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Nokia Had an Android Phone In Development
puddingebola writes "Perhaps influencing Microsoft's $7.2 billion acquisition, the New York Times is reporting that Nokia had an Android phone in development. From the article, 'A team within Nokia had Android up and running on the company's Lumia handsets well before Microsoft and Nokia began negotiating Microsoft's $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone and services business, according to two people briefed on the effort who declined to be identified because the project was confidential. Microsoft executives were aware of the existence of the project, these people said.' Perhaps Nokia feared they had put too many eggs in one basket? Whatever the case, the project is most likely dead at this point."
My prediction is that Microsoft will almost give away phones when they own Nokia's handset business. Micorsoft realizes that they are in danger of an entire generation learning that they don't need a PC running Windows and that this is complete disaster for Microsoft in the making.
How much money has Microsoft dumped into Xbox over the years? I suspect that those billions will pale into insignificance in comparison to Microsoft's plans for Windows Phone.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I doubt they would have been concerned about Nokia as an Android competitor - but they would have been very, very worried about losing their partnership with the maker of 80% of the Windows phones sold. Nokia is the only thing that is currently letting Microsoft believe that it has any chance at all with phones.
Windows already has fuck-all share of the smartphone market - reducing that to only 20% of fuck-all would just be humiliating.
Without Nokia Windows Phone's global market share drops to 0.6 from 3.0. So... about $3B per point of market share. Otherwise they disappear in the noise of "other". There wasn't anywhere else they could get those points so cheap. They will probably scoop up Blackberry's customers too. They really have no choice. Smartphones and tablets will be more that 80% of clients sold next quarter, trending up. Next quarter will be the last quarter that traditional PCs outsell tablets, and people get tablets that are like their smartphone and work well with it, not one that works well with and like their PC. If people keep getting invested in phone and tablet apps on platforms that are not theirs, they are done for. Frankly I think it is too late, but to them they have no choice but to try.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Nokia had the best reception of any cell phone company (at least, that was their reputation). They made nice hardware. Apparently they have the best camera of any cell phone.
Given all that, they could have competed. Not because Android is magic, but because WP8 counteracts any benefit their phones ever had. Buy an Android with an amazing camera? Sure! Buy WP8 with an amazing camera? Does it even have a fart app?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Nokia could have had excellent success with an Android phone. Unlike the many upcoming phone makers you see today, Nokia had a huge market share with lots of loyal costumers who always chose Nokia phones when they needed a replacement phone. Nokia was a premium brand among consumers.
By not making a Android phone, all their loyal costumers were forced to go elsewhere. For years, 9 out of 10 Nokia costumers have chosen another brand of smartphone when they needed a new phone.
If Nokia could have kept most of those costumers with a Android phone, they would be dominating the market this day, and they would have kept the up coming competitors down, in stead of just handing over the smartphone market to them without a fight.
Like it or not folks, and this is coming from somebody that uses an Android phone that I'm quite happy with, with Android you have a race to the bottom where the VAST majority of Android sales in the under $185 price range and this market, the ultra low end? is a market that Nokia could NEVER compete in, okay?
I find it very strange that you argue that Nokia couldn't sell cheap phones when that was what they're best at. Nokia wasn't exactly the Ferrari of the cell phone world, they built boring solid cheap phones that the first world found dull and emerging markets gobbled up. Take those hardware skills, massive economics of scale, brand and sales network, build a cheap Android phone and they'd be giving Samsung a run for their money instead of maybe soon clawing their way back to second tier.
If there's a race to the bottom, you can either get in or get out but if you stand around thinking your customers will be happy to pay a huge premium for your product then 95% of the time you're wrong. For example just look at all the expensive solutions that have been replaced by cheap x86 desktops and servers. If you can take a cheap SoC from China, slap a $0 version of Android on it, put it in a phone chassis and sell it then that's what it is worth today, what that was worth yesterday doesn't matter.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings