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Finally Nokia is getting attention from the West

It’s nice to see Nokia sentiment from the Western media temporarily switched to positive. Or at least almost-positive. You’ll have no doubt been tracking the various different opinions zooming around the marketplace (Nokia must do Android, Nokia must do Microsoft, Nokia must hold fast with Symbian & MeeGo).

It’s good to see the company getting attention beyond the usual ‘Nokia is doomed’ line.

Indeed I’d go so far as to say that in recent weeks, Nokia has never had so much Western media attention that didn’t involve a serious amount of kicking.

There is quite a bit of excitement around the marketplace.

And you know what, it’s so refreshing.

It’s refreshing because we’re seeing traditionally iOS/Android dedicated publications like Forbes giving Nokia the time of day, recognising that should the company play ball as per expectations (Windows, Android, some sort of deal), then Nokia will become a very big fish indeed.

It’s already a big fish. Just, not in the way the media wants it to be.

Here’s what Forbes had to say:

Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft (MSFT) simply need to do a deal. The logic is obvious. Nokia has large but eroding handset market share, and increasingly dated software. Microsoft has spiffy new handset software, but hardware partners who seem smitten with Android. The companies need each other.

That, at least, is the way many on the Street see the situation.

via Dear Nokia And Microsoft: Please Do A Deal, Love, Investors – Eric Savitz – Tech Musings – Forbes.

Now.

The ultra negative bit here is that if Nokia does not impress next Friday at Capital Markets day. Or possibly through MWC, that’s it. It’s game-over. It’ll be time for the Western media to deploy words like ‘confused’, ‘beleaguered’, ‘struggling’ and so on.

Nokia’s status has already been set to ALSO-RAN/IRRELEVANT. The media is going to absolutely nuts if Nokia doesn’t ‘make good’ on some kind of additional platform announcement beyond MeeGo and Symbian shortly.

Bring on the fireworks.

10 COMMENTS

  1. The day that Nokia ditch Symbian and Meego* for any other operating system will mean two things.

    1) I need to go out and buy several of the current high end handsets and store them somewhere safe.
    2) Nokia cease to exist as a viable company in my eyes. But that does not matter as the USA and the UK, the two largest growing, most under subscribed mobile markets on the face of the planet will all of a sudden see 90% of their populations rush out and buy a new shiny Android/WP7 running phone.

    *I could just about live with them releasing, at the maximum, two handsets for those aforementioned markets.

  2. Microsoft platform would be saved if Nokia embrace it. But the other way round would be almost meaningless to Nokia. The possible choice is more on Android, while having Nokia moving to Android mean the game will move to having surviving phone/pc makers with verry tiny margin. I’m sure the investor going to be verry unhappy at the end of the day. The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence….

  3. Sorry, but — quite honestly — I don’t see how a MSFT/NOK deal will save each other’s bacon.

    And even if a deal is struck, there is absolutely no guarantee it will result in a win-win for both.

  4. Nokia is between a rock and a hard place here.
    If they don’t announce WP7 or Android support, at least for the North American market, the analysts on Wall Street may decide the company is over, investor support will disappear, and the company is in big trouble on the financing side of things.
    Should they announce support for another OS, then they gain some short-term (US) analyst buzz, but draw away much needed resources from S40/Symbian/MeeGo/Qt development and effectively give up their viable long-term OS strategy (Symbian downwards into the mass-market, MeeGo from the high-end, linked via the Qt application layer), becoming just another Android/WP7 vendor.
    Motorola and SonyEricsson are trying this, but their long-term prospects are not clear (and I think less than good in both cases), LG have failed to create a viable business in the same space, and the successful Samsung is trying to establish their own platform with Bada, while the also successful HTC is trying to differentiate on the basis of Sense UI.
    So there really is no case to be be made for Nokia adding another OS to their portfolio – except for in the minds of some US analysts, who mostly don’t see anything but the vastly distorted US market and the euqally distorted, US-dominated blogosphere.
    Nokia’s problem is execution, not the larger strategy.

  5. I’d like to see some kind of nod to the West. I certainly ‘get’ Nokia’s
    Symbian/MeeGo strategy — but the wider Western market simply doesn’t. This,
    whatever way you look at it, is a problem.

  6. Totally agree. If anything Nokia should convince other companies to use QT not jump ship to a new OS. I know they can’t force companies to pick it up but if they announce that HP or RIM will be using QT next Friday just imagine how much attention that would get. Nokia, HP and RIM have almost the weakest ecosystems (Win Phone 7 takes that crown although MS does have a great dev kit) and looking around I don’t see too many people saying that they will support all three – this way they could.

    .

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