
"Microsoft’s Nokia purchase"
Know something we don't?
HTC is actively looking at buying its own mobile operating system, such as HP’s WebOS, but isn’t in any hurry. In an interview with Economic Observer of China, HTC chairwoman Cher Wang said that she and other members of the board were looking at the options for the company to buy its own OS but that no decisions had been made …
Great deal for Microsoft - rather than paying billions to buy Nokia outright, they just got 'lucky' when a ex-MS exec got the plum CEO role at Nokia.
End result - Nokia's now half the price and about the only dedicated supporter of WP7. Total investiment from MS - about a billion in marketing costs to Nokia.
I could imagine Elop will be popular at Microsoft when/if Nokia exits the smartphone market, leaving a carcass of dumb phones and patents.
So they haven't brought Nokia yet, but seem to be running the ship at minimal cost.
They'll either need to make sure any new OS is free from infringing baggage or, more likely, comes with a whole host of patents (like Web OS) otherwise they'll just be spending money to become another Microsoft/Oracle/Whomever infringement target again. Sometimes you have to wonder whether the US market is worth getting into for phones when the rest of the market is absolutely huge (Africa, India, China, Europe etc) and the US economy is bust anyhow.
There are some OSes to buy but what to do? WebOS, MeeGO even Symbian! Or fork Android like some are saying that Amazon will do. But apart Android, only Symbian has considerable apps available. MeeGo technically is on par with Android, iOS and WebOS, but like WebOS, no market, and that means alot of money in marketing it. But picking WebOS or specially MeeGO, that i would love to see and wait with a pint on my hand for the faces of Elop and Steve B. :-)
I think WP7's biggest problem to adoption was Windows Mobile 6.x (and earlier).
Also, I'm not quite sure of the 1% market share, the only place I've read that is Gartner and as they said it was down on the same time last year (i.e. *before* WP7 launched), I'm inclined to take their figures with a pinch of the old sodium chloride.
Other sources put the figure in the 4-6% range, which actually compares quite well with Android at roughly the same age (2-3%).
I seriously doubt it'll make the 33% Android hit at the two year mark, though.
Well that'll be the end of HTC then. HTC should simply stick with Windows Phone and Android and keep on producing class leading hardware. We all know Android is set to become the dominant mobile OS, so on earth is HTC thinking foolish thoughts??? HTC, do what you do best, produce the best hardware bar none to remind Google that HTC hardware is far superior to Motorolas.