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Comment by HTelrunya | Hacker News Reader

1. Android would be short term profits. Let's just take Chinese market. China has 70% Android. Now, I am coming to the market and building a new Android phone. It's awesome and everything but how do I stand apart from HTC, Samsung, Moto and low cost options like ZTE? Imagine a Lumia running Android. Would I be able to beat HTC and Moto and Samsung with that?

2. I guess we will start seeing the Nokia MS partnership success going forward when Nokia really has a chance of adding value to MS products.

I agree that Nokia took on the insane task of reviving themselves as well as MS. But if they can get some sort of adoption with WP7, they can continue to survive and add value to the ecosystem going forward with WP8. They have to continue on life support until their true strategy kicks in to place.

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> I guess we will start seeing the Nokia MS partnership success going forward when Nokia really has a chance of adding value to MS products.

I doubt that. The biggest change was that the mobile devices turned from devices (that people buy and use, but rarely get 3rd-party software for) into platforms (that people buy to have access to 3rd-party software). The big difference is that there are not that much positive externalities for market share for devices, but positive network effects absolutely determine the platform market.

That's why Windows rules the desktop, and that is why Android will do so in the handset. I predict that all competitors will effectively be dead in 2 years, and only Android and iOS remain.

The argument against Android has always been that manufacturers using it have no power over their users. By that, I mean that customers could pick up another brand and it would still be Android. I remember reading some tech sites opinions on the Nokia-WP7 strategy and how the benefit was that it would give Nokia that edge that separates it from being just another manufacturer.

But if Nokia is successful and WP dominates, what's to stop everyone else from using WP as well? I guess skinning it, which is one of Nokia's rights in the Nokia-Microsoft deal, but that's like what HTC is doing with Sense and Samsung with TouchWiz. It's not as if a skin will really give you an edge.

The only real way to have won is to have your own OS and to be in control it. Meego might have worked better for Nokia than WP7 long-term since Nokia could influence the direction Meego was going in.

what's funny is that MS is probably making more off the Android market than the WinPhone market - all they have to do is threaten a patent lawsuit, and suddenly they're making a couple of dollars for every Android phone a vendor makes.

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