Nokia and Microsoft announce 'broad strategic partnership'
Unproven + proven 'years behind' = ?
Surprised? Then you haven't been paying attention.
It's been a week of Nokia-related speculation, largely arising from a leaked memo in which Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who formerly worked at Microsoft, compared the company's current predicament to a “burning platform”.
"While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time...we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind."
The memo intensified rumours that Nokia was looking to abandon its current operating systems - Symbian and MeeGo - and partner up with Microsoft, whose gaming-friendly Windows Phone 7 platform arrived last year to critical acclaim (though relatively little commercial success so far.)
Right on cue, Nokia and Microsoft have jointly released an open letter announcing a “broad strategic partnership”. This entails that Nokia will “drive and define the future of Windows Phone”. Nokia will adopt Microsoft's Bing search service, and Microsoft will employ Nokia Maps as “a core part of Microsoft's mapping services.”
The open letter suggests a full partnership, with Nokia broadly taking responsibility for hardware while Microsoft takes responsibility for software – frankly, given Nokia's recent record with software, a sensible division of labour.
But one question mark hangs over the venture: why, when Google's Android OS is clearly more successful than Microsoft's Windows Phone 7, did Nokia choose to throw its lot in with the latter?
The choice prompted Google employee Vic Gundotra to tweet: “Two turkeys do not make an eagle.”
In case you're wondering, the speechmarks signify that Gundotra is quoting Nokia's Anssi Vanjoki, speaking in 2005 about BenQ's acquisition of Siemens's handset operation. Ouch.
The joint Microsoft-Nokia open letter concludes with a rousing triplet of single-line paragraphs that wouldn't be out of place in the script for Gladiator:
There are other mobile ecosystems. We will disrupt them.
There will be challenges. We will overcome them.
Success requires speed. We will be swift.
