I don’t agree with this analyses. All smartphones get outdated after one year. Consumers are fine with this. The WP7.5 and soon WP 7.8 OS is a fast and excellent OS. Right now it belongs amongst the best performancing OS in the market. Considering their low price, Nokia Lumia phones are a bargain and offer great value. Not to mention the raving reviews of Nokia’s pureview 808 camera phone.

There seems to be a general misconception in the tech reporting world that MS threw Nokia under the bus in a surprise move.  You can be sure that Nokia knew this upgrade news for months, if not from the time they entered the partnership.  Nokia is important enough to Windows Phone to have them included in the planning and execution of the Windows 8 roll-out.   Apple showed its hand at WWDC with iOS6, and I’m betting MS and Nokia both breathed a sigh of relief because it’s clear that from a technical level, WP8 leapfrogs iOS6, and WP8 has enough compelling features to keep it fighting toe-to-toe with its biggest rivals.

All signs are pointing to a combined WP8/Win8 release in October along with the appropriate hardware, and I think with the Lumia name having gained massive amounts of positive press and the promise of some really unique devices (a WP8 with the game-changing Pureview camera from the Nokia 808) they probably thought they could take the pain of the possibility of 3 months of depressed WP8 sales.   The albatross around Nokia’s neck continues to be the dying Symbian platform, not the WP8 upgrade issue.

Let’s face it, the vast majority of the market doesn’t care about the lack of WP7->WP8 upgrade path.   Android’s awful track record in this regard has proven time and again that although we as geeks get rabid about upgrades (I’m REALLY bitter about the fact my Galaxy tab 10.1 still hasn’t officially got ICS yet), users buy a phone for what it is at the time, not what it might be in the future.

Sigh, Duncan, just announce it – you are a die hard Nokia fan and you are dying at the fact that Microsoft is not making Nokia the most important person for them. Every decision to “hurt” Nokia you mean, can be flipped to be seen how Microsoft is (finally) making consumers first and foremost there priority.  

“Microsoft’s decision not to support the update on current hardware is surprising”

No, it is not. Since the very first Phone 7 news, there has been very strong messages about hardware specs & requirements – it really is a tighly controlled ecosystem for hardware. When you think that Phone 7 & Phone 8 have vastly different requirements, it should not be surprising that the hardware is not compatible. 

What you are proposing is that Microsoft either release a poorer OS so it can run on slow & out dated hardware or those with Phone 7 get such a bad experience that they never touch another device?! Neither good for consumers – so Microsoft took the hardline, which in the end will benefit consumers of their platform.

Surprising is also not the case, Microsoft has made it clear for MONTHS that this would be the case, not really sure who is surprised except those who never watch any news on tech.

“Any tech-savvy consumer … is going to think twice now about a Windows Phone product” 

In South Africa I 100% agree, I think this will stall the sales and MTN has yet again handled the Windows Phone situation terribly.

But applying the South African issues to Microsoft & Windows Phone decision making is a flawed logic. We have sales of only a few thounsand WP7 devices, really a small, behind the times, country here. The markets that matter have had the devices for much longer and for those markets this is less of an issue.

It is also important to remember that Nokia got to this party over a year late – while Nokia is important, should Microsoft punish customers by holding back new stuff so Nokia has time to sell old kit?! 

Microsoft has shipped many other WP7 devices (Samsung, HTC etc…) should they too be punished to serve just Nokia? 

“Microsoft has pulled the rug” 

I do not think Nokia was under any illusions of this happening, there was no rug pulling here. Nokia has agreed a long time before a single device has shipped that all WP will have their navigation software. So when Samsung sells a phone, Nokia will make money. Nokia is the reference hardware for Windows Phone 8 – as shown in the demos. Microsoft is making the partnership in the phone space stronger than ever. 

“Microsoft’s curious decision to develop its own brand of tablet computers”

How is this curious? Microsoft has said clearly that it because NO ONE ever builds hardware right. They called HP out by name on this for the horrid Windows 7 tablets. This doesn’t mean we can’t & won’t see other manufactorers, it just means Microsoft is making sure that they do right by their customers from day one.

“Nokia’s share price continues to tumble” 

Nokia is greater than just Windows Phone, what has happened to the other entry level devices they announced? Nothing. How is the brand seen compared to say iPhone? What are they doing to make the migration from Symbian to WP devices easy? Do they seem to have gone from market leader to a company with no clear plan? Are they a hardware or service company? It is not one factor – it is all of it. 

“develop a flagship tablet powered by Windows 8″

Completely agree – that was my gut feel too that the flagship was from Nokia. That said maybe this is a Nokia thing, they do not seem to be first to market ever with new platforms. 

If only MS had taken a leaf out of Apple’s PR manual. Instead of saying to Lumia owners “you’re only getting 7.8″, why not tell them they’re getting 8 but with a few hardware limitations, like iPhone 4 without Siri for example? Once again, it’s not what you say, its how you say it.