Android devices and iPhone were going much forward leaving Nokia and Windows Mobile devices behind. Microsoft studied the market and made a drastic decision by changing its entire OS to a new thing. It brought out the Windows Phone 7 OS which gave the same user experience as an iPhone or an Android based phone. Nokia on the other hand was stubborn. They kept on trying to do things differently. They sort of pulled it off with a few models such as the 5800 music express and the N97. Even so, it was no close to its competitors. Ovi store, the market for its applications is also far behind iTunes app store, Android market and even Windows market place. They continued their attempt by using different operating system such as the Maemo OS on the N900 and rumours also said they were going to try Meego, another operating system. They even released a new version of their symbian last year, Symbian 3 on devices such as the mighty N8 which had a 12 mega pixels camera. Frankly speaking, the hardware produced by Nokia these days are one of the best and even better than iPhones and Blackberrys, but the only set back is that Symbian OS. It’s too slow and not as cool as the others. Nokia was in big trouble by this time and had to reduce its size by cutting off workers. On February 11 2011, Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft employee, unveiled a new alliance with Microsoft, and announced it would replace Symbian with Windows Phone 7. Although it isn’t the greatest move (android would have been better in many ways), it looked like a solution. Photos of the upcoming Windows Phone 7 based devices were also released but there isn’t any device until now. They are still releasing phones that run on Symbian3 such as the new E7. I really can’t understand why they are moving slowly. I mean in 2004 Nokia's share of the Finnish GDP was 3.5% and it was the 120th largest company in the world in 2009. In July 2010, Nokia announced that their profits had dropped 40% in the global smart phone rivalry. So what are waiting for? Haven’t they learnt their lesson the hard way? They are just sitting back and watching themselves committing suicide. Last month, Nokia announced that its Windows Phone handsets won’t be available until early 2012. If you ask me, I think they were already too late 2 years back. They have to do changes quickly. They say in the mean time their primary business strategy is to reach the 3.2 billion people who don’t currently own mobile phones, and the other nearly 3 million who can’t or don’t access the Internet on their devices. So they aren’t exactly aiming high there. What they are saying there is, “We are going to step back and let the others feast in the high-end, money-making market”. It’s simply pathetic isn’t it? Another question that bothers me is how they are going to update their Symbian3 for the new device if they’re going to kill it next year. If they do kill it, wouldn’t it be unjust for those who have just bought the E7? The right thing to do would be to update the Symbian3 or to simply update the device to the new Windows Phone7, but I just doubt they would do that.
Looking at the way things are going, I ‘m guessing the next generation won’t know what is Nokia. They’ll have their iPhones, Blackberrys and android devices. Nokia might just go down, bringing Windows Phone with it because let’s face it, without Nokia as its strong hardware partner, Windows Phone will never survive in the unforgiving market. It would be sad to watch the 100 years old Finnish company go down just like that.
-jaggy jagadis-
