Reports: Nokia gung ho for Windows Phone
Saturday, February 12th, 2011It looks increasingly likely that Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 will get a starring role in Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop’s attempt to turn around the ailing phone giant.
Reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal indicate Nokia’s turnaround plan will involve phones using Microsoft’s new and still immature mobile operating system. Elop plans to detail his strategy for overhauling Nokia tomorrow at an analyst day in London.
Google’s Android, another contender for a software alliance, doesn’t look like it has good prospects at Nokia at present. “Two turkeys do not make an Eagle,” tweeted Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering at Google, including a “#feb11″ hashtag to make it clear he was referring to Nokia’s event on that date.
Elop, who arrived from Microsoft to take over Nokia a few months ago, offered a scathing assessment of Nokia’s phone strategy thus far. In his “burning platform” memo, he said Nokia failed to answer Apple’s iPhone at the high end, respond to Google’s Android operating system spreading to the midrange and lower-end smartphones, or stem the tide of inexpensive Chinese phones. And its own operating systems are a mess, with Symbian not up to the modern smartphone challenge and the higher-end MeeGo only just dipping its toes into the waters with a single phone coming late in 2011.
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