Yesterday, rumors about Nokia looking into running Google Android OS on an upcoming smartphone drew a lot of attention (via Guardian). Nokia has flatly denied any plans to go Android and refreshes its commitment for the Symbian platform.
Nokia is forever married to the Symbian platform and it’s going to be a long shot if we can ever see a Nokia handset with an Android OS in it. Why?
Well, first of all, there’s that $700 million dollar reason. Nokia bought out the remaining 52% of Symbian last year for a reportedly €264 million ($368 million) big bucks.
Nokia is also promoting its own non-profit Symbian Foundation which combined several different operating systems (Symbian OS, S60, UIQ, MOAP) and made the whole thing open source (read: free, just like Android).
Nokia also bought into a lot of other properties that ride on the same ecosystem. One prominent example is Navteq for $8.1 billion (it has to make money off of Nokia Maps to get that investment back). Going Android also means dropping Nokia Maps for Google Maps (Navteq provided maps to Yahoo, Google and Microsoft and makes over half a billion in sales a year).
Last month, Intel and Nokia announced a strategic partnership and support development of Moblin and Maemo platform for future mobile computing devices.
Nokia is slowly losing the smartphone wars — analysts at HSBC reckon Nokia had 47% of the global smartphone market in 2007; that was down to 35% last summer and 31% at the end of the year {via}. Meanwhile, the Blackberry, iPhone 3G, Palm Pre and Android phones are gaining momentum.
If Nokia gives in to Android as the better platform than Symbian, it will continue to lose market share in the growing smartphone market. It has also invested a lot of marketing money and resources to promote Ovi. It looks like it’s Symbian or nothing for Nokia.
Do you think Nokia should just drop Symbian, specifically the S60 platform, for a better one?
ang masabi ko lang sa nokia.. maghire sila ng magagaling na programmer na kaya iupgrade ang OS nila na tulad ng ANDROID at IOS same lang lahat naman ng logic at life cycle ng code niyan… different Programming Language ang ginamit pero isa lang ang point makagawa ng OS… logic lang ang hindi makuha nila, dati sa pinas nokia ang sikat. ngayon kahit china phone natatalo sila. bakit? dahil mura na my features na wala sa nokia at meron features na wala ang nokia…
ano laban ng nokia vs tv phone
nokia vs 2sim card
nokia vs wifi+2sim+android+tv cheaper price
maganda lang kay nokia ay ang camera
market strategy sa features mahina.
kung maglalabas ang china na unit with high-end camera paano na?