Life after the Nokia Microsoft Partnership

By Leanne Westphal

So it is 2011 and the smartphone landscape is shifting again. Moving into the New Year, Google’s Android and iPhone market share numbers are still growing, while Nokia Symbian struggles to hold the lead worldwide. For its part, RIM was fast of out the gate with BlackBerry but has been losing ground lately. Alas Microsoft struggles to gain significance in the market with its introduction of its Windows Phone 7 late in the year. The newly announced Nokia Microsoft partnership will take up to two years to develop as Nokia transitions it array of phones to the Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system. Both the RIM BlackBerry and Microsoft Phone 7 have achieved limited success in attracting application developers. Meanwhile the Apple app store for the iPhone is bulging with300,000 applications, and the choices for Android users has be growing with over 130,000 3rd party apps. RIM’s management may be exploring whether it should make the move to Android as well, to better compete with the Nokia Microsoft partnership. Although RIM is closely watching the latest developments in the marketplace, no one is commenting for now. RIM and Nokia are both strong internationally, so the latest announcement has significance for both companies in their global business. The two year Microsoft transition time line for Nokia means it isn’t too late for the RIM BlackBerry folks to change their strategy, however the latest announcement puts pressure on the company to re-examine its options sooner than later.

Related Link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110211-710610.html