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Comment by marshray | Hacker News Reader

Baloney. Some of Nokia's other options were to

1. Develop a fantastic new platform/product/ecosystem that people wanted to buy (using local talent)

2. Support Android on some or most of their devices

3. Reinvigorate their current platform somehow (new features, reduced costs, new apps, developer incentives, etc)

Keep in mind, MS's product in this space is widely considered less than successful. The only thing MS has going for it is cash in the bank, but so do Google and Apple and Nokia.

How many people walk into the store thinking "I'd like to sign up to buy a Windows phone"? How is this going to benefit Nokia again?

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Nokia has shown over time that #1 & #3 aren't realistic. As for Android (#2) vs Windows 7 Phone (W7P), you can make a strong argument for either's adoption.

W7P is currently not a market hit. As you mention, Microsoft has cash in the bank, and they are not going to give up (see xbox, search, etc). Given a couple generations of W7P development, W7P will look like Android today (read: usable).

Nokia may eventually be relegated to a commodity hardware maker, but they do benefit by adopting a modern, competitive mobile OS (as opposed to their current in house options). The worst case for Nokia may look like Motorola. (In that Motorola was bleeding post-RAZR, adopted Android, and are now doing fine even though they don't create the OS.)

Have you ever seen their local talent? These are the guys who built Symbian.

Nokia should have bought Palm (and similarly pivoted to it and away from the existing awful tech).

Windows Phone 7 has been on the market for less then a full quarter. It is a brand new OS, better on initial release then iOS 1.0 or Android 1.0. So stay calm. In time, people will see Windows Phone as an attractive alternative in the market.

RE point 1 and 3, Nokia did this already - it was supposed to be Maemo. They didn't go anywhere with it. They turned it into Meego. We know what happened with. Nokia failed MISERABLY in this regard.

How is WP7 better than iOS 1.0? It seems about feature even with iOS 1.0.

Nevermind that WP7 isn't competing against iOS 1.0. It's competing against iOS 4.3, and in the fall, iOS 5.0.

App ecosystem, better camera software, better social integration, better notifications. These are all better. It's a given that WP7 1.0 is competing with the most recent revs of iOS and Android, but the gap of what they have to make up is much smaller, which works to Microsoft's advantage, if they're willing to put resources into iterating quickly (which they haven't so far).

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