Macadamian Blog

Nokia and Microsoft Join Forces!

My collegue Martin was right - Microsoft and Nokia did join forces, and Nokia placed it's bet on the Windows Phone 7 platform. The market reacted negatively to the news, and from what I've seen so have industry bloggers. The industry insiders praised the news and so do I. In my view, the marriage makes a lot of sense - this is no time to be maintaining your own OS. 

The smartphone market is maturing at a breakneck pace. One of the most foolhardy things you can do in a maturing market is focus your scarce energy and resources on building and maintaining an operating system. As smartphones become more mature and more mainstream (the industry predicts smartphone sales will over take PC sales in a couple of years, so I'd call that mainstream), smartphone vendors have to differentiate, and the operating system becomes a commodity. Operating systems are complex beasts that take huge teams of designers, developers, testers, product managers, and technical writers to maintain and release. 

Not long ago, server companies standardized on either Linux or Windows, and all but dumped development of AIX and HP-UX. The same is happening in the smartphone market - the industry is converging around a few key operating systems - iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7, so that the vendors can focus their energy on differentiating in ease-of-use, compelling design, market-specific features, and marketing. Windows Phone 7 is a great operating system that will only get better. This move will be great for Nokia. It was a brave move that will free up resources to innovate.