All those rumors and the leaked memo were true. Today Nokia and Microsoft announced their plan to join hands
to compete against Android and iOS. The highlights of the announcement are,
Windows Phone 7 becomes the primary smartphone OS for Nokia
Nokia OVI Maps will become a core part of Microsoft’s Bing mapping services
The present Nokia Ovi Store will be merged into the Microsoft Marketplace
Nokia will work closely with Microsoft in the future development of the Windows Phone 7 platform
by using its expertise on hardware optimization, software customization, language support and scale
Stephen Elop (CEO, Nokia) and Steve Ballmer (CEO, Microsoft) penned together that,
“There are other mobile ecosystems. We will disrupt them. There will be challenges.
We will overcome them. Success requires speed. We will be swift. Together, we see the opportunity, and we have the will, the resources and the drive to succeed.”
Future of Symbian & Meego:
Nokia promised it will continue Symbian support and Meego will become open source.
We can also expect a Meego device later this year.
“Symbian becomes a franchise platform, leveraging previous investments to harvest additional value.
This strategy recognizes the opportunity to retain and transition the installed base of 200 million Symbian owners.
Nokia expects to sell approximately 150 million more Symbian devices in the years to come”
“Under the new strategy, MeeGo becomes an open-source, mobile operating system project.
MeeGo will place increased emphasis on longer-term market exploration of next-generation devices,
platforms and user experiences. Nokia still plans to ship a MeeGo-related product later this year.”
Whatever Nokia says, Symbian is going to be dead. May be by 2012, there won’t be any Symbian phones
(unless some other big company decides to use the open source Symbian which is unlikely).
This is also the case with MeeGo. Other than the promised MeeGo device by end of this year,
there won’t be any. One unlikely chance is, Nokia may use this platform for tablets.
Future of Qt (cute) platform:
Nokia made clear that it is not possible to develop applications for Nokia Windows Phone using Qt.
They will need to use the Windows Phone Developer Tools (Visual Studio 2010, Expression, Silverlight and the XNA Framework) to develop WP7 applications. Qt may be continued to use to develop in Symbian and MeeGo platforms. Once the Symbian and MeeGo developments are stopped, Qt will also become dead.
What can we expect?
Nokia is known for its build quality and imaging strengths. It will be very interesting to see the power
of Nokia N8's 12 MP camera in a Windows Phone 7 device. I think Nokia made the right decision to join hands with Microsoft. It is said that Nokia has given some exclusive rights to customize the OS (no other manufacturer has the right to customize the Windows Phone UI) though extensive customization is unlikely. Microsoft also has some advantages because Nokia is a renowned brand in many countries and it will
surely help the WP7 platform in its growth.One thing is fore sure, WP7 platform is here to stay. With Microsoft’s software technology and Nokia to back up the platform with proper hardware, Windows Phone 7 platform has a good chance to fight against the existing platform giants like Google Android and Apple iOS. The best part is, these war will surely benefit the end user. As the end user we’ll have the option to select
the best phone from a variety of platforms and devices.
This year is really interesting!
