Nokia may have been hooked line and sinker by Windows Phone 7 under new CEO Stephen Elop, but Nokia’s number one competitor in last decade’s feature phone wars is wholly unimpressed.
“I don’t envision us using Microsoft. I would never say never but it’s not something we’re entertaining now,” said Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president of software and services product management for Motorola.
Why not? After all, Motorola has had a rich history with Windows Phone 7’s predecessor operating system, Windows Mobile. However, in the post-iPhone age, Motorola seems concerned about adopting an operating system like Windows Phone that is not open source.
“We would like an opportunity to create unique value and we don’t feel we could with a closed platform,” Wyatt said.
Additionally, even if that wasn’t a concern, Microsoft simply delivered Windows Phone 7 too late and too under-featured to be considered, according to Wyatt.
“[T]here were a bunch of things that we believed about Microsoft that ended up not being true, mostly about what functionality it would have in what period of time,” she said.
It’s interesting hearing Motorola speak so bluntly about why they abandoned Windows Phone 7. It certainly puts Nokia’s decision to adopt the operating system in perspective: Nokia — long behind the times when it comes to the state of the mobile industry, post-iPhone — is trying to catch up by picking the most under-featured and behind-the-times smartphone operating system. Meanwhile, Motorola’s wised up and are embracing Android, while publicly talking about how they’re doing their best to speed up the Android upgrade cycle for end users. Seems like one of these companies has realized that times have changed, and the other still hasn’t.
Read more at PC World
