Barcelona: Nokia, soon to be acquired by Microsoft, is turning to software created by arch-rival Google for a new line of phones it hopes will make it a late contender in the dynamic low cost smartphone market. Its first models, Nokia X, X+ and XL, rely upon an open version of the Android mobile software system created by Google that has become the world's most popular software used in smartphones.
The release of the phones just days before Nokia sells its handset business to Microsoft in a $7.2 billion deal, is an attempt to stay relevant in emerging markets, where low-cost Android phones are being sn-apped up by hundreds of millions of buyers. Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop said the market had “shifted dramatically,” and the group needed to address a sub-$100 segment that is set to grow four times faster than more expensive phones. He told a crowded press conference at the Mobile World Congress trade fair in Barcelona that rather than being an 180-degree turn in its strategy of using Microsoft’s Windows Ph-one for smartphones, it was a move that introduces the “next billion” users to Nokia’s hardware and Microsoft’s services. “We see the X family being complementary to (Windows Phone) Lumia at lower price points,” he said.
But the strategy shift underlines the many missteps made by the Finnish company since Apple launched its ground-breaking iPhone in 2007.
Nokia was caught between a rock and a hard place - committed to using Microsoft’s Windows Phone software but needing Android software to reach more cost-sensitive customers, CCS Insight’s head of research Ben Wood said. “That a company soon-to-be owned by Microsoft, the creator of the original operating system, is moving to Android is almost an “admission of failure”, he said.
Global smartphone shipments grew 41 percent annually to reach nearly 1 billion units in 2013, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics. Android phones from dozens of handset makers accounted for almost four out of every five smartphones sold, or 781.2 million units.
In the past year, Apple shipped 153.4 million smartphones worldwide for a 15 percent share of the market, making it the second largest smartphone platform after Android.
Microsoft Corporation was a distant third in market-share terms, shipping 35.7 million units worldwide with its Windows mobile software platform, but still struggling to gain traction in the low-tier and premium-tier smartphone categories, Strategy Analytics said.
