You can please none of the people none of the time
There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth in response to the announcement from Nokia that it's going all-in with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 on its smartphones.
Nokia loyalists such as @tomiahonen think this is a great deal for Microsoft, but despair at Nokia selling its software soul and entering into a Faustian pact. Former Microsoft man Stephen Elop is positioned as a wolf in sheep's clothing, Trojan horse, and many other unflattering analogies, no doubt.
And investors are just as miffed. Nokia's NASDAQ listing was down 13 percent at time of writing. Market-follower Eric Savitz summarized some early analyst response. The main worries concern the extent and duration of transition from Symbian to WP7, with Elop having revealed it will probably take a couple of years to reach full momentum.
The fear, quite rightly, is that Nokia will continue to lose share in the short to mid-term. There are also still a lot of unanswered questions regarding how Microsoft and Nokia are going to divide the spoils of software and services. The non-exclusivity of the deal, as well as the fudging of what the fate of Symbian and MeeGo will be, added to the general sense of uncertainly that has made investors nervous.
These are all good points, but you have to wonder what people expected. Everyone knew Symbian is on the way out, everyone knew a move to Android would rob Nokia of its ability to differentiate itself, and everyone knew there had been little news from MeeGo.
A week ago we said it would be a mistake for Nokia to give up on MeeGo, but that was based on the assumption that Nokia was going to launch a MeeGo phone at MWC. Surely that wasn't too much to hope for after Nokia and Intel had had a year of pooling their extensive resources on it. But, with Elop confirming the ‘burning platform' memo was legit, it looks like Nokia was going to manage just one MeeGo handset for the whole of this year.
Faced with that catastrophic reality we don't see what alternative Elop had. Another year of Symbian launches wouldn't have solved Nokia's problems, and the criticism over the lack of MeeGo devices would have reached fever pitch.
So while this move does mean more upheaval for Nokia, and it probably won't have a great 2011, we're more inclined to go with tech blogger Robert Scoble, who reckons Nokia loyalists should take a chill pill and accept that this is probably the best result, considering the position Nokia is in. This might not be a bad time to buy some Nokia shares as a mid/long-term investment.
