Nokia + Microsoft = 11 Days of Links

Since my life has continued to be personally challenging, I have not had the time to blog about my thoughts on the Nokia + MicroSquash announcement but here are my favorite articles of the last eleven days:
* asymco on In memoriam: Microsoft’s previous strategic mobile partners
* outsider on Microsoft Buys Nokia for $0B: “This is a coup, folks.”
* C. Enrique Ortiz on Reaction to Nokia 2011 Strategy Announcement (and Microsoft relationship)
* Mobile Monday Silicon Valley’s Mike Rowehl on Nokia and Microsoft: “So to all the other developers out there who are going to be hearing a ton of marketing down the line about the Microsoft/Nokia partnership and trying to make some sense of it, remember that this isn’t a two party deal. This is really about Microsoft, Nokia, and us. And in business deals like in poker: if you look around the table and can’t figure out who the sucker is, it’s you.”
* Roland Tanglao hits the whole matter on the head with point #2 in February 11, 2011 shall henceforth be known as #Nokia #Microsoft Co-Dependence Day 🙂 and further hits the nail on the head with a second blog post in Nokia execs believed it couldn’t do 21st century mobile phone experience hence Nokmsft & the move to Windows Phone 7
* Jonathan Greene on Nokia the OEM: “Microsoft gets a new hero manufacturer to abuse. If Nokia enables Windows Phone sales he wins – on both sides of the equation. Nokia as a company and brand has some major issues to resolve.
The real issues facing Nokia are remain the same. They still need to attract developers and require some major assistance still in the US, the largest smartphone market. Microsoft has barely made a dent and it seems their sales are in the channel rather than end user. Windows Phone is a fresh start in a race that’s been active for years. Android while more competitive for Nokia as an OEM would have been an easy option for developers to work with given the stratospheric growth and sales of Android products over the past two years. Windows Phone is certainly nice, but that’s all it is. There are no standout applications yet even though the growth has been reasonable. Time will tell, but I’m not feeling this at all.”
* Former Nokia designer, Adam Greenfield, who would not blog about Nokia upon departure has now blogged in Nokia: Culture will out: “I have to conclude that it’s this inability to even perceive the clear makings of an unacceptably bad user experience, let alone address them as profound obstacles to success in the marketplace, that leads to situations like this.
Another, blunter way of putting it: there’s nobody with any taste in the decision-making echelons at Nokia. And this is especially unfortunate and ironic, given that elegant, simple Finnish design has tutored generations in what taste means. My whole tenure in Espoo was soured by the nagging counterfactual, “What if Nokia had embraced and extended the finest traditions of its own national design culture, in its approach to the global mass market?”
Something tells me that Stephen Elop, whether or not he turns out to be a Trojan horse for Redmond, will be comprehensively unable to help in this department.”
* Today, former Nokia Lifeblog creator & executive Christian Lindholm, came out in favor of the alliance from a long term design cycle perspective in The beauty of the Nokia Microsoft deal:”In UX circles we have for a long time talked about Context or Task Centric UIs. UX people agree that context or task centric experiences are the future, but no one has stepped up and launched one, until Microsoft Phone 7. The Microsoft Phone UI is called Metro, from the underground network that connects you seamlessly from one place to another and from the clear signage the real world is full of. It is a great name, and a powerful guide for designers. It the first UI that has taken bold moves towards the context UI. (one of my visions here from 2007). The Metro vision is from 2004 it seems a long time ago, but designing these UI’s take a long time. A key reason is timing the paradigm shift. Microsoft simply had the guts to do it first. A huge bet. We do not know if it pays of, but one thing is certain it will be the catalyst to the next paradigm if it is not it. The most important sign is user reaction which generally is positive. Once that happens the rest will unlock.
Both Microsoft and Nokia knows that this is where things are going. Nokia is joining an industry transformation or even a disruption, started by Microsoft. It is a transformation, because we need to rethink how services work, how users are drawn into the services, and how branding is done and how customisation is done. How services are mashed up. Lost of challenging Service design rather than UI or UX design. Metro takes the UX business and turns it into a service business.”
Lindholm makes the first compelling argument for the Nokia + MicroSquash (mis)alliance, but I am still afraid that MicroSquash’s inerrant ability to crush and bankrupt partners as well as their deeply ingrained distaste/hate for all things open will be more detrimental to Nokia than the possibility that the two companies could *possibly* be on the vanguard of a whole new mobile UI / UX archetype.
Deep down inside, I am wary and more than a bit horrified at the Nokia + MicroSquash deal. It still smells slightly rotten to me.