As everyone knows by now, Nokia has decided to put Symbian and MeeGo aside and begin using Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS on its hardware. If you were in Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's shoes, would you have made the same choice? Intel CEO Paul Otellini wouldn't have. The exec was recently interviewed by Reuters and says that, although sticking with MeeGo "would have been the best strategy," he would've opted to use Android rather than WP7. The reason for his decision? Otellini believes that Nokia will find it much harder to differentiate itself on WP7 than it would've been with Android.
Both Android and WP7 would've made good choices for Nokia, but it certainly wouldn't be an easy decision to make. Android is extremely popular and offers a lot of opportunities for customization, but with all of the different handsets and manufacturers currently using Google's OS, it could be tough to stand out. On the other hand, Windows Phone 7 doesn't have quite as many OEMs including it on their hardware, but Microsoft has set some pretty strict limitations on the kinds of hardware that can be used with its OS and what customizations can be made to it, as well. We've heard that Nokia was given permission to tweak WP7 to their heart's content, but that they won't make too many changes for fear of delaying important software updates. So now we pose the question to you: if you were Stephen Elop, would you have adopted Android, WP7, some other OS, or stuck with Symbian/MeeGo? Why?
