Microsoft and Nokia Join Forces to Battle Smartphone Evil

nokia logoms_office_logoMicrosoft and Nokia held a press event today to announce a new alliance between the two firms. I attended the event to see if any new information would be shared that had not already leaked out. The president of the Business Division for Microsoft, Stephen Elop, shared the stage with the vice president of devices for Nokia, Kai Oistamo. The pair led a simple, five minute cheerleading session to talk about the new alliance between the two firms. Notoriously missing from the event was anyone from the Microsoft Windows Mobile team. Windows Mobile is Microsoft’s platform that competes with Symbian from Nokia.

While neither company representative was willing to discuss specific parameters of the alliance, they spent most of the event talking each other up. The theme of the announcement from both companies was that “choice” is good, and that’s why they are cooperating, even while competitors. The gist of the deal has the two companies working to leverage Microsoft technology on the Nokia product line.

Nokia would only firmly commit to two things — there will be a Symbian version of Office Mobile next year, and it will also be bringing Microsoft’s Office Communicator to their phones. This is also expected to happen next year. Office Mobile will be produced for inclusion on the Nokia Eseries phones at first, and other product lines as they see fit. When pressed about that statement Nokia would not commit to bringing Office to any other product for certain.

Nokia is already licensing Exchange and ActiveSync technology from Microsoft, and the alliance will see that expanded to add Sharepoint Server and the Microsoft System Center support on the back-end. System Center is an IT device management technology. Throughout the press event today it was clear that Office Mobile for Symbian is the cornerstone of the alliance. Microsoft kept emphasizing that, although Nokia did not.

Elop did say that Microsoft is still firmly committed to Windows Mobile, and that Nokia is just as committed to Symbian. The two companies will still compete while playing in the same sandbox. Nokia’s commitment to Symbian was also emphasized to Om Malik, so it’s clear Symbian is not going away.

During a brief Q&A session following the announcement, it was stated that Nokia has no plans to make a Windows Mobile phone. They didn’t say they wouldn’t produce one, just that they didn’t plan on it “at this time.” Microsoft repeated that the alliance was focused on Symbian, although Nokia held back from firmly stating that.

When asked what mobile operators will get out of the alliance, Microsoft stated that Nokia’s extensive customer survey information would benefit operators to help them make better offerings to their customers. That sounds like Nokia may be required to provide carriers with customer information as part of the deal.

The alliance is basically as expected — Microsoft will produce software for Nokia. Throughout the event Nokia kept calling the development a collaboration, but I don’t recall Microsoft saying that. Nokia wins Office Mobile and Communicator out of the deal, although I’m not sure what they gain from that. Office support is already provided by third party solutions for Symbian, and some would claim these are superior to the existing Windows Mobile version of Office Mobile. I tried to find out if the Symbian version of Office Mobile would be a port from the Windows Mobile version, but my question was not answered. As for Office Communicator, I personally have never seen any company use it other than Microsoft. Maybe Nokia is planning to sell phones to Microsoft employees.

The big loser of the deal in my view  is the Windows Mobile team at Microsoft. Yesterday they could claim the only version of Microsoft Office for a smartphone; today they can’t. Their loss was driven home after a brief audio outage at the press event today. When audio was restored Elop joked that they should obviously have used Nokia handsets to handle the press call. Ouch.

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