sunny with chance of flying pigs

Give Nokia and Microsoft some time to execute on this deal. Granted, behemoths like those are not well known for their speed or excellency of execution. And yet, Microsoft has managed to deliver WP7 that is not just a me-too product. It is innovative, well thought-out and feels genuinely different from iOS or Android. So it's pigs flying time and maybe Nokia+Microsoft will manage to give the Apple & Google world some solid competition.

The assets are there. Microsoft has a solid smartphone OS and even a decent app portfolio. The OS has some bits lacking like multitasking and a real-time kernel to be able to run the phone radio on the same chip as the rest of the phone. However, nothing a couple of of competent software engineers cannot solve. Nokia on the other hand knows how to make phones. They have a massive industrial design and manufactionring operation in place and their brand is not that bad.

With this deal, Nokia will be the #1 WP7 maker and most probably the only one in the long term and that is just what they need: an genuinely different and innovative operating system that is exclusive to Nokia phones.

So I do see how this makes sense. If Apple and Google look at the cards Nokia+Microsoft have in their hands, they have reason to be afraid.

Now the real question is: will Nokia+Microsoft be able to play those cards smartly and win. Oh look, there is a flying pig above the building over there !