Nokia and Microsoft to Deliver Windows Live Services to Millions of Mobile Customers
Industry leaders join forces to bring Web services to Nokia devices. — Nokia, the world's largest mobile device manufacturer, and Microsoft Corp., a global leader in online communications and communities …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft has spent two years buying its way onto phones that don't run its own OS — the 2006 Sprint mobile search deal put Windows Live Search in front of a US carrier's subscribers, and this agreement does the equivalent at the device level. By teaming with Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, Microsoft gets Windows Live — Hotmail, Messenger and the rest — preloaded into the S60 installed base rather than waiting for carriers to opt in.
First-order effects
- Millions of Nokia S60 owners gain native access to Windows Live mail, messaging and communities, giving Microsoft a consumer-services footprint on devices where Windows Mobile has little presence.
- Nokia ships competitive internet services out of the box without funding a portal build-out of its own, shortening the gap between its hardware and rival smartphones' online features.
Second-order effects
- Rival handset vendors face the same choice Nokia just made — license Microsoft's live services or fund their own — which pushes more manufacturers toward third-party service suites and weakens carrier-controlled on-device portals.
- Operators lose another lever over what ships on the handset: device-level service partnerships let Microsoft reach subscribers directly, mirroring the direct-to-consumer route it opened with Sprint's search deal.
Third-order effects
- If handset-plus-software-vendor pairings become the default route to market, mobile competition shifts from whose operating system wins to whose services are preinstalled — an early structure of the platform wars that defined the smartphone era.
- Device makers ceding the services layer to partners risk commoditizing their own contribution, setting up exactly the strategic tension between handset economics and software-platform ambitions this deal embodies.
The trend: Handset makers are licensing third-party internet services instead of building their own portals, making service distribution — not hardware specs — the new battleground for reaching mobile users.