Monday, June 27, 2011

Nokia's first WP7 phone, made by.....Compal?

According to Intomobile, Digitimes has a post that states the first Nokia WP7 phone will not be made by Nokia, but will be outsourced to a Taiwanese ODM, Compal.  The speculation is that Nokia is doing this to get their WP7 phone out before the end of the year.

Elop risks weakening Nokia's WP7 brand by outsourcing the first phone's hardware, and a further erosion of its market share of smart phones (and by nature of market growth, total mobile phone market share), if there is even one minor hardware flaw.  Unlike Apple, I doubt Nokia is in a position to survive an antenna-gate.  Nokia's rapidly shrinking market share shows that its consumers are not in the mood to wait around for its WP7 solution, let alone stick around for a flawed WP7 phone.

And I'd be worried that by outsourcing hardware production, Nokia also risks having its internal designs exposed to a bunch of eyes outside of Nokia.

A lot of risks; are the rewards worth it?

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