Nokia Capital Markets Day 2011 – What could be announced?

There is definitely a buzz over the WorldWideWeb with the upcoming Nokia strategic conference on February 11th in London. Stephen Elop has spoken about different markets requiring different eco-systems; could this be a tie-up with Microsoft that has been rumoured since the former Microsoft Exec took over at the helm of the Espoo-based company?

A lot of rumours are abound about the event – some of them are below.

• Nokia will announce a tie-up with Microsoft where they will utilise the Windows Phone 7 mobile OS across their handsets.
• Nokia will announce that they will be releasing a Windows Phone 7 device, either globally or in the US.
• Nokia and the Microsoft mobile division will announce a merging to the two companies.
• Nokia and Microsoft will announce a deal involving the use of Microsoft Office applications in Nokia handsets.

Nokia Capital Markets Day is certainly a day where Nokia give the world their promises; Jay at MyNokiaBlog has found that Nokia’s 2010 Capital Markets Day announcement involved (amongst other things):

Nokia Devices & Services operational priorities
In addition to providing its key financial targets, Nokia also outlined key Devices & Services operational priorities for 2010. These are:
- Improve our user experience;
- Re-engineer our Symbian user interface; deliver a major product milestone before mid-year 2010, and another major product milestone before the end of 2010;
- Deliver our first Maemo 6-powered mobile computer, with an iconic user experience, in the second half of 2010;
- Significantly increase the proportion of touch and/or QWERTY devices in our smartphone portfolio;
- Scale up our Services business by expanding geographically and in partnership with more operators;
- Provide third party developers with better tools to create applications and content for our Ovi ecosystem;
- Further optimize the industry’s lowest cost end-to-end business model in Mobile Phones; and
- Continue to build on our affordable and localized services offerings for emerging market consumers.

That’s just part of the devices and services announcement of 2010′s Capital Markets Day announcement; the lines in bold above show where they failed. Reading between the lines of the announcement, Nokia had planned to release a Symbian^3 handset (the N8 – announced April 2010) by mid-year 2010 and a handset with the updated revamped Symbian platform (previously known as Symbian 4) by the end of 2010. This is all alongside the new Maemo6 handset which was shelved in place of a Nokia-Intel tie-up on the MeeGo platform.

Nokia’s failure to meet their targets from CMD could be in part due to several things; a change at the top, with Stephen Elop taking over from Olli Pekka Kallasvuo, the Intel/Nokia collaboration on MeeGo and the Symbian^3/Symbian^4 changing to one Symbian. Plus the demise of Symbian as a platform used by other manufacturers and the end of the Symbian Foundation.

With CMD 2011, will we see Nokia announce a deal with Microsoft for Windows Phone 7? It’s potentially more likely, given Nokia’s investment in Symbian and MeeGo, that we will see a strategic deal regarding the use of Office software amongst other things. Looking back at Microsoft’s announcement of Microsoft Communicator Mobile for Nokia, Kirt Debique says:

“Our alliance with Nokia aims to bring the Microsoft Office productivity experience to the millions of people using Nokia smartphones around the world … With the arrival of Communicator Mobile for Nokia today, we have a great start to fulfilling our joint vision.”

Personally, I think we’ll see the next stages of the office deal announced; maybe outlook could be used as the new email application on Nokia smartphones (Nokia messaging certainly isn’t good enough at the moment), or there could be something else set to be announced. Nokia may even make an announcement about their new home in Sunnyvale, Silicon Valley.

With Nokia’s resources and Microsoft‘s aim to become a major player in the smartphone market after their demise, I can understand why people believe in the potential deal. However, thinking outside the box, could Windows Phone 7 really help Nokia? We doubt it. It could actually help Nokia’s competitors as no doubt it would take around 12-18 months before the platform would be available on Nokia smartphones; this would put Nokia several years behind the competition and that really would spell the end for the Finnish company as a smartphone manufacturer. This is without even considering the effect on the loyal Nokia following alongside the multitude of Nokia N8 purchasers worldwide; Nokia would be foolish to consider abandoning the Symbian platform after recently launching the N8, C7, C6 and soon to be released E7 on the platform; their users would leave Nokia out of disgust. (An example is the backlash Nokia received after releasing their Maemo5 handset, the N900 and then abandoning the platform).

Overall, this year’s Nokia Capital Markets Day announcement is set to be followed by millions; this is where we see whether the changing of the guard at the top of the company has been effective or not. Whatever they announce, this really is Nokia’s last chance saloon when it comes to competing at the top of the smartphone ladder!

What do you think their strategy will be this year? Let us know in the comments!

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Category: Opinion