Things We Don't Want To Happen After Microsoft Acquires Nokia's Devices And Services Division

Microsoft acquiring Nokia’s Devices and Services team is almost confirmed now and the deal is only pending to get all government approvals in no.of countries. While this is mostly a great news for Windows Phone platform, I have few concerns about it and I expect Microsoft to not do certain things after they acquire Nokia’s devices and services team.

• Do not retire any Nokia Apps/Service unless you have a direct credible alternative which is available to same number of users.
• Try to maintain the apps away from the OS. If you integrate every app into OS itself as a feature, users need to wait for months to get a small feature update or bug fix.
• For example, I fear Microsoft might dump Nokia Music in favor of Xbox Music. While Xbox Music might have some advantages over Nokia Music, Nokia Music is available in countries like India where Xbox Music does not exist.
• Nokia Xpress Browser might be dumped in favor of Internet Explorer. Microsoft will announce that they will integrate Nokia Xpress features in to future versions of IE and I suspect it will happen anytime soon. While I’m not a regular user of this browser from Nokia, there are people who use it everyday and it matters to them.
• Let HERE Location suite use pure Nokia HERE Location data until Microsoft covers the maximum possible imagery around the world. Nokia HERE apps now use pure Nokia location data and people from most parts of the world love it. Even though Bing Maps has better data in some parts of the world, do not mess up with HERE Apps until new Bing Maps data trumps Nokia’s HERE Location data.
• Let the team which develops Nokia Imaging apps like Cinemagraph, Photobeamer, etc, remain within Nokia’s imaging team. I guess Microsoft might move them to the new Windows OS Services team headed by Chris Jones. In my view, Microsoft’s release cadence is in months whereas Nokia’s release cadence is in weeks.
• Let the Nokia Devices and Services team continue their work for another year or so without any disturbances. Since Nokia will be part of Microsoft in few months, Microsoft may be insisting the developers behind imaging, apps, services team from Nokia to make their things work on other OEM devices like HTC 8X or Samsung Ativ S. Even though this move will help Windows Phone platform in long term, I don’t want Nokia’s team to get distracted for supporting devices which are negligible in the market.
• Last but not the least, the marketing teams. In my view, Nokia’s marketing team did a great job with their given low budget to promote Nokia Lumia devices. Now that Microsoft can pump in more money, I expect them to perform even better. I fear Microsoft may try to fold Nokia’s marketing team inside Microsoft’s new unified marketing team headed by Tami Reller. Even if Microsoft wants to include them in the new division, I don’t want Nokia’s marketing team to follow Microsoft’s marketing strategy. I believe there is a huge difference between selling a $20 phone to a African customer and selling a $500 phone to a US customer. Microsoft does not have enough expertise in both of them to be frank.

All the above are in my own point of view, so I might be wrong! There are things which Microsoft should/could do after this acquisition, I’ll keep that for another separate post. Even you people might have some similar concerns and you expect Microsoft to not do certain things after the acquisition. If yes, let us know in the comments.