I rarely feel compelled to comment on business news, but Nokia's recent announcement that it was adopting Windows Mobile 7 contained an item that's breathtaking.
As reported in a number of places including here, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop acknowledged that Nokia looked at adopting Android, but concluded Nokia "couldn't differentiate products" from other Android manufacturers. They decided to go with Windows Mobile 7, where they obviously feel they can do a better job differentiating themselves from other Windows Mobile devices.
Wow, this is classic. Uh, differentiating yourself from other Windows Mobile 7 devices isn't the point. Smartphone consumers are madly buying iPhones and Android phones now. Your job is to convince us your products is better than an Android phone or iPhone, not that it's better than the current Windows Mobile 7 phones that we don't care about and aren't buying.
To put it another way, if you can't compete with HTC or Samsung by selling a phone that runs Android, you're really screwed, because you certainly won't be able to compete with those same phones when you don't run a competitive operating system.
Elop has a reputation for being honest (and I certainly give him credit for being able to acknowledge that Symbian and MeeGo weren't awesome options). But if he really wanted to face up to the new world he should have chosen Android and admitted that to thrive Nokia needs to be a competitive hardware maker to HTC or Samsung.
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My experience with Nokia was that they had wonderfully durable and easy to use hardware, with well engineered basic software features. In case they're reading this blog: Elop - pull your head out and copete with the adults!!
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