Welcome to the New Nokia

Stephen Elop announced almost everything that I wrote in my prediction. I guess the signs were in the air so well that even an amateur blogger like myself could make a good guess.

Now, are these news good for Nokia (Nokia adopting Windows Phone 7, etc.)? In my opinion it depends on one thing: you guessed it, execution! If Nokia will be able to produce great Windows Phone devices, that people like and want to buy, relatively soon, then I think Nokia should be allright. However the longer it takes, the more difficult it will be to make a come back.

It looks like Meego is put on some sort of research project status. It would require another change in Nokia's strategy that we would see more Meego devices than the one Nokia has promised to ship this year. One question though, why to launch even one Meego device?

Touchdown!

The New Nokia: worst case scenario

On February 11th 2011 at 12.30pm London time Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop will announce that...

Meego

Meego becomes an OS only for tablets, for now. In 2013 Microsoft will have tablet-optimized Windows 8 running on ARM processors. Nokia starts to use that and Meego gets retired completely.

Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7 becomes Nokia's OS for high end smartphones. However, Nokia's Windows Phone 7 devices will get lackluster reception: the devices will be buggy in Nokia's old fashion.

Symbian

From now on Symbian will be used only in low end smartphones whose price is $200 and below without subsidies. Symbian will be updated time to time and will continue to have moderate success.

Ovi Store

Without support for Ovi Store in Windows Phone 7, the Ovi Store will stagnate. In 2013 Nokia will replace Ovi Store with Microsoft's application store.

Qt

Microsoft promises that Nokia can port Qt to Windows Phone 7. However, the project gets late and the first version of Qt for Windows Phone 7 comes out only in 2013. At that time, it is already too late, and Microsoft's C# and Silverlight has become the standard language for application development for Nokia's devices.

Qt will stay as the preferred programming environment for Symbian.

Summary

In only 2-3 years Microsoft will gain control over Nokia. Nokia's smartphone market share will drop down to 20% as Nokia's Windows Phone 7 devices will not get good reception.

At that time, Stephen Elop will resign and move to some other company to do restructuring. Nokia has lost all their remaining significance in the smart phone race.

Or can we expect even more action, such as what Andrew Orlowski has heard? Wait and see.

Rich Green: Nokia embraces change. Elop: Sacks top execs

Is Rich Green telling us the truth about what is happening inside of Nokia, when he mentions in Venture Beat's article, that "he is very impressed with Nokia’s willingness to embrace change and turn the ship around". Because the very next day came out story, that next Friday February 11th during Nokia's Capital Market's Day, the CEO Stephen Elop is likely to sack most if not all Nokia's top executives.

That doesn't sound like the transition to "new Nokia" is going that smoothly.

However it has to be said that if the projects that Nokia's current top execs have been running for years will get canceled soon, those execs may not have motivation to continue anyway.