Nokia is feeling increasingly confident that it can play with the big boys in today’s smartphone race.
At the Mobile World Congress in Spain this week, the manufacturer is gaining a lot of attention. It garnered a lot of interest last year too, but the tone back then was mainly trying to figure out what Nokia would do to gain a new foothold in markets like the US.
Now, that question has been answered. Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform has paid off in spades. With only one phone available for sale, Nokia shot up in the ranks to become the #1 vendor of Windows Phone handsets, in its first quarter on the market.
Now, “Our focus is on competing with Android,” said Nokia CEO Stephen Elop at a Mobile World Congress event, as quoted by Cnet. It’s an incredibly ambitious roadmap as Nokia tries to legitimately compete with Google’s mobile platform, as well as the iPhone.
Being the #1 Windows Phone maker is a bit like saying Wendy’s is the #1 seller of Baconators. Within the confines of Microsoft’s platform, Nokia doesn’t have a lot of competition. But comparing the Lumia to the iPhone (or comparing Baconators to Big Macs) is a much different story.
Elop admitted, “We’re starting from a base with Windows Phone. We have to build from there.” The one thing Nokia doesn’t want to happen is for the Lumia 710 to have been a great success but for all future Lumia devices to fall flat.
Nokia’s Windows Phone devices are new and exciting. It’s usually pretty easy for a large company to roll out a brand new product with a lot of fervor. The hard part is maintaining that fervor.
