BARCELONA – How do you change your whole business without losing your customers and partners? In a small group interview at Mobile World Congress, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop didn't give a clear path for transitioning from Symbian to Windows phone, but it's clear he's thinking about the problem.
"We'll be investing effort to make sure that a Symbian user has some sort of path forward in terms of Windows Phone … we don't think people will stop buying [Nokia Symbian smartphones,]" he said.
Future Symbian devices will have "improvements" such as "gigahertz multicore processors," but it's clear that Nokia is shifting focus. Nokia made the final decision to switch to Windows Phone 7 the night before Elop's Friday announcement, after spending several months looking at Microsoft, Google and in-house options, Elop said.
The new Nokia will rely on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 for its smartphone OS. Nokia doesn't have a normal relationship with Microsoft; the phone maker will have a lot more control over its Windows Phone platform than the standard OEM. It will shy away from making any changes to the main UI or to anything which could affect developers. But if providing a faster camera app improved the performance of Nokia cameraphones, for instance, Nokia could contribute that to Windows Phone, Elop said.
"We are going to be involved in every step of the development process … this is quite a bit different than the traditional OEM model," he said.
Still, though, it's a bit frustrating and unclear how much Nokia's phones will differ from the standard Windows Phone software. Elop said that "there will be some Nokia exclusive differentiating capabilities that we build for Nokia's devices," but said they wouldn't be UI skins. He talked a bit about augmented reality and augmented-reality-based advertising as possibilities. It's clearly early days in this relationship.
Elop said he thinks other OEMs, like Samsung and HTC, will continue to make Windows Phones even though Nokia has unusual access to the platform because Windows Phones offer better product margins than Android devices.
"Even if a company is making all sorts of money with Android, it's very well understood that … margins will come under increasing pressure," he said.
Keeping Nokia's existing developers as it transitions to Windows Phone may be difficult, as Windows Phone doesn't use Nokia's existing Qt development platform. Nokia will still be selling Symbian phones for a while and it's making at least one MeeGo phone, Elop said. He also, tantalizingly, teased the idea that Qt might become a development platform for Nokia's huge body of Series 40 feature phones. But he held the line on Qt for Windows Phone 7.
"Both Nokia and Microsoft agreed that Qt should not be on Windows Phone … it was architecturally possible but created all sorts of challenges," he said. "We [would be] forking from a messaging perspective and a mindshare perspective, and we thought that clarity is essential."
Nokia hasn't lost its relationship with Intel although it spurned the Nokia-Intel joint project MeeGo for its next platform, Elop said. Nokia is continuing to work with MeeGo, he insists, and he's meeting with Intel CEO Paul Otellini here at Mobile World Congress to figure out their next steps.
Elop has described the smartphone world as a "three-horse race" between Microsoft, Google and Apple. So where does that leave RIM? RIM doesn't yet have the full "ecosystem" needed to remain a major player in smartphones, and they're soon going to have to make the same kinds of choices Nokia Did, Elop said.
"They're selling a lot of phones. We respect them, there's no question. But … I don't yet have vision into what the BlackBerry ecosystem looks like. RIM needs search. RIM needs advertising. They can build it all themselves, they can get it from Google, or they can get it from Microsoft."
Nokia plans to dig soon into RIM's stronghold in the US, which may create problems for the BlackBerry maker. Of course, we've heard Nokia say they'll be selling more US smartphones before. Elop wouldn't commit to making CDMA phones (although he said Verizon is a "very large player") and didn't really give a clear path to getting more Nokia phones into US stores, although he acknowledged offerings like the cancelled AT&T X7 were "not competitive."
"We have an obligation to put competitive products in the marketplace," he said.