Nokia boss Stephen Elop has almost resembled a politician running for office recently, hitting the campaign trail in a big way to tell anyone who'll listen about Nokia's particular brand of mobile politics.
Part of the reason why, however, might simply be this: should the Windows Phone 7 partnership fail, Nokia has no Plan B. Should this platform burn, Nokia may well go down with it.
Elop has had a busy couple of weeks, and has spoken a lot about the decision to go with Windows Phone over Android, the foundations (or “pillars”) of Nokia's vision for ecosystem success with Microsoft as partner, and the specifics of what made Nokia start looking in the first place.
But in an exclusive interview with CNBC, Elop touched on a point we haven't heard discussed before – that there's no backup plan should the WinPho project go south.
Elop was asked about Nokia's Plan B would do should Windows Phone 7 not “gain traction”, given that it's officially started scaling back its development of Symbian.
“Plan B is to make sure that Plan A is very successful,” Elop responded. “The critical ingredient for success are there, consumers are saying the Windows brand operating system is very good. Better in terms of their satisfaction than the competing platforms, but Microsoft hasn’t had a partner doing its best work for Windows Phone.
“That’s the commitment Nokia made through this process. By bringing together our hardware, software and services assets with the strengths that Microsoft brings, we have a formula we believe will drive great success.”
Fine words indeed. Let's hope Elop doesn't come to regret them.
