More or less what’s happened lately, not necessarily in the completely right order:
- Nokia loses most of its smartphone market share to Apple and later Google/Samsung/HTC etc. The stock plunges.
- Nokia collaborates with Intel for a modern smartphone/tablet platform called Meego, based on Nokia’s Maemo platform and Linux.
- Steven Elop moves from Microsoft to become CEO at Nokia.
- Nokia releases a few Meego phones.
- Microsoft lobbies and pays Nokia $1B (officially) to adopt Windows Phone, dropping both Symbian and Meego (surely Symbian was end of life, but that didn’t apply to Meego).
- Nokia employees are disgruntled over the choice of Windows Phone as the new smart device platform, blaming top management for treason and incompetence.
- Microsoft decides 2013 to acquire Nokia’ mobile phone division some time during 2014. The stock jumps.
- Nokia releases a low-end Android phone.
What happens next?
Nokia X Dual SIM – Affordable dual SIM smartphone with Android™ apps – Nokia
Hands on: Nokia X review | Phone Reviews | TechRadar
This is a rather low-speced phone (800*480, 3 Mp, etc), but it will also be sold for peanuts. The naming indicates this is one in a potential series of phones with different specs.
It runs a forked version of Android 4.1, making this an outdated and probably expensive platform for Nokia, as Google only delivers the full application package to Google-provided Android (and then of course the latest version), requiring replacement apps. Samsung has the same issue, for good and for bad. Nokia X comes with Opera’s browser. The UI is custom.
Nokia X family – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Interesting quote from Joe Belfiore, Microsoft: “Other things we are LESS excited [about]”. Like Android phones?