Microsoft has its own Windows Phone 8 phone in the works, according to WPcentral and BGR. “Details about what it looks like, hardware specifications, launch times, etc. have not been shared with us by the person(s) who have provided the information. The only thing we do know is when compared to current WP8 hardware it’s something unique.” Seems elementary. Not a big vote of confidence for Nokia though.
The title of this article should be:
RUMOR: Microsoft working on its own Windows Phone 8 device
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, “We need to compete with Android aggressively”
Now you must compete with all the different Android handset makers, iPhone, WP8 handset makers, including your strategic partner, Microsoft.
idiot…
Yeah, if Elop was really working for Nokia, he should have said: “”We need to compete, using Android aggressively.”
In memoriam:
http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/11/in-memoriam-microsofts-previous-st…
in the future any company announcing strategic partnership with Microsoft will see sizeable cut on its valuation.
Nokia obviously intends to focus on the low end of the phone market. The new Nokia smarphones will be really just be replacements for their feature phones as prices fall.
MS (in the unlikely event they build a phone for sale) will presumably be building a halo phone to take on the S3 and iPhone.
I don’t see it as unlikely, as they’re now making their own tablets. One could argue that in terms of hardware, a tablet is just an oversize smart phone.
Middle-segment of the phone market.
Low end is something like Nokia 1xx ( http://press.nokia.com/2011/08/25/nokia-launches-the-nokia-101-and-… ), 1208, 1616, or 5030 handsets – all running Series 30. Maybe also entry-level Series 40 phones, like 2323; maybe the lowest Asha, too (that would be 201, I think).
That said, Nokia obviously focuses also on the low end, on the above – but the “feature phones” on which you focused are the middle-segment of phone market (that includes most Series 40, Asha series; at least some Symbian smartphones, too …though, from what I see, Ashas are starting to be called “smartphones” too, anyway – after all, if we’d try to be rigorous with definitions, even 2323 is more of a smartphone that iPhone in its first year…)
And who knows what are the exact plans of Nokia with those – Ashas seem decent, it is under Elop that the S40 platform nicely improved after many years of stagnation… (but loud pundits don’t see it, in their atypical western places, with tunnel vision focused on ~US smartphones)
Edited 2012-10-08 00:53 UTC
I don’t see it as unlikely, as they’re now making their own tablets. One could argue that in terms of hardware, a tablet is just an oversize smart phone.
Edited 2012-10-03 15:09 UTC