Bad Timing: Microsoft Should Have Waited Until After 2013 Holidays To Make Nokia Deal Announcement

There is a sense of pride in that Nokia is a Finnish company.  And Nokia's dominance for years fueled that pride.  At the same time, I'm sure some of the neighbor states in the EU for years felt the same on some level.  With Nokia faltering in the smartphone race, more and more users switched to using Android and the iPhone.

But now, with Nokia's mobile division now firmly in the hands of an American company, Microsoft, it likely has freed more users to abandon any allegiance to the Finnish brand, seeing the buyout as a green light to look and switch to another brand and mobile platform.

No matter what Microsoft/Nokia announced in the last month, with the Nokia 1020 and its crazy 41 MP camera (I'm very jealous mine's only 8MP - with that big of a difference, size matters), and whatever will be out for the 2013 Christmas season, it will make a large segment of the consumers feel uneasy about a floundering platform that may not go anywhere even if it is Microsoft in the driver seat now.

Right now, it would be a great time for Apple, Google, and Samsung to pile it on.  And today, saw Samsung unleashed the Note 3.  On deck is Apple with the iPhone 5S or iPhone 6 and Google with its Nexus 5 powered by KitKat.

If the situation for Blackberry was better than it is now, the Canadian firm could also launch a campaign to convince Windows Phone users and other mobile warriors it is the true heir to inherit the third spot in the mobile market behind Apple and Google.  Unfortunately, Blackberry is looking to get out of the hardware market as badly as Nokia was.

It remains to be seen just how the Lumia and other cheaper Nokia devices hold up this Christmas.  Microsoft really needs a big, big win.  There's no work on when the next Windows Phone upgrade and devices will be coming out.  However, Microsoft does have the Surface 2 devices ready to go.  Maybe if the Surface does well enough, or at the very least, doesn't do worse than the first Surface, maybe tech pundits and mobile warriors might reconsider the Windows option as their mobile platform.