Poor Nokia – I feel sorry for the company that once ruled the mobile phone market a few short years ago, and certainly it was caused by poor business decisions, the last big blunder being the hiring of Microsoft’s Stephen Elop to head their company. He turned out to be a Microsoft “trojan horse” that went in and promptly declared that Nokia would sign an exclusive agreement to sell Windows Phones rather than the much more popular Android based smartphones. Nokia, as always, delivered the good on hardware and quality, but just did not sell many devices due to the Windows format. And to top it all off, when that trojan horse opened up its belly, Nokia found themselves sold off to Microsoft via the Stephen Elop and Steve Ballmer connection.
Our hopes that Nokia would indeed product an Android phones was bolstered last month when word leaked out, as did a picture, via @evleaks, of the Nokia Normandy, a low-end device for emerging markets. Will this device ever see that light of day? The answer would probably be a resounding, NO, at this point. Even though Nokia still has control over its smartphones, Microsoft will taking over in the next few months…and even with Nokia’s CTO division, that was working on the Android type phones and a tablet, staying at Nokia, they are not allowed to make a Nokia branded mobile device for two years, per their agreement with Microsoft.
According to a report from CTech, as reported by UnwiredView.com, Nokia’s CTO group will be working on wearable devices, including the head-gear variety, like Google Glass. It was a natural decision to move away from future smartphones considering the complexities of trying to make a significant impact in that field, but wearables is still in its infancy and is predicted to grow significantly in the next few years. The current Nokia smartwatch projects may be headed to Microsoft, but the future wearables will be staying at Nokia, like their smart glasses. Nokia will concentrate on wireless power transmissions, grapheme sensors, flexible displays, and that ever popular, augmented reality area.
Let us know on our Google+ page what you think about this whole Elop, Ballmer, Microsoft, Nokia relationship…are you glad to see Nokia get bought out by Microsoft and do you think that is their answer to survival. Are you one of the many that would like to have seen a Nokia-Android device – nice combination of hardware/software.