Nokia Deals Industry A Blow By "Going Android" - A Different Angle

So is Nokia going Android or not? Here's what I hope is a fresh outlook on this story...

It was 11 AM on a Monday morning, as one of my esteemed managers walks into my room with a blank look on his face. You know, one that states "I have a great secret to tell you, but not only is it such a secret... it also validates what I've been arguing for such a long time...". He asks for a moment of my time which I am obliged to give under such circumstances, thinking it's probably the latest and greatest about our product. So then the guy states with the required digerati pomp - "Have you heard that Nokia are switching to Android?"...

"Where have you heard that?" I answer, but I must admit I am a pretty blunt person, and it's pretty clear from my tone that my real reaction is "do you really think we should be wasting time on such nonsense?". The guy names a leading local daily whose writers are all fabled business and technology gurus. I suppress my laugh and dismiss this as rumor. Putting this behind me, I go back to work, and 10 minutes later I get the unavoidable email from one of my executives with the link to the Guardian article. Now that seals it. A "real authority" spilled the beans... Of course that article is a little less firm, stating that Nokia is "understood" to be making such a device and later that there is some "speculation following the Nokia-Intel announcement..."  A-ha.

So someone speculates, the Guardian "understands", and other newspapers are already committing. But it doesn't end there.

30 minutes later, it's all over the social networks and instant messengers, and various friends and colleagues are exchanging opinions. Of course I have to respond to some of them as they're asking me directly and I have to answer - otherwise I am the guy who's too aloof to care. So I get to spend another 15 minutes on this.

Somewhat flabbergasted, I walk over to get myself a cup of coffee, only to witness half of our developers standing in the corridors, exchanging opinions (best case) and libel (worst case), and generally mis-spending time and energies...

Is this over? Has Nokia's denial ended this? Maybe. Probably not.

Bottom line:

I can think of at least 200 small companies, 100 mid-sized and 10 giant ones where such news would be the talk of the day, resulting in dozens of thousands of managers, developers, analysts and any other shape or form of self-styled expert spending considerable time on this "debate". Probably hundreds of thousands of hours, costing dozens of millions, were spent on this.

So never mind that Nokia just acquired Symbian, that Google is an arch-adversary, that building Ovi and then succumbing to Google services (Maps, Calendar etc.) is almost like a public act of Harakiri for some of the executives there.

The real story is about the power of a rumor.

Or maybe not?

P.S: Who am I to talk? I just spent another half hour posting this...

PPS:

This is something I believe in a little more:

Nokia and Symbian: Forget about Android, it’s all about Cutey (Qt)

Comments

[Haim]

Hi Nadav, I have enjoyed reading your post... and especially the bottom line;) I also enjoyed the good work you are doing with your blog... there is a lot for many others to learn about blogs and their effective business usage... BTW, I am continuously working on a series of slides that focus on the possible business usages companies can do with blogs... more at http://www.lifemichael.com/en/?p=138. Keep on with the good work! Best, Haim.

[Charles Letizia]

Hi Nadav, this is very interesting, I'm Chief Procurement Officer for Cable & Wireless international and a heavy Worldmate user. as you can imagine, I'm constantly keeping tabs on what is going on with some of our key suppliers. Evidently this raises some issues for telcos as well.
Anyway, you have a solid product. I would like to have a chat with you, have you thought about partnering with telcos to offer this service to their high tier customers?
Cheers,

Charles Letizia
Chief Procurement Officer
Cable & Wireless International
charles.letizia@cwig.com

[Juan]

Plan-101-simple: if Nokia adopts android, it would be more and more difficult to maintain the brand as differenced as today. Android is for the jungle competition of OEMs, and they know that. Besides, they are betting for MAEMO, since they finally realized that Symbian was a dead horse.

Suddenly, all the software developers have to face a harsh reality: they have to develop for at least three more platforms (android, webOS -it sounds funny in Spanish, and Maemo) if they want to reach the majority of the market.