We now pronounce you, Phone and OS. On February 11th, CEO's Stephen Elop and Stephen Ballmer announced that both Nokia and Microsoft have entered into a cellular partnership. Nokia will begin to use WindowsPhone 7 as the primary OS for their smartphones, in place of Symbian. Gradually, through 2011 and 2012, Symbian phones will be completely phased out. Nokia's development of Meego will become an "open source project" with an emphasis on exploring future market opportunities.
Meanwhile, Nokia's move to WindowsPhone also involves merging the Ovi store into the Microsoft Marketplace as well as integrating Ovi Maps into Bing, which will, of course, become the main search engine for Nokia Phones.
It remains to be seen if these two companies are really made for each other.
Nokia's market share amongst smartphone makers has decreased, giving way to the iPhone and phones running Android in foreign markets where Nokia had reigned for years before. Much of Nokia's troubles have been attributed to a lack of innovation in Symbian's UI. Stephen Elop, who left Microsoft to take the reigns at Nokia, recently wrote a passionate state of the company address, in which he describes Symbian as a buring platform and says that other phones manufacturers are leaving Nokia in the dust. These comments fueled rumors that Nokia was in search of another platform to run on their phones.
Meanwhile, even with the praise WP7 has received for it's innovative UI implementation, It has failed to garner sales even approaching it's primary competitors. A joint venture such as this one has potential to be great for both parties, if each is what the other really needs to be successful.
Only time will tell whether this new deal is a marriage made in the heavens of success or the fiery bowels of failure. (As if you need another marriage pun.) However, you get to weigh in in the comments section below. Also, check out the video and the source link. So what do you think? Will the two Steves be lifelong lovebirds, or middle aged divorcees fighting over the wording in the pre-nup documentation?
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