Nokia+Microsoft

Nokia the leader of the mobile phone industry decided to join hands with Microsoft, Leader of the software industry. This combination can work out best for both the companies as the 2 companies complement each other in strengths & weakness.

Almost every one is aware about the strengths & weakness of both these organisations. Also the market ie the competition is shaping up differently over the past 2 years..

2007-2009 Period

The handset manufacturers were Nokia,Samsung,HTC,Motorola,Sony Ericsson(SE),LG,Apple,Blacberry. Of these Nokia,Samsung,SE,LG were using Symbian, HTC with windows,Motorola,Apple & BB its own OS..

The neutral manufacturers were either attached to Symbian or Windows. Google was not present in the mobile OS market.

Samsung,SE,Motorola,LG were not strong in mobile phones losing the market to Nokia's. Also they had their internal problems too.

During this market scenario, Apple launched first iphone- touch screen phone. It was welcomed well but it was available only in limited markets.

This opened up the gates to the customers, touch phone experience. Even though touch phones were available earlier too( HTC,Nokia,SE), they were costly, needed a stylus to operate and not that user friendly. Apple re-wrote the touch screen features. Many know how its different. Parallely they also created the App Store, which is a store house of applications which can make your smart phone do many new activities.

Apple was becoming quite popular with these market changing features.

During this phase in 2008 Google launched Android OS, open source platform based on Linux Kernel.the advantage was manufacturers can buy this OS and customise as per their needs.

So the market was getting accustomed to the touch phones and demand for touch based phones increased.

Symbian was basically designed for a non-touch phone and hence the OS approach was not very user friendly for the touch based phones.

With companies fighting tough to survive in the mobile market, ( SE,Motorola,Samsung,HTC,LG) and touch based phones going to be future with more applications needed to make a smartphone, Symbian being not touch friendly OS, Apple’s huge success, made all the above companies to embrace Google’s Android.

Major companies shifted to google giving a sudden boost to the Android OS.

Post 2009, the Mobile OS market was mainly divided among three. Nokia Symbian, Google Android, Apple iOS. Windows phone 7 & Blacberry OS have very small presence compared to the 3.

Under this circumstance, now Nokia has joined hands with Microsoft and Windows phone 7 ( new Microsoft OS for Mobile phones). As an OS, Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is vey very good and has superior features.

Nokia, other than symbian OS, is leader in Mobile Hardware. Nokia N95,N8 mobiles stand testimony to the hardware superiority of Nokia. Also all customers accept the superiority of Nokia Hardware compared to any other manufacturer.

With these, this combination should really be a best one for both the organisations, to continue in this business.

Both need to act faster, as they are competing 7 manufacturers, 5 with Android,Apple and Blackberry.