More Nokisoft thoughts
A few more thoughts on Nokisoft.
- In the short term, nothing will change. MeeGo was delayed, Windows Phone 7 phones won’t arrive in strength until 2012. And that doesn’t count the delays both Nokia and Microsoft are so well known for. On the plus side, the OS is actually ready, contrary to MeeGo.
- It’s impossible to overstate how completely fucked Nokia is when it comes to apps. Silverlight for native, IE7 for web. Hurray hu-bloody-rray. Will Symbian developers flock to Silverlight? I beg leave to doubt it. As to web developers and IE7, well, that doesn’t need any comment.
Some action on this front is urgently required. Qt? Unlikely. IE9? Microsoft is working on it, but I expect it end of this year at the earliest. Another browser, such as Opera? Unlikely; creating a browser in Silverlight is not the easiest of tasks.
Seems IE9 is our best bet, especially if Windows Phone 7 will arrive in strength only in 2012.
- I believe the Nokia/Microsoft agreement will run for three years, until the start of 2014. Zero evidence, so feel free to disbelieve me.
- Nokia Employees Stage Walk Out in Tampere. Not happy. Fortunately the walk-out falls within flexible working hours.
- Microsoft gets a lot out of this. More exposure for WP7, good contacts with operators, licence fees, increased use of Bing, whatever.
- Nokia gets very little out of this, except the chance to appease the financial world and the blogosphere. And an OS that’s slightly more ready for deployment than MeeGo.
- Thus it seems Nokia has more leverage on Microsoft than vice versa. But that all depends on the contractual details.
- What will the other Microsoft partners, LG, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung, think? All three have Android devices to balance Windows Phone 7 (and Samsung also has bada), so they have more freedom of action than Nokia. And Nokia has become Microsoft’s most important partner overnight. Still, one assumes the Microsoft strategists have calculated their risks and decided even a walk-out of the other three would be manageable.
- Horace Dediu rehashes some old and failed Microsoft partnerships. It’s never partnered with someone quite as big as Nokia, though. Maybe it’s never partnered with a company that gives them as much as Nokia does? Dunno. Still, the prospects are not brilliant.
- Tomi Ahonen is not happy. It’s the end of Nokia as a software company. (To be honest, software has never been Nokia’s strongest suit.) Also, he doesn’t think this move will open the US market because that depends on operator relations, which neither Nokia nor Microsoft possess.
- Telecoms.com adds some interesting thoughts: It’s make or break for both. If they fuck up, they’re both history. Operators, however, will look upon the new partnership with pleasure because it gives them an alternative to iOS and Android. Here’s to hoping.
