Imo Nokia did the right thing to go with WP.
Since 2010 that it was pretty much consensual that Nokia would need to sell smartphone models with an american O.S. to try to get a foot into the U.S.
That was never the point..
Then again.. given the universal acclaim of the Swipe UX, that might not have been necessary, but whatever.
Symbian was a total dead end in the high end phones.
Nokia had publicly stated that Symbian would be gradually replaced by MeeGo for high-end phones, afaik back in 2009.
Again, that was never the point either.
With MS WP has better chance to grow than Meego ever did.
- By the end of 2011, WP7 had been selling for ~1,5 years in all key markets (Germany, UK, USA, etc.), had ~20 models from 8 makers.
- By the end 2011, MeeGo had been selling for ~3 months with 1 model from 1 maker, blocked from all the key markets.
- Even though it was blocked in most major markets, in Q4 2011 Nokia alone sold ~2.5x more MeeGo handsets than all WP7 from all makers combined in the whole world.
Therefore, that statement makes no sense.
They could have handled the transition better. Imo the new strategy is going to take some time to spread it's wings, short attention span people just have to give it time a bit. I believe that two years from now the business will be running fine and WP will have a solid ecosystem. MS isn't going to drop this easily.
Speaking
mobile, during the past 5 years Microsoft managed to:
- Launch Zune into the market
- Drop Zune
- Launch Kin into the market
- Drop Kin
- Drop the 11 year-old PocketPC / Windows Mobile line
- Launch WP7
What was that thing about
short attention span?
It doesn't matter if they've poured a lot of money into it (Zune), or if it has a very large user base (WinMobile).
If they find out the business won't be worth it in the long run, Microsoft
will drop the "Windows Phone" brand, along with all their partners in the project.
Miksu said:
What I find puzzling though is that I can't figure out why Windows Phones aren't selling that well.
You mean, besides the blatant lack of features, functionality, differentiation between models, having phones launched in countries with no market support for many months while preventing manual applications installations
and being rather expensive devices compared to much better equipped and supported Android models?
Well
besides that, T. Ahonen says the carrier stores all over the world are boycotting all sales of Windows Phone devices, due to Microsoft purchasing Skype a few months ago.
Which kinda makes sense. When Microsoft enables every WP7 model to make near-free calls whenever the user is near a WiFi access point, people will stop using expensive carrier plans, which will cut deeply into the carrier revenues.. So why would the carriers be interested in supporting Microsoft?
Yes, it was kind of a suicidal move from Microsoft regarding their Mobile division, but I bet it was still a very profitable decision for the company in the long run.
Then again, it's yet another indicator of exactly
how much Microsoft is "loyal" to their partners in the Mobile division.