Windows 7 set to charge Nokia smartphones

Smartphones – a segment offering tremendous opportunities, and expected to grow at a CAGR of 48% over 5 years. The leader in this segment are Nokia,Apple’s iphone, Blackberry, HTC.

The Finnish giant had been seeing a downward spiral since 2007 when the first iPhone hit the market and Google announced Android. That was a time when Nokia's market share in the smartphones segment was nearly 50 percent. Nokia had been considering a strategic move to reposition itself as the market leader in the smartphones segment.

In February 2011 Nokia announced a plan to make Microsoft Windows Phone 7 its high end smartphone operating system, reducing MeeGo(a Linux-based open source mobile operating system) to a research platform while still keeping Symbian for mid range and low range products.

Nokia Maps will use Microsoft's Bing search engine for its search capabilities and all Nokia apps and content store will be integrated with the Windows Phone 7 platform.

Why google made Android an open source: In Web traffic , Apple and Android dominate with 81 percent share. Every year, Google pays Apple 10s of 100s of Million Dollars to keep the Google search the primary choice on iOS devices. With growth of Androids, (users choosing Android over iOS) Google endsup paying way less to Apple, since the deal is per iOS device sold.

Google has a revenue sharing deal with handset makers as well. The revenue sharing deals appear to be advertising revenue shared with carriers that support Android. For handset makers, the revenue comes in when they include Google applications like search, maps, Gmail etc