Nokia Lumia 900 (AT&T)

The headline of this column is for the benefit of both Nokia and Microsoft. Nokia, as I've explained before, should abandon the Windows platform and move to Android ASAP. That's the way I see things from Nokia's perspective. From Microsoft's perspective, I'd say, "Why buy the cow when the milk is free?" Microsoft essentially owns Nokia now.

At least, that is what some financial writers seem to think. Rocco Pendola of writes:


So why would Microsoft want to buy Nokia with this sort of thing in place? Well, harkening back to the free milk from the cow, perhaps someone should consider the fact that the cow is starving to death and nobody seems to give a crap. If Microsoft is going to buy the company, is it going to buy it at a bankruptcy auction? What is it waiting for?

As an aside, I would like to mention that nobody has ever benefited from a partnership with Microsoft. Maybe one of my readers can help me out, but I cannot find any examples. Even IBM lost out when it was working with Microsoft. FrontPage, one of the first webpage editors, was decimated after Microsoft bought it. A common theme, it seems. The only thing that thrives at Microsoft is Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office.

So exactly how would Nokia benefit from a Microsoft buyout? The cultural differences are enough to sink Nokia. I sure do not see such a deal bringing down Microsoft. You can imagine all the work that would go into such a massive deal: Continuing with a huge push for more sales of the Windows Phone, eventual failure, the shuttering of Nokia. Then Microsoft would say, "Oh well. We tried. It was Nokia's fault the Windows Phone died. It was a bad idea to buy Nokia."

Meanwhile, Finland loses Nokia.

This is all inevitable if the Finns do not do something to stop it. The country could apparently, on its own, stop the Russian army, but it cannot stop Microsoft.

It's actually not too late for Nokia to turn things around. Surely it has to be noticing all the attention that the Samsung Galaxy S III is getting. It sees the Samsung Galaxy Note is hot. It must be aware that the HTC One X is all over the news. What do these phones have in common? They run Android.

I have a Nokia 800. It's gorgeous—beautiful lines, a great screen, and responsive. How would this phone be if it ran Android, rather than requiring me to run Zune software to grab a simple photo and move it to my machine?

The product differentiator for Nokia products was never the Symbian or any other OS. In fact, that was the drawback. The reason people liked Nokia was because of the hardware. Apparently, it has never figured that out and now, it is facing extinction.

You can Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter @therealdvorak.

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