that is so much better than anything Samsung can come up with that it compensates for marketing. And that is much easier said than done.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."<p>The common perception seems to be that WP & Nokia is failing but I actually think they've managed to turn things around, there's a little inertia but they're getting there<p>1) Major players has started developing and supporting windows phone apps. Twitter, Tumblr,Facebook, WhatsApp, Foursquare all have quality apps. Maybe they're not updated with the frenzy of the pace-leader Apple but what do people expect when they're coming from behind. Compare that to blackberry which is a true wasteland<p>2) Nokia has been stellar in its support of its Windows Phone users, pushing out excellent updates, services and apps. Perhaps its partly because they're fighting for their life but I'd argue that Nokia is one of the best phone manufacturers there is right now from the users point of view.<p>3) Nokia/Microsoft is between update cycles. Nokia won't and can't push out a major flagship phone before Microsoft has the next major version of its OS ready. A major complaint of Nokia phones has been hardware specs (which I think its a little retarted since WP performs as well or better than many android phones on "less" specs), with the next update MS will probably up the support for newer hardware and resolutions<p>4) Microsoft and Nokia has a very compelling ecosystem together, something that even Samsung is hard to match. MS has Office/Yammer/Sharepoint/XBOX and Windows. Nokia has a range of quality services within mapping, music, local transit. While most are not pack leader they're certainly not that far from it.<p>5) If anyone thinks Microsoft going to stop pouring money at the problem and/or adapting & improving they're crazy, and their coffers are huge. Tablets and Windows Phones are too important a segment for MS to ignore so they will continue to claw themselves to the top until they're at least firmly top 3.<p>6) Windows Phone at its core is one of the most recent & modern OS's there is. Android & IPhone have been around longer and has more bagage.<p>7) Windows Phone leads in user satisfaction so clearly they're doing something right. The only thing that's holding them back is "lack of apps". But I think what Windows Phone lacks is not quantity of apps, but what they need is a few unique "flagship" apps to show its a contender and they will start to change the impression of the platform around.<p>Also I think at its core WP is the only phone that has a UI paradigm that will work in the long run. Its flabbergasting that people can spend so much time arguing how the icons look in ios7 looks like and <i>not</i> that its an outdated limited paradigm. The future belongs with more glanceable / dashboard-oriented UI's<p>Microsoft have however dropped the ball a little, they should have been doing as good a job as Nokia: pushing out apps, updates and features more quickly. But we'll see, WP8 was the first version using the new kernel so there probably was some housekeeping to be done, once the behemoth gets rolling we'll see what happens.<p>I think Nokia made a good bet although its hard to say. Look at the trouble HTC is in now. Sure Samsung is up right now but all manufacturers are only one missed cycle from being screwed. Android is so commoditized that's its hard to differentiate. Meanwhile Nokia is owning a whole powerful ecosystem on its own.<p>In the end however I think any company that doesn't have an app store is pretty much screwed so that leaves Google, Apple, Microsoft and possibly Amazon
An MS buyout is exactly the end of the Nokia story I'd anticipated once they set the Windows Phone course, so I guess the only thing I'm surprised about was that it somehow fell apart.<p>Looking back, maybe I overestimated the value of Nokia's patents and distribution reach -- maybe the patent war flamed up/out too fast, maybe competition already made the distribution moot.<p>Or maybe it's hard to convince MS that Nokia really has much value to offer them after they were essentially able to get Nokia to yield significant control to them for almost nothing.
A point that a lot of people don't see with WP8 is that it runs great (compared to Android) on low-end devices. You can get a Lumia 520 for ~150€ where I live and it offers (theoretically) pretty much everything a Lumia 820 or 920 does, except Games.