As mobile phone market intelligence analysts foresee a tough task for windows smartphone operating system outsmarting Android for instance, Agboola Toheeb, chief technical officer, ITRN Technologies Limited, told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek at the weekend that Microsoft’s new bride-Nokia possesses features that will lift its fortunes.
Agboola however warned that Microsoft needs to pay more sacrifice, fine-tune its operational philosophy to capture the market.
He believes that Microsoft should cash-on Nokia OVI software and developing it into a robust mobile OS with the goal of competing with Android and IOS.
“This is a tough one for Microsoft though owing to the fact that the company is usually not flexible about changing its philosophy on proprietary software model but many things have changed in the last few days at Microsoft including having a new CEO who is from India.
“Nokia take over is Microsoft’s second attempt and I am pretty sure they wouldn’t want to mess it up like they did with Danger in 2008. This time around Microsoft will want to tread carefully while trying to stay at the top. An area to look into is the Nokia OVI which I think has more potential than the blackberry software; Microsoft should focus on tweaking the Nokia software and developing it into a robust mobile OS with the goal of competing with Android and IOS.
“This should be done from the perspective of flexibility and openness and a far shift from the traditional Microsoft proprietary scope for developing software. They can do this leveraging the Nokia brand which I belief have a strong brand perception in the market place.
On Nokia regaining the top chart in the mobile/Smartphone market, Agboola said, “Let the challenge began. This could be a game changer for the industry as a whole. Microsoft and Nokia: Nokia lost out of the market because it couldn’t innovate its phone software and Microsoft couldn’t get its hardware in perfect shape before iPad.
“Now I want to belief this take-over would help Microsoft bounce back amid its dwindling fortunes and loss of market dominance in the last few years. However, nothing is impossible but I have a strong feeling Microsoft would rather use this as a platform to swing the market in its favor something more like Microsoft Mobile”.
The implication for the Nigerian market, he said, “Unarguably Nokia has a lot of domesticated functionality for the Nigerian lifestyle, but it will be nice to see a Nokia phone that runs on or in the least a Microsoft version of something close to Android portability and flexibility and I don’t mean Windows Smartphone OS.
“Nokia remains every Nigerians second choice phone after the exotics and classy phones, so I think Microsoft would need to shift from its rigid proprietary software paradigm to a slightly flexible openness to encourage app developers to thrive. This is the secret of Google’s Android & Apples IOS”.