Nokia execs and senior tech people have said on several occasions that they seriously considered Android and specifically rejected it. The reasons are obvious to anyone who follows the industry:
It would instantly switch Nokia to being a hardware-focused company with little or no ability to differentiate itself in the eco-system and software. There is just no way a company with Europe-based R&D and design cost structures can compete price-wise with Samsung, one of the planet's premier volume electronics manufacturers, with a significant and increasing degree of vertical integration. Put bluntly, without a differentiator over which it has some influence, Nokia would be forced to become just another box shifter, and it simply cannot match Samsung in churning out cost-competititve hardware. Nokia has chosen specifically not to compete with Far Eastern manufacturers, but rather to leverage FE manufacturing and spend a lot more energy on software, eco-system & design aspects and also the carrier and channel relationships that are almost as important in driving volume into the market.
Samsung, on the other hand, is software-agnostic. It'll go with whatever sells or has half a chance of selling. So far in the mobile and tablet space, it cares does little more than pay lip service to ecosystems and OS platforms, mainly because that's what their customers (mainly not end-users) and the Press want to hear. Samsung makes its money by manufacturing and shifting hardware in volume. Period. And it does this superbly well and with great success, with all the attendant paybacks in efficiencies of scale, volume, etc.
Please don't think I'm somehow denigrating Samsung or think that this business approach is in any way less worthy. It's a perfectly valid model and the market needs companies that do it well - and Samsung do it superbly well. Hats off to them. They can certainly out-manufacture Nokia or almost anyone else on earth, at a lower price and with outstanding quality. We need companies like Samsung, and long may they live.
But it's not Nokia's approach - and neither can it be. They simply cannot choose to be a volume box shifter with zero-differentiation software like Android, and expect to survive let alone thrive when Samsung can do it faster, cheaper and in greater volume than just about anyone else. So the New Nokia has to look into the 'softer' side, and make its bets there. It also means they can draw on traditional European (and American strengths) in design, software and 'value add' rather than on low-cost manufacturing. Yes, it's true that Nokia rode a wave in first cellphone/mobile proliferation, and shifted more handsets than anyone else on the planet. Those days are over - once Samsung and others got serious and scaled up volume, handset prices dropped and margins for all but two or three manufacturers evaporated. When you're hardware-focused, volume is everything, and you do whatever it take to shift another million boxes. That's not a bad thing - it's a good thing - but it's different from the approach of others who choose to look at the 'softer' side, ie design, IP, software, "eco-systems" (I detest the buzzword), and so on.
Had Nokia "done the sensible thing and chosen Android" it would have delivered the company and its future into Samsung's hands. Within 24 months it would be a gaunt shadow of its former self - all the design, software and value-add people would have melted away - and within three years it would collapse into irrelevance and fold because Samsung (and others) can do it faster and cheaper. It would have been a monumental strategic blunder.
So why not do both WP and Android? Get the volume with Android, and use the cash and time to build WP at the smartphone/value-add end? We can be certain this was discussed and analysed to death inside Nokia. In the end they decided to not be a company that hedges its bets and goes with the flow/LCD, but to resolutely focus on building something for the longer term. That requires dedication, focus, and ... commitment. Not everyone might agree with their decision, but we can all admire the fact that they made a clear decision and committed everything. It's a big and risky bet, and it can only succeed if the company isn't also distracted by the short-term money that would come from an Android volume-spurt, because that would pull them back into the direction they can never survive long-term: another generic Android box-shifter.
