Nokia + Windows Phone 7 could be a winner

As a soon-to-be-ex-nokian (notice period ending on Feb 20) I have a lot of thoughts about the situation of the company and prospects of the freshly announced new Nokia strategy. I won't comment much the first one except that there are great people there and with good leadership and strategy Nokia can still remain #1 mobile phone company for years to come.

But I can't resist to comment the new strategy. I'm confident that it's the right one as the Windows Phone 7 is actually already a great mobile OS, at least as good as Android, maybe even better. I've only used one Win 7 phone for a few days but I was totally convinced by that experience that partnering with MS on smart phone OS is the right way to go. I'm sure that once Nokia starts working together with MS on the Win Phone 7, it can for sure become the best mobile OS leaving Android far behind. iOS doesn't even need to be mentioned and HP's WebOS, as good as it is, just won't fly. And Blackberry...well, that's just a one trick pony.

A lot of readers in both Finnish and international news sites and blogs are commenting that they don't understand how it would help Nokia if they take Win Phone 7 as the smartphone OS because Windows Mobile sucks. Well, these people just have never used any Win 7 phones. The old Windows Mobile was behind competition in every aspect but really the latest MS mobile OS has got nothing to do with the old one. I know the Win Phone 7 has thus far only 2% market share in the smarphones but that can easily be changed now.

Ok, so I'm convinced that this strategy is the right one if you purely look at the technology perspective of the smartphone OS. But what about the services side then? Well, that's a no brainer obviously with the OS selection. Partnering with MS on services as announced is a logical move. So the strategy is good I think. The only remaining questions are, can Nokia and MS execute the strategy fast enough and will they be able to convince consumers that Windows Phone 7 is actually a great smartphone OS?