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Nokia & Microsoft Join Forces...


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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTCwf6dXZOg

Nokia and Microsoft teamed up on Friday to build an iPhone killer in a desperate attempt to take on Google and Apple in the fast-growing smartphone market.

Nokia said using Microsoft's Windows Phone software in its smartphones would speed up new product launches, but shares in the world's largest cellphone maker fell sharply on uncertainty about the financial impact of new chief executive Stephen Elop's strategic u-turn.

"It is now a three-horse race," said Elop, who was drafted in to head Nokia from Microsoft last September.

Elop said the partnership would mean job cuts around the world, while research and development spending would also be slashed.

The deal with Nokia marks a major breakthrough for Microsoft which has struggled for years to establish itself in wireless.

But investors were unconvinced by Elop's new strategy and Nokia shares tumbled 10 percent after Nokia said 2011 and 2012 would be "transition years," fuelling fears of a negative impact on margins.

Nokia said its operating margin would be "10 percent or more" after the transition period, compared with a margin of 7.5 percent for 2010.

"Given that the people who were positive on the stock were looking for mid-teens devices margins by 2012, we can see some cuts to estimates," Richard Windsor, global technology strategist at Nomura said.

Nokia has rapidly lost share in higher-margin smartphones as Apple's iPhone, and products based on Google's Android platform, have revolutionized the market.

Although Microsoft's Windows Phone platform, which had a 2 percent market share in the last quarter, is widely recognized by industry experts as a leading edge technology, it has not yet caught the imagination of consumers.

The decision to throw its lot in with Nokia could put others off using its software, but analysts said that on balance it was Microsoft that would gain most from the deal.

"I do not see LG, Samsung, HTC carrying on with Windows Phone. They are betting everything on (Google's) Android. Nokia's obviously going to have a much deeper integration than the others," said Carolina Milanesi, handsets analyst at IT research firm Gartner.

FEAR FACTOR

Nokia, which has struggled to create a rival to Apple's iPhone phenomenon, is now watching smaller competitors like HTC Corp and Motorola hook up their smartphones to Google's Android software and lure customers around the globe.

"This is a partnership born out of both parties' fear of marginalization at the hands of Apple and Google but there is no silver bullet," said analyst Geoff Blaber from CCS Insight.

Nokia's share of the smartphone market fell to 31 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 from 38 percent the previous quarter.

In a bid to stem Nokia's losses, chairman Jorma Ollila poached Elop from Microsoft. The 47-year-old Canadian is the first non-Finn to head Nokia, which has been criticized for a closed culture and inability to develop new products quickly.

Nokia said in a statement it would stick with its current management team, with only one senior executive to leave. There had been speculation of a wider cull at the company. Elop said he would announce a new North American management team later.

Nokia also said it would use Microsoft's Bing search engine across its cellphones, potentially opening up a huge market for Microsoft as it seeks to build up its challenge to Google as the world's leading search engine.

Analysts said the Finnish company, which invested billions of dollars in building up mobile internet services under its previous CEO, had effectively admitted defeat in its services strategy by joining forces with Microsoft.

"This is a very frank admission that Nokia's platform strategy has failed and underlines the seriousness of Nokia's position. Such a move would have been unthinkable just 12 months ago," Blaber said

Could be a problem in the smart phone market if microsoft can get the OS upto iOS levels... the first version did look alright but still someway to go....

Nokia have always made sick phone just symbian was the biggest fail ever.... worst OS going...

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Hmmm windows OS phone never really interest me, there's always that underline corporate association with windows phone software. Eg just so boring to look at and uninspiring and feels very limited. Compared to the new kids on the block. And with nokia not only losing in sales, they've already lost the cool cred factor or "desire\need to have" factor.I can't see how they can pull themselves ahead of apple iphones and google andriod and even blackberry. The damage has been done, they buried themselves outta ignorance.

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I'm just sorry for the nokia employees as there will be massive layoffs

still, im excited about it. I like wp7 and this isn't me being a fan boy. I have/had a blackberry, iphone and wp7. For my needs the iphone wins but not by much. The wp7 is very close and only let down because it is slightly restrictive and doesn't have anywhere near the support apps wise that the iphone has. To its credit, its very new and is very good so the potential for it to grow in the next few months etc is there. It doesn't things differently but just as well.

i don't think it looks corporate at all. If anything the old winmo OS looked really corporate and boring to me. The tiles thing on the wp7 is really nice especially after you have set it up to have all the contacts and relevant stuff you need displayed. The way it collates all the users contact info from various sources to create a comprehensive profile is in my opinion, better than the iphone hands down.

Hopefully nokia and build some quality handsets for the os and together develop and improve it as new iterations of it get released. The smartphone market needs new competition like this. Its not healthy to see one platform dominate.

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Guest Waka Flocka Dave

Hmmm windows OS phone never really interest me, there's always that underline corporate association with windows phone software. Eg just so boring to look at and uninspiring and feels very limited. Compared to the new kids on the block. And with nokia not only losing in sales, they've already lost the cool cred factor or "desire\need to have" factor.I can't see how they can pull themselves ahead of apple iphones and google andriod and even blackberry. The damage has been done, they buried themselves outta ignorance.

dnt think youve actually looked at windows phone 7

its actually good

/

what'll happen to Symbian^3 n them other OS' they have?

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Nah I've never looked at the new windows 7 OS. But that's my point, after bad experiences of older versions and the percieved image, I never felt curious or registered any interest to even bother look at it!Bit ignorant yes, but thats the point I'm making, nil interest. Bores me just hearing the name alone windows... Bland. But yeah, hopefully they turn things around. I remain a skeptic til then.

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Nah I've never looked at the new windows 7 OS. But that's my point, after bad experiences of older versions and the percieved image, I never felt curious or registered any interest to even bother look at it!Bit ignorant yes, but thats the point I'm making, nil interest. Bores me just hearing the name alone windows... Bland. But yeah, hopefully they turn things around. I remain a skeptic til then.

I was exactly the same, then I tried Windows phone 7 and my opinion did not change in the slightest.

You guys rate it too much. Its improved from 6.5 but its still way behind iOS and android.

I hope this merger flops, both companies were market leaders and let their competition sh*t all over them.

Serves them right for being complacent.

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Nah I've never looked at the new windows 7 OS. But that's my point, after bad experiences of older versions and the percieved image, I never felt curious or registered any interest to even bother look at it!Bit ignorant yes, but thats the point I'm making, nil interest. Bores me just hearing the

name alone windows... Bland. But yeah, hopefully they turn things around. I remain a skeptic til then.

I was exactly the same, then I tried Windows phone 7 and my opinion did not change in the slightest.

You guys rate it too much. Its improved from 6.5 but its still way behind iOS and android.

I hope this merger flops, both companies were market leaders and let their competition sh*t all over them.

Serves them right for being complacent.

Of course it's going to be behind IOS. It's just come out, but in it's current first iteration it is very good and it can only improve. IMO like any other smartphone os you cannot give a real opinion on it until you have properly field tested it in the wild for a few days. Touching it for 10 mins in a shop tells you nothing. If microsoft can get the same app support as android and apple it will be a key factor to being successful. It is growing faster at rate faster than any other os due to Microsoft allowing devs to keep loads of the profits compared to apple.

Apples marketing is out of this world and will get people wanting the iphone/os even if it becomes sh*t or inferior to the competition. Windows phone 7 has had barely no marketing or it was done poorly. Shops barely displayed it 2 weeks after release. Your average dummy probably

wouldn't have even heard of it despite how radically different it's is. Androids open source has the tech geek Market and is growing fast too but IMO it's constant fragmentation will end up hurting it in terms of its casual user base.

How can you want both companies to fail. That's dumb still. Non of us benefit from one company dominating at all. Competition will push these companies to give us better products. Nokia were still one of the biggest sellers of phones on the world. It's their smart phone Market that sucked. This merger will probably mean bringing a smart phone os to cheaper handsets and thus newer younger audience and foreign markets.

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Nah I've never looked at the new windows 7 OS. But that's my point, after bad experiences of older versions and the percieved image, I never felt curious or registered any interest to even bother look at it!Bit ignorant yes, but thats the point I'm making, nil interest. Bores me just hearing the

name alone windows... Bland. But yeah, hopefully they turn things around. I remain a skeptic til then.

I was exactly the same, then I tried Windows phone 7 and my opinion did not change in the slightest.

You guys rate it too much. Its improved from 6.5 but its still way behind iOS and android.

I hope this merger flops, both companies were market leaders and let their competition sh*t all over them.

Serves them right for being complacent.

Of course it's going to be behind IOS. It's just come out, but in it's current first iteration it is very good and it can only improve. IMO like any other smartphone os you cannot give a real opinion on it until you have properly field tested it in the wild for a few days. Touching it for 10 mins in a shop tells you nothing. If microsoft can get the same app support as android and apple it will be a key factor to being successful. It is growing faster at rate faster than any other os due to Microsoft allowing devs to keep loads of the profits compared to apple.

Apples marketing is out of this world and will get people wanting the iphone/os even if it becomes sh*t or inferior to the competition. Windows phone 7 has had barely no marketing or it was done poorly. Shops barely displayed it 2 weeks after release. Your average dummy probably

wouldn't have even heard of it despite how radically different it's is. Androids open source has the tech geek Market and is growing fast too but IMO it's constant fragmentation will end up hurting it in terms of its casual user base.

How can you want both companies to fail. That's dumb still. Non of us benefit from one company dominating at all. Competition will push these companies to give us better products. Nokia were still one of the biggest sellers of phones on the world. It's their smart phone Market that sucked. This merger will probably mean bringing a smart phone os to cheaper handsets and thus newer younger audience and foreign markets.

I'm going to stop you here.

Before smartphones were smartphones to the masses they were running on windows mobile. Pretty much any advanced/business handset was running windows mobile. Long before other manufacturers even THOUGHT about using touchscreens.

They were the market leaders BY A LONG SHOT & FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS, they made little to no progress. Apple and Android have.

Microsoft saw they were losing the consumer, worked on an operating system, released it and it still isn't up to scratch. This isn't something they dreamt up overnight they talked about transforming the OS for years. The end result isn't good enough.

its like LG bringing out a console now to compete with the PS3 and 360 but when you look closer its just a dusty ol' sega saturn in a shiny new case...

Nokia dominated the market in the high-end and low-end phones. They got complacent and now they dominate neither.

Both companies have realised the error of their ways and are hoping to use each other as a springboard to success.........but why has it taken so long?!

Of course I want competition in the market, it means the consumer wins.

But I want them to fail because I don't think they deserve to succeed. Both companies have been half-hearted over the years. Maybe a fail is what they need to make things work.

Other OS have made more improvement in 2-3 years than Windows Mobile and Symbian have in 7-8, you could put that down to technological advancement - or you could say that when they were market leaders and they noticed pressure, why didn't they start the ball rolling.

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i'm not disputing that they have been lazy when the old winmo system was around. The fact is that wp7 IS the first iteration because it has been completely redsigned from the ground up by a new team (i think). You cant compare the two the OS because they are a different breed from each other with different philiosphies (sp?) behind them. You need to forget about winmo. I dont believe it factors in to todays world. That was a different era when smart phones were not being rocked by casual users whose primary use is social networking. It would be silly to deny apple and its ios completely reshaped or heavily influenced the direction or thought processes of os now. It kicked everyone up the back side which is a good thing. Microsoft took this and built a new os with a new direction but in a different way. I'm actually impressed it managed to create an os concept with just ripping off ios. As far as i am aware it was developed by a seperate team and there were a lot of conflicts with other internal os concepts(botched Kin anyone?).

The fact is competition has spurred this wave of innovation on am i for one and glad for it. I don't believe in the "deserves to fail" because when you are winning or there is no alternative you obviously wont care and can become complacent. There is always going to be someone who will come from left field that will get everyone to buck up their ideas. Apple is currently on a high but with the way they are going lately i wonder how long it will take for the bubble to burst and another contender comes in. At times they are definitely acting how Microsoft used too.

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they are trying so hard with bing

llow it no1 is buying it

does anyone use bing?

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Industry tracking firm comScore on Friday reported that Microsoft's Bing gained ground on Google in the lucrative Internet search market in January.

Google continued to dominate, handling 65.6 percent of "explicit core" online queries, but Bing's share grew about a percent from December while Google's slid by about the same amount.

About 16.1 percent of US online searches were done at Yahoo! websites, which are powered by Bing. Bing's handling of 13.1 percent of searches brought its total share of the load to 29.2 percent.

Ask accounted for 3.4 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL Network with 1.7 percent, according to comScore.

Nearly 17 billion online searches were conducted in the United States in January, with Google tending to 11.1 billion of them, comScore reported.

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won't work

Sony Ericsson's Experia phones with windows on them are also behind, and Sony Ericsson make better phones than Nokia.

only thing that will help other companies in the phone market is an improvement in BBM type apps that aren't BBM

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