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Microsoft and Nokia: will this marriage work?

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in London 2/11/2011
Nokia
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in London 2/11/2011

When Nokia decided its Symbian operating system wasn't the path to success in the smartphone market and started looking for outside options, it found two major suitors: Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 and Google's Android.

The Friday before Valentine's Day, Nokia announced it was hooking up with Microsoft. Will this marriage work? Strategic News Service publisher Mark Anderson says this deal may not be the best thing that ever happened to Nokia, but it won't be the worst.

The main disadvantage of this relationship? Mark says Windows Phone 7 has, according to various estimates, only 2% to 7% market share. Android would have given Nokia a much, much bigger slice of the smartphone pie.

But Mark says Microsoft offers some advantages over Google:

  • Product support
  • Developer support
  • Customer support

Coupled with Nokia's ability to manufacture huge volumes of phones, Mark says there's a decent chance this alliance could turn out to be a winning combination.
Wondering why Nokia needs this relationship? Take a look at Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's burning platform memo at Engadget.

Dave Meyer has been anchoring KNKX news shows since 1987. He grew up along the shores of Hood Canal near Belfair and graduated from Washington State University with degrees in communications and psychology.
Mark Anderson is the CEO of the Strategic News Service® (SNS), www.stratnews.com. SNS was the first subscription-based newsletter on the Internet, and is read by Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Mark Hurd, and industry leaders and investors in computing and communications worldwide. Mark is the founding chair of the Future in Review® (FiRe) Conference, which the Economist has labeled “the best technology conference in the world,” as well as of SNS Project Inkwell, the first global consortium to address technology design changes for one-to-one computing in classrooms. He is the founder of two software companies, a hedge fund, and the Washington Technology Industry Association “Fast Pitch” investment forum, Washington’s premier technology investment conference.