Microsoft plant the Swingin' Stephen Elop has been having a chat with a ZDNet blogger where he revealed himself to be either a deluded madman or a talented spinster.
Blogger Matthew Miller had a 20 minute sit-down with the brains behind The Swing Factor. When asked why Nokia plumped for Windows Phone instead of Android, Elop didn't answer "because I used to work at Microsoft," but instead said there was no other platform with an ecosystem in place except iOS. Android would probably like a word.
Elop also admitted that Nokia has been handing out 'thousands' of Windows Phone devices (read: Nokia) to bring developers on-side. He did not answer the question at hand, which was if Symbian developers were switching to Windows phone.
Microsoft has a problem with its marketing. Apple gleefully launched an anti-Redmond smear campaign, dressing up Windows PCs as dull, boring failures. Elop admitted that perception is still a problem, telling the ZDNet hack that "there must be a focus on the retail process so that employees at wireless carriers actually offer the devices as viable alternatives".
The full piece is here and is an excellent demonstration of executive media training in action.
Even if given considerable benefit of the doubt (e.g.: all research was from mid-to-late 2010), his conclusion does not reflect a credible analysis of the facts.
At the time Elop passed on it, the plot of Android's market share looked like a classic biz school chart...heading upward at 45 degrees. Or maybe more.
With that kind of explosive growth -- no matter what the sector -- you acquire ecosystem through simple accretion, much like a planetoid develops gravity.