Apple and Nokia have had a decidedly strange relationship this year. The latter company has alternately praised (albeit faintly) and ridiculed the iPhone since its inception. In doing so, Apple's device has been used as both a validation for that whole phone-as-'multimedia computer' re-labeling Nokia tried with its N-Series smartphones and as a target for how not to approach third party app development.
Now, in an interview with the New York Times, Nokia head honcho Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (pictured right) has changed tunes again, this time labeling Apple as "the first credible newcomer to the cellular market in years." Incredibly, he didn't even throw in the obligatory N95 reference that is mandatory with any iPhone (or Apple) compliment.
"It's very clear that Apple, Google and other players are bringing in a lot of new directions," Kallasvuo told the Times. Those include a more intimate union of device functions as well as new approaches to which devices and applications are allowed to run on a carrier's network.
In the end, Nokia undoubtedly likes the fact that Apple and Google are cramming new and unprecedented business models down the throats of U.S. cellular carriers. The company, which now owns 39 percent of the global market of 1.1 billion phones and close to half of the worldwide smartphone market, has had considerable trouble gaining a foothold here in the U.S. According to the NYT, that trouble stems from the fact that Nokia has refused to adapt its strategy to our market's idiosyncrasies -- a nice word for backwardness.
But now the U.S. market may in fact be adapting to Nokia…and other newcomers. Insofar as Apple (with its iPhone and lucrative revenue sharing deal with AT&T) and Google (with the OHA and Adroid) are the harbingers of a new cellular landscape, Nokia finally stands to win a halfway decent chunk of the U.S. market without all that bothersome 'adapting.' Who cares if it happens to be a competitor that's paving the way for these changes.
[Via NYT]
