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Comment by schuke | Hacker News Reader

It looks Nokia is in the vantage position now. Nokia can afford walking away from Windows Phone. But Microsoft can't. Nokia accounts for roughly 80%* of all Windows Phones. If Nokia leaves, WP is basically doomed.

*http://blog.adduplex.com/2013/05/adduplex-windows-phone-stat...

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Correction, windows phone is doomed, irrespective of Nokia or Microsoft's actions. People just hate windows; Microsoft should just change the name and I swear they'd sell like gangbusters.

You have to understand, Nokia and Microsoft Both lost position in the market as a result of working together. There's a big portion of the world that would buy a decent nokia phone, just because of the history. Fuck Microsoft, make the world's most badass android phone and they stand a chance. Standing with Microsoft is killing them.

Microsoft should just change the name

How about "Portals"?

Numbers scare people. Windows phone 8 sounds scary. Why not Windows "Portal" or Windows "Air" or simply "Air".

Microsoft just sucks at marketing and so does Nokia; which is run by an ex-Microsoft employee. I swear he went to Nokia to ruin them and put them in a position where Microsoft could acquire them.

Don't account to malice what can be accounted to incompetence. :) If MS acquired Nokia it would sink only lower, and MS knows it, that's why they killed the deal.

I do think you're ignoring the market reality. Before elop, Nokia had a 12-15% global market share and windows had 3. As a consequence of the migration away from Symbian (the infamous burning platform memo) Nokia went from 12-15% to 3.2% in very short order, like 2 years. The lift to Windows phone? .4% market share.

In short, Nokia burning 10-12% market share to boost Windows by .4%. It's one of the worst business case studies ever: how to kill a manufacturer.

There's no way Nokia would be at 3% market share if they'd gone after the future OS after Symbian. There's no way Nokia would be at 3% if they went with Android. All of the mobile OS geeks knew Windows was doomed because in the 10+ years they've been releasing Mobile OS systems, every single one has been pure crap. Why would WindowsP8 be different?

Seriously, Nokia was a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Baller with Elop as high-priest.

Blackberry went with the "future OS" and now has cratering market share (under 3%). HTC went with Android, and had a head start over Nokia, and it too has less than 3% market share. Motorola is owned by Google and has virtually no market share.

Everyone seems to assume that Nokia would do well if only it had used another platform. Why? Most of it's competitors haven't.

Tiles.

How about Portals?

GlaDOS.

That's what's so incredible. Again and again, Microsoft has persisted in their delusion that the trademark "Windows" somehow holds value in consumer space. The Windows brand has yet to earn them a dime's worth of consumer attention or goodwill, but Ballmer keeps humping the chicken. He just knows that there's a golden egg in there, somewhere amongst all those feathers.

The only thing "Windows" means to the consumer is the certainty that, whenever they see the term come up at work, for whatever reason, in whatever context, they are going to have to call the helpdesk. Again.

I agree that the product name Windows Phone is one of the worst ideas ever in business.

At a time when clearly the very last thing people want is all the shit that they associate with Windows .... name your new phone OS that.

It's scary to think such a big and powerful corporation as Microsoft is so delusional as to think people actually like windows. That they don't see that people buy Windows because they have no choice. MS brilliantly set up this whole quasi monopoly, but somehow they seem to believe their own marketing spin on it...

Fun fact: I heard of several ex-iPhone owners Nokia with Windows is the perfect phone.

But yes, Microsoft still has a bad name. Maybe they should call it NokiaOs

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