| ArnoldRimmer said: I think the fact that Nokia shares instantly dropped by about 10% after this decision was announced makes pretty clear what to think about that alliance. I wonder how Microsoft managed to convice Nokia though, as it's pretty obvious that Microsoft will benefit from this alliance while Nokia will suffer. Did Microsoft give Nokia some of their 500 million WP7 marketing budget? |
Surely some economic incentives, but they also offered a competitive edge in the WP7 submarket: they granted Nokia the right to customizations they denied to HTC, even though Elop was quick to point out that they will stay pretty close upstream. Obviously that also entails that differently from HTC Nokia will be using WP7 exclusively.
For MS it's a big win, as adoption of WP7 has been much less than brilliant and they need models out there. For Nokia it's a chance to be the biggest name in the third OS submarket for smart phones, and to finally cut and refocus their enormous R&D expenses. Basically looks like the preamble to an acquisition to me.
