Why Microsoft should welcome Nokia's new Android phones
According to the conventional wisdom, Nokia’s decision to launch the new Nokia X line is a slap in the face to Microsoft. An insult, an embarrassment, a major headache that Microsoft management will have to confront soon, when the acquisition of Nokia closes.
That conventional wisdom, frankly, makes no sense to me.
Microsoft’s archrival in the mobile market is Google, not Android. Microsoft’s services – Office 365 and Outlook.com, OneDrive cloud storage for consumers and businesses, communications via Lync and Skype, among many others – work on multiple platforms. They compete on most of those platforms with Google services, like Gmail and Google Apps and Google Drive and Google+ Hangouts. Bing competes with Google Search. Nokia’s powerful mapping services compete directly with Google Maps.
