Nokia's adoption of Windows Phone 7 has gone down well with the large cellcos, but less well with its customer base, according to a survey on the Finnish firm's own blog.
The large mobile operators were reported to have urged Nokia not to support Android, and were keen to see MeeGo, or failing that, WP7, strengthened as a counterweight to Google. Now that the dust has settled on the Nokia-Microsoft marriage, Vodafone Germany's CEO Jan Geldmacher has expressed the support of the cellco community, saying it will be good for competition in the smartphone sector.
"We are very much looking forward to the new products that will come from the cooperation between Microsoft and Nokia," he said, though he does not agree with Nokia chief Stephen Elop that there is now a "three-horse race" for high end handsets. Instead, he still sees RIM as hugely important, especially in the business field, and said: "We think that a fourth operating system, with Nokia and Microsoft, will be a positive thing for the market overall."
There were more mixed reactions on the Nokia Conversations blog, where the vendor was surveying its users on their response to the WP7 deal. More than one in five did not want the new OS at all, with these people split about evenly between preferring MeeGo and Symbian. The survey asked what would be most appealing about WP7 on a Nokia device, but most of the 22.6% who ticked the 'other' category said they wanted to stick with the existing platforms.
On the positive side for Microsoft, 22% said the unique user interface was the most attractive feature to them, though it was not indicated whether this meant the UI in its current form - a hallmark of the Nokia-Microsoft alliance was the freedom for the Finnish partner to create its own own overlays and user experience, which has not been permitted to other OEMs (even HTC's popular Sense UI, which spanned Windows Mobile and Android, is hidden one layer down on WP7).
Other highly rated features were Xbox games support, integration with Windows PCs, higher resolution screens and even support for the IE9 browser. Nokia said that Microsoft data indicated that 90% of current WP7 users would recommend the platform to others.
Not that it is killing Symbian any time soon - it still expects to sell about 150m devices in the coming few years, mainly to low end profiles or as updates for the existing, 200m-strong installed base. At the recent Asian launch of the E7 phone, Vlasta Berka, general manager for Nokia Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, said: "Just because we are changing our direction in terms of a smartphone platform, it doesn't mean that the existing platform is completely broken. We still have obligations to our users, developers, business partners, and customers." And the first (perhaps only) MeeGo handset, the N950, will make its debut soon.
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