Nokia Licenses Microsoft Technologies: ActiveSync and WMA

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Lots of news from 3GSM - tons of new phones, but right off the bat the announcements from Nokia made me nod my head.

It looks like the Borg has won this round. After years of resisting and providing inferior alternative solutions, Nokia has decided to capitulate and license Microsoft's ActiveSync and WMA rather than try to fight it. I think I mentioned how important sync and DRM was, and how far ahead Microsoft was in these areas, so this isn't a surprise. I would've rather had Nokia produce a compelling syncing suite like Palm's Desktop, but I guess that since even Palm has licensed ActiveSync, it was only a matter of time. And WMA, well, there's not much Nokia can do about the entire electronics industry coalescing around that format, can they?

In addition to these announcements, Microsoft has mentioned that they are working directly with Flextronics to start creating inexpensive smart phones. Now, if Motorola and other "manufacturers" use Flextronics as does Microsoft, is Microsoft now a manufacturer? I personally think this is going to put a lot of pressure on the whole mobile market, not just the smart phone market: Microsoft is going to use their $70b warchest to blanket the Earth with inexpensive but highly functional mobile phones and the other manufacturers will have little choice but to follow suit.

Anyone want to make a bet how long it'll be before we see a Nokia branded Windows Mobile phone?

-Russ

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