The partnership of Microsoft and Nokia is on track and soon we will have news of the W8 and W7 handsets that will be the first generation of handsets by this odd but obvious collaboration. Elop and Balmer seem happy thus far with the route they have taken but will the devices by interesting and worthy of your spend?
There should be some pretty decent hardware to come from this meeting of 2 minds, remember how the early Nokia devices were the best you ever had back in the early days of mobile phones – well i think the addition of Windows as its operating system could bring back a revival period for Nokia, for me its always been Symbian that put me off the last 5 years of Nokias releases.
Looking closer at the partnering you have to think about how Android assisted this coalition to occur. Steve Balmer and Microsoft always had a strong partnership with HTC and right up to the release of the HD2 Windows Mobile was a huge factor for HTC’s sucess, in fact the release of the HD2 was a last desperate attempt by Microsoft to gain back its dominance over Android – HTC insisted the flag ship HD2 would never see an android version and for five minutes Steve Balmer looked a very happy man.
Just a few months later HTC did release the HD2 form factor in Android variants and the world was engulfed in Android and its many different flavours of handset, HTC put their Sense UI on top of the 4 inch screen EVO and the HD2 was just a distant hiccup that had now been embraced by the modder community and it too was now also running Android as a result !
So with HTC now not dependant on Microsoft for its operating system and since HTC were sensible enough to never tie themselves solely to one software giant Steve Balmers Microsoft were left feeling a little shunned to say the least, after all it had always been the ‘Pocket PC’ type device that made HTC the company they now were. So it seems it was not just a strategic choice for the Nokia handshake but also a statement made to re assert the Microsoft brand with its new ‘Phone 7′ OS as a serious force and a defined platform within the mobile phone eco system.
