“Nokia, soon to be acquired by Microsoft Corp, is turning to software created by arch-rival Google for a new line of phones it hopes will make it a late contender in the dynamic low-cost smartphone market,” Paul Sandle reports for Reuters. “Its first model, the Nokia X, will rely upon an open version of the Android mobile software system created by Google.”
“The release of the phone just days before Nokia sells its handset business to Microsoft in a $7.2 billion deal, is an attempt to stay relevant in emerging markets, where low-cost Android phones are being snapped up by hundreds of millions of buyers,” Sandle reports. “But the strategy shift underlines the many missteps made by the Finnish company since Apple launched its ground-breaking iPhone in 2007.”
“Nokia was caught between a rock and a hard place – committed to using Microsoft’s Windows Phone software but needing Android software to reach more cost-sensitive customers, CCS Insight’s head of research Ben Wood said. ‘That a soon-to-be Microsoft-owned company, which is the owner of the original operating system, is moving to Android is almost an admission of failure,’ he said,” Sandle reports. “The Nokia X uses the open source version of Android, which runs most apps without the right to customize Google’s basic software. For Nokia, it was a question of making this humiliating reversal in its strategy or facing irrelevance in this category of phones, Wood said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: You know, because Windows Phone can’t cut it.