Despite Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s best efforts, Nokia’s stock has dropped nearly 20 percent since Nokia CEO Stephen Elop announced plans to abandon the Symbian operating system and align with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform.
Microsoft promised to accelerate development of the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem, and has planned a major upgrade that offers Internet Explorer 9 and cloud support, more third-party multitasking, Twitter integration, and more. But Ballmer’s announcements at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, doesn’t seem to be convincing Nokia shareholders or employees that Elop made the right bet.
“Particularly for business users, Windows Phone 7 provides an interesting and very powerful platform and user experience that is beautifully integrated with the world’s most popular PC operating system and productivity software,” said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Research. “But part of the problem is that you can have a great technology, but you need buy-in from a significant part of the market. Companies and technologies have gotten left in the ditch time and time again in the computer industry.”
De Facto Control
At this stage of the smartphone market’s evolution, conventional wisdom and market wisdom clearly lie with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms. Even Research In Motion with its BlackBerry OS is ahead of Microsoft in the smartphone game right now.
King said Nokia, even with all its problems, is still the largest handset maker in the world, so throwing its efforts behind what is essentially the fourth-most-popular smartphone platform is questionable.
“Nokia hired an executive who was deeply invested in Microsoft to run the company. And Nokia’s new American operation has a company president that’s also from Microsoft. So if this is not something that the board of directors expected, then what the hell were they thinking?” King asked.
“There were rumors years ago that Microsoft would find…