Switched On: Microsoft and Nokia trade posturing for pragmatism
By Ross Rubin 
posted Aug 27th 2009 4:32PM
posted Aug 27th 2009 4:32PM
Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
Few tech giants have circled each other as intently over the past decade as Microsoft and Nokia -- Big PC vs. Big Handset, not quite direct competitors but hardly partners, and only occasionally backing common initiatives such as DLNA.
But this year there have been signs that relations between the two companies have been thawing -- the Finnish tundra's warmed to the Seattle rain. In March, Nokia announced that it would support Microsoft's Silverlight on its S60 handsets. And earlier this month, the two companies announced a "global alliance" that will begin with Microsoft porting Mobile Office to Symbian in order to compete more effectively against fast-growing Research in Motion.
Just weeks after that announcement, however, both companies have made moves in each other's space that show they're willing to break with longstanding positions in order to capture a share of the other's opportunity.
This week, Nokia announced that it would release its first PC, the 10-inch Booklet netbook, touting up to 12 hours of battery life. And on the same day, Microsoft announced the OneApp platform, a kind of on-device portal that will allow featurephones to have lightweight apps that answer some of the functionality of smartphones.
OneApp programs live partially in the cloud, and can help with on-the-go tasks such as social networking status updates, RSS feed updates, health monitoring, and the kinds of news, weather, sports and stock updates that are often associated with widgets. An initiative from Microsoft's Unlimited Potential group, OneApp is targeted at emerging markets for the short-term, but will likely spread to more mature wireless economies.
Both of this week's post-alliance moves by Nokia and Microsoft are far more than a response to the other, but they both serve to change the dynamics between the two companies. For Nokia, moving into the netbook space represents the realization that laptops are becoming a more important part of the wireless landscape, particularly as they become part of carriers' portfolios. Strikingly, while Nokia had two mobile operating systems at its disposal, including Maemo, which is designed for "PC-like" experiences, it opted to go the traditional route with Windows 7. This reinforces Microsoft's increasingly dominant position in has in the mobile computing landscape -- if a device looks like a Windows PC, consumers expect it to act like one.
But even as Nokia had to concede weaknesses in its favored mobile operating systems, so did Microsoft, as Windows Mobile is beyond the capabilities of most feature phones and Windows Mobile 7 will require ever more advanced hardware if it is to eventually answer the iPhone. OneApp is not the first time Microsoft has reached out to the low end of the mobile sphere; more than a decade ago, the company announced a microbrowser for accessing mobile Web sites. But this time, Microsoft has also had to play on the platform of an old rival standard in Java, a technology that has been included in millions of phones from Nokia and others. As more operators deploy OneApp, it will provide Microsoft a new opportunity beyond its Live services to influence the mobile user experience at the low end of the market.
Even before 4G speeds up wireless data, the opportunities it will provide are accelerating competition to a point where even industry leaders can no longer hang on to legacy and loyalties. If this month has taught us anything, it's that Microsoft and Nokia are both determined to play across the full array of mobile devices whether they engage each other with handshakes or hand grenades.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
But this year there have been signs that relations between the two companies have been thawing -- the Finnish tundra's warmed to the Seattle rain. In March, Nokia announced that it would support Microsoft's Silverlight on its S60 handsets. And earlier this month, the two companies announced a "global alliance" that will begin with Microsoft porting Mobile Office to Symbian in order to compete more effectively against fast-growing Research in Motion.
Just weeks after that announcement, however, both companies have made moves in each other's space that show they're willing to break with longstanding positions in order to capture a share of the other's opportunity.
This week, Nokia announced that it would release its first PC, the 10-inch Booklet netbook, touting up to 12 hours of battery life. And on the same day, Microsoft announced the OneApp platform, a kind of on-device portal that will allow featurephones to have lightweight apps that answer some of the functionality of smartphones.
OneApp programs live partially in the cloud, and can help with on-the-go tasks such as social networking status updates, RSS feed updates, health monitoring, and the kinds of news, weather, sports and stock updates that are often associated with widgets. An initiative from Microsoft's Unlimited Potential group, OneApp is targeted at emerging markets for the short-term, but will likely spread to more mature wireless economies.
Both of this week's post-alliance moves by Nokia and Microsoft are far more than a response to the other, but they both serve to change the dynamics between the two companies. For Nokia, moving into the netbook space represents the realization that laptops are becoming a more important part of the wireless landscape, particularly as they become part of carriers' portfolios. Strikingly, while Nokia had two mobile operating systems at its disposal, including Maemo, which is designed for "PC-like" experiences, it opted to go the traditional route with Windows 7. This reinforces Microsoft's increasingly dominant position in has in the mobile computing landscape -- if a device looks like a Windows PC, consumers expect it to act like one.
Microsoft and Nokia are both determined to play across the full array of mobile devices whether they engage each other with handshakes or hand grenades. |
Even before 4G speeds up wireless data, the opportunities it will provide are accelerating competition to a point where even industry leaders can no longer hang on to legacy and loyalties. If this month has taught us anything, it's that Microsoft and Nokia are both determined to play across the full array of mobile devices whether they engage each other with handshakes or hand grenades.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
thats like the perfect placement of inputs, on the side you can see. AND HDMI !!
That laptop looks better than the Dell Adamo I was thinking about getting and costs $1000 less.
Can't wait to see all the nice phones coming out for Maemo. Looks like a solid platform.
Microsoft's Unlimited Potential = MUP!
It's a MUP! Look how cute!
I'm not sure what the general sentiment on Nokia's Booklet 3G's design, but am I alone in thinking it just doesn't look good? Sure, the build quality and material may be high quality, but god, this design keeps reminding me of the Classmate PC from the days of yore.
Oh yeah, WHERE IS ENGADGET LIVE??
"Few tech giants have circled each other as intently over the past decade as Microsoft and Nokia -- Big PC vs. Big Handset, not quite direct competitors but hardly partners, and only occasionally backing common initiatives such as DLNA. "
Are you inventing history again? I've never even heard of any sort of implied hostility between the two companies.
Yeah, I consider myself "up to date" on the happenings on the tech landscape and... me either.
It was a silent war. Microsoft was eyeing smartphone market as a potential new monopoly. They had big plans on pushing the windows to every manufacturer as there was no other multimanufacturer operating system.
Nokia was aware of Microsoft moves on smartphone market. They knew the history of msdos and windows, saw the dangers. They had the monet and marketshare to develop or buy a good operaating system but they also knew it would be a shortsighed strategy. Even if they had 30% marketshare at the time that would have left 70% of the market for microsoft, leaving Nokia into the minority.
So to stop microsoft nokia got together an alliance of phone manufacturers who bought epoc and made it into symbian. This proved out to be effective strategy and probably the only reason why theres such a multitude of different phones. Without symbian windows probably would have 80-90% marketshare and any other operating system; linux, webos, osx; would have a hard time entering market. All phones would be pretty mutch the same, with slight variations in color and shape, and microsoft raking lions share of profits.
There are a few good articles on The Register about it. Just google "gates nokia" and you should get there. Simply put, Gates spewed venom at symbian and lost sleep when nokia was able to form alliance in operating system with eriksson and motorola.
Its taken this long for microsoft to get over tthe issue. As the windows marketshare is dropping co-operation with nokia was only way to gain growth. Microsoft might be hoping to get people used to working Office on phones and in time dropping symbian and with that getting more people for windows phones. I hope nokia has made good contracts on to counteract this chance.
well, this is great and everything. I like the laptop, but I really don't care how microsoft and nokia interact with each other. I am a mac user but not a fanboy, but i just don't care what microsoft does unless its revolutionary. Nokia, i love the industrial design of the n97 (aside from the placement of the space bar) but i just think that symbian is just 2 old for modern users.
Yep slap some metal on it and it's instantly "industrial design"
Interesting article I must say.
If only this laptop wasn't so expensive...
hey, i was wondering if there was a way to change the email address that engadget sends me sutff on.
I've been wondering this too. I don't want to have to create a new account, and lose all the history of comments I made.
It looks cute.
http://onioning.com
msnPhone?
I think OneApp is an awesome initiative. It would be quite useful in developing nations too, where a person may not want to go to the full expense of purchasing a real smartphone just to get some good apps. Wish it were available on more dumphones though. Would be cooler if Microsoft made an awesome dumbphone OS....
I don't like the name OneApp though. Kinda misleading. "UniApp" would sound more better, if it were completely universal on every dumbphone.
Nokia should know better than this. If you deal with the devil you are going to get burned.
Shouldn't you be making lame "There going to buy Microsoft Product X, then return it in a week" jokes over in a Zune thread?
You know... because seeing your down ranked, grayed out, repeat posts over and over again helps to break up the text of the other comments and makes for more pleasant reading.
It might be a bit expensive, but that Nokia netbook is the first one that has been released so far I would consider purchasing, especially if it comes equipped with Windows 7. While I would like to see ION and dual core Atoms ect ect, I have a much better feeling this will actually be released sometime in the near future. (Unlike the magical ION platform weve been hearing about for months and have yet to see 5 machines with it, but even fugging COBY is making an Atom/Intel GMA Netbook).
It just shows you... Every month they were coming out with a faster processor back in 2004. Now that AMD has fallen out of meaningful competition with intel in the junk proc (read Atom) sector, intel has slowed hardware progression to a halt in order to ink out every little bit of profit they can out of these little chips, while the process to make them only gets cheaper.
Great business plan for Intel (as they are probably the only ones making any money on these things), but a sad set of events for those of us who just want a 10in netbook with 1280x768 screen, the video capability of a 3 year old Geforce Graphics card, and a processor that can run full screen flash consistently without crying. You know, the sad thing is the technology is all there to do it (and maintain somewhat decent battery life), but Intel (and Microsoft with their XP hardware limits to push people towards Vista) have decided that as long as we will buy these Mcdonalds computer's, they will keep selling them.
But, going to give a +1 to Nokia for at least giving their netbook a few features that make it a little less loathsome then the rest, even if it doesn't cost 300 bucks like everyone seems to want.
ms and nokia have most certainly been very major rivals. However it was one of those silent wars that has lasted for years until now. It may not have been aparent because nokia isnt a big flashy pr-type. They are simply more interested in making tgings rather than engaging in trash talk (see palm vs apple). I respect a company whose culture is such that they decisively take action (by edging out wince n winmmo) and then just go about their business. It still leaves potential for future partnerships open.
This says a lot about their slogan: connecting people. There are precious few big companiesthat still have the same kind of soul and humanity that nokia does. While i was generally lukewarm to their products i have always respected the way and consistency with which they conduct their business.
BTW, there is no tundra in Finland.
Was just going to post the same... last time I checked there was no tundra in Finland :D