Dwindling Nokia… is it as bad as it seems?

Nokia recently announced their decision to drop Symbian as their main Smartphone operating system; and replace it with Microsoft’s brand new Windows Phone 7 Operating System.

This week Nokia released the details on how much profit they made in the last quarter. Not surprisingly their profits had fallen. Is this signalling the end of Nokia’s market dominance in being the world’s largest producer of mobile phones, or will this be a temporary blip that will be forgotten once the transfer over to the Windows Phone 7 Operating System is completed?

I’ve got a few qualms about Nokia’s decision to abandon the Symbian Platform.
I was a big Nokia fan up-until their announcement. In fact the week before I had bought one of the new Nokia N8; which I sent back needless to say.

What I don’t understand is why Nokia made this decision. If we think of how Symbian compared to the other Mobile Operating Systems; it was the most widely used (until Android took over it at the beginning of this year), the Ovi Store (Nokia’s App Store for Symbian) makes a lot of money; and has quite a lot of Apps in there.

All Nokia needed to do was polish up the interface a little bit; make it more “eye-candy” and simple for those who like that sort of the thing. Then they would’ve been a great competitor again.

Yet, what Nokia have managed to do it shoot themselves in the foot. They are transitioning over to an Operating System that is not very widely supported, has an extremely small App Store and that can’t even get a major update out of the door without failing.
I’m a Microsoft fan-boy, I’ll admit, and I love Windows 7 and the Xbox… But I draw the line at Windows Phone 7. Microsoft should’ve kept their sticky mits of my favourite mobile phone manufacturer; they’ve ruined it now.

Time will tell whether Nokia has made the right decision, I hope they have because I still like the phones that Nokia produce; it’s just a shame that from now on they’ll be running the wrong operating system.

What do you think Nokia’s future looks like? Is it a bleak one?