Microsoft Denies any Home-Grown WP; Still Believes in OEMs (+ Random Thoughts on Meego)

No beating around the bush here, when Microsoft announced it’s own home-made line of tablets alot of minds (mine included) went down the “Nokia is screwed” route; but thankfully we’re all a bit hyper-imaginative, since MSFT have confirmed that they are currently no plans to create a Microsoft phone to accompany their pretty impressive surface tablet.

Senior Marketing Manager for Windows Phone has denied the rumor that they are making their own phones. He also said that they have a strong ecosystem of partners that they are very satisfied with them

NOTE: Jay beat me to the original post but as my thoughts got carried away and diversified a bit I thought I’d stick with it and share my ideas.

Of course this is great news for Nokia (and any other OEM for WP) as it puts to rest that little annoying voice that was whispering doubts into their ears, after all how can you compete with the people who make the OS itself? Which on a totally unrelated subject was the reason why I don’t think Meego could have made it as a 3rd/4th ecosystem- who in their right mind would choose to be an OEM competing against the N9 WITHOUT swipe interface on their phones (as that is a custom skin that wouldn’t be part of the licencing deals)?

Anything and I mean Anything that anyone pushed out would look like a troll in a beauty pageant (don’t bother searching for that phrase I just made it up). At the risk of sounding cliched Meego was a victim of it’s own perfection in the N9 (although a bit pre-mature). If perhaps Nokia had a slightly less investment in Meego (meaning Intel or some other SOFTWARE company was the main developer) there might have been a glimmer of hope, but it’s no use competing against the people who coded the whole OS; where they know every line of code and have a huge head start, it just doesn’t seem reasonable.

Honestly I couldn’t see Microsoft going down that same route of pushing out their own phones at the risk of alienating their OEMs; not because that would be mean, simply because WP doesn’t have enough of a userbase to be abandoned by it’s OEMs. I can see Microsoft pushing out their own phone somewhere down the line once WP has established a PROPER foothold in the smartphone market (at least 15-20%), hopefully if that time comes Nokia will be well back on it’s feet and kicking diversifying into multiple strange new worlds (maybe the concept UI we saw yesterday).

The tablet market could be considered as if Microsoft didn’t encroach on any of it’s OEMs as really none of them ever put some serious effort into a tablet (except Samsung) and those who did make a tablet pushed it out under the Android Banner (HTC Flyer), but phones are a whole nother story; when an OS manufacturer knows how much effort a company such as Nokia went through to get those WPs up and running and the number of services they’re providing for their WPs under the Lumia name they probably will think twice before messing with them. Also it would seem that MSFT have slightly dug themselves into a commitment with Nokia by the amount of air time they inadvertently gave to the Lumia range, using the Lumias as their phone of choice in the “Smoked by Windows Phone” competitions as well as using mockups VERY similar to Lumias in their presentations and bringing Nokia on stage in their Dev meets has made Nokia/Lumia Synonymous with WP; meaning when someone mentions WP they would conjure a picture of a lumia their brain, if MSFT were to make their own phone they’d have to tone down the subliminal advertising of Nokia’s first.

Category: Nokia, Windows Phone