Biding their time
Among the advantages of being written off is the fact that you're not thought worth attacking. Both Nokia and Microsoft were considered yesterday's news when they were rendered obsolete by the Apple iPhone, and it took both of them a while to face up to that.
But face up they did. Microsoft made the difficult decision to abandon the Windows Mobile roadmap, and Nokia did the same with Symbian. After a year of groping blindly for alternatives they fell into each other's arms once Nokia appointed an ex Microsoft man to the top spot.
There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth ever since from people who still hadn't faced up to the severity of Nokia's predicament, and even conspiracy theories that Microsoft was taking over Nokia by stealth. But Stephen Elop's decision to adopt WP7 exclusively seemed like a pretty rational one to me: we're doing a rubbish job of creating our own platform and Android is already overcrowded, so that leaves WP7.
It was still easy to deride the NokiaSoft alliance as two fading dinosaurs clinging to each other in a forlorn bid to delay the inevitable, but then the great mobile patent war escalated. Apple attacked Android OEMs and they retaliated. Meanwhile Nokia quietly settled its own dispute with Apple and Microsoft promised not to sue HTC so long as it paid a royalty for every Android device sold.
A major reason they were both able to do this is the strength of their respective patent portfolios - both in terms of number and quality, with the latter arguably more important. Apple's patent portfolio is a fraction of the size of Samsung's, for example, and yet Apple is the aggressor, with Samsung seemingly unable to dig up enough patent power of its own to scare Apple away.
So now we have the ridiculous situation of Google having to buy patents in order to give them to Android OEMs as ammo in their defence from Apple's onslaught. Meanwhile Google is buying a rival OEM, and saying it's doing so to help the others. The fact that Motorola will have a massive competitive advantage over the other Android players is discreetly side-stepped.
When the NokiaSoft deal was first announced I said it would only work if the other OEMs cleared off, in order to avoid exactly the kind of differentiation problems that put Nokia off Android. But subsequent conversations with those OEMs reminded me that having an alternative platform to Android is strategically important to them for many reasons.
At the same time Microsoft has been quietly adding to its stable of Android bitches who have to pay it royalties every time they sell a gadget. Today it added Acer and Viewsonic, and specifically stated the latter will pay royalties.
Also today Nokia revealed the relationship with Microsoft has become so cozy that Microsoft is offering a bunch of productivity apps, for free, on Symbian Belle phones. "Just as Symbian Belle extends the everyday possibilities for social interaction, we wanted to extend the possibilities to manage personal worklife for individuals and employers. Microsoft Apps is another example of Nokia's ongoing commitment to continue delivering value and innovation to Symbian users," fawned Purnima Kochikar, VP of business mobility at Nokia.
Apple's attacks on Android make it very unlikely any WP7 OEMs will desert, as shown by the latest HTC launches. But Nokia will be Microsoft concubine number one for the foreseeable future, and there will be a lot more buzz around the NokiaSoft launches when they finally arrive.
For all their collective failure to anticipate the seismic shift in the technology industry, Microsoft and Nokia must be watching Apple and Google (and Oracle) knocking chunks out of each other with unbridled glee. While they expend time, effort and resources on fighting each other NokiaSoft is getting ready to rumble in 2012. If the two of them gain as much market share as many have forecasted, Apple and Google might conclude they've been distracting each other rather too much.
