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Nokia and Microsoft Make Smartphone Alliance
pbahra writes "The smart money was right. Nokia has jumped into bed with Microsoft and will produce phones running Windows Phone 7. The cynics would say that, here, we have two lumbering dinosaurs of the technology world clinging to each other hoping that the other gives them a future. Optimists would point to two companies that need each other, both bringing vital components to the alliance. The big winner is Microsoft. Windows Phone 7, while reasonably well received by commentators, has not set the world on fire. An alliance with Nokia gives it access to the world's largest phone maker and its huge mindshare — in many developing nations a mobile phone is known as a Nokia. The biggest loser is MeeGo, the ugly, unloved step-child of operating systems."
Nokia wrote to developers, "Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same."
I believe this makes a patent settlement between Apple and Nokia in the form of a cross-license easier and more likely to happen in the near term. That's the biggest IT patent war I've ever seen. Apple asserted a variety of smartphone-related patents such as touchscreen user interface patents against Nokia in response to Nokia enforcing some standards-related (GSM, UMTS etc.) patents. Now that Nokia has chosen Windows Phone for the high end, I can't imagine that Apple would enforce patents against a Microsoft operating system. Those two companies haven't had a patent fight in a long time. It would make strategic sense for Apple and Nokia to settle and to focus on competitors building Android-based devices. I commented on this in more detail on my blog.
I'm just saying, I've been working in the telecom industry for 10 years and I've never seen a stable and interesting or usable version of PocketPC or Windows Mobile. I was waiting on the first WP7 devices just so I could bash them. In that sense I was very disappointed and I (to my surprise) gave them a good review. So far so good on stability, but the real refreshing thing about WP7 is the ease of use and just the general cleanliness of the interface. I remember hearing Ballmer go on "yeah we know Windows Mobile 6 blew, but wait 'till you see 6.1!", and then "wait 'till you see 6.5!" and I would snicker. This is different though, really shows a change of mindset on MS's part.