Whilst Nokia aren’t exactly going under or anything it’s no secret that they could be doing a lot better than are doing right now. Of course, you could call me out for being an out and out Android fanboy but – it’s Windows Phone that has done this to Nokia. Not because Windows Phone is terrible or anything, there’s a lot about it that I quite like and in some cases I can see Microsoft making right moves but right now, Windows Phone is barely an ecosystem – let alone a successful one. All of this is down to Microsoft leaning too heavily on Nokia – an ecosystem is not made of one dominant player. Yes, Samsung is towering above everyone else right now but, thanks to Android’s openness the rest of Google’s partners benefit as well.
So long as Windows Phone continues to trail behind then so too, will Nokia and over these last few years we’ve seen Nokia go from one of the biggest in the industry to one of the smallest. They’ve had to transfer all manufacturing over to China, lay off masses of their workforce and make some pretty harsh decisions and all for Windows Phone.
The well known bank Credit-Suisse has downgraded Nokia’s status from “neutral” to “under-performing” and whilst you could say that this is just a bank it’s never a good sign when the big bad bean counters condemn you for poor performance. Nothing good can come of such a thing. The bank went on to say however that a number of different parties could become interested in the companies vast assets. For instance, Huawei, Ericsson and ZTE could be interested in Nokia Siemens’ technology. However, the more interesting question here is what would happen to Nokia’s huge patent portfolio if they were to break the company up? It’s said that Apple would be more than interested and to say that they have few tele-communication related patents I can see why they would be. Google however would be interested also due to the fact that for some time now Google has been lacking when it comes to patents – Google bought Motorola for the patents.
I doubt that anything will happen of this soon but in reality if something like this were to happen any time soon but the writing’s more than on the wall for Nokia.