Stephen Elop just finished his talk with Walt Mossberg at D9 conference from All Things Digital. Stephen Elop called the rumor suggesting that Microsoft has bought Nokia's mobile division ' baseless '. The rumor was pretty ridiculous IMO, didn't make much sense but good to see that Stephen Elop quickly cleared that up. Secondly and most importantly, he stated that first Nokia Windows Phone device will launch in Q4 (Just in time for holiday season). Initially, single device will be revealed and then bunch of devices will be released periodically and in quantity next year at various price points all over the world.
Also, they had an interesting conversation on why Stephen Elop chose Windows Phone over Google's Android and why they dumped Symbian:
Also, they had an interesting conversation on why Stephen Elop chose Windows Phone over Google's Android and why they dumped Symbian:
There were a lot of questions with how much control we would have, changes down the road... differentiation.We felt we could differentiate better with Windows Phone. I went to Nokia knowing there were challenges. I went there planning on moving towards MeeGo. We looked at Android, we looked at Windows Phone — but I decided when I sat down with the head of Symbian, he said we can put a great product into market in a third of the time it will take with Symbian. Symbian was at a deficit in some markets. We said, with Symbian it's going to take us too long to get where we want to go. It's crufty, it takes too long to change. Nokia felt that with Windows Phone, it had a better shot at maintaining long-term differentiation than with Android.The point of competition is with Android and Apple; those are the groups that we need to differentiate from
Read more from the Engadget liveblog here.
I love the fact that Stephen Elop is a fearless speaker, speaks his heart out. Accepts mistake and plans aggressively for the future. Clearly he wasn't impressed with fragmentation in Android and the fact that Nokia could differentiate little by adopting it,with respect to it's competitors, made it impossible for them to make a switch to Android. What's confusing here is that Windows Phone is a closed OS while Android is open thus customizable. You cannot change the UI in Windows phone OS - so how do you differentiate? Get a dedicated marketplace. Fine. Make quality hardware. Ok. Then what? That's all Microsoft allows OEM to do. Sure, Nokia will have special applications and probably their own marketplace but they could have done that with Android too? IMO, if they did - competition would have been even more fierce than current LG v/s Samsung v/s HTC saga and there would be no clear winner. Each one of them is trying to outdo it's competitor with better hardware and then saturation point wouldn't be far off (it's coming, delayed at the moment, but surely coming). Nokia enters the market in Q4 2011, not much competition in hardware running Windows Phone - get in and show some snazzy phones running Mango OS. Perfect strategy and if pushed well enough (advertised well enough, rather) there is no stopping Nokia from getting that consumer respect and gigantic profits back. Drop in your thoughts.
