Nokia and Microsoft – What does it mean for marketing?
Written by Bruce Townsend
Thursday, 17 February 2011 00:00
The big tech story of the month so far has been the new alliance between Nokia and Microsoft, which will see the world’s biggest mobile phone supplier drop its own proprietary operating system, Symbian, and adopt Windows as its operating system of choice.
The full implications of this new alliance remain to be seen, and no-one can yet tell how successful it will be. But what might be the future implications for marketing?
1 – Firstly, the default search engine for Nokia devices in future will be Bing, not Google. Many users will no doubt change the default and switch back to Google anyway. But the move will undoubtedly increase Bing’s share of search on mobile devices. At the same time, its alliance with Yahoo! will see the popular portal dropping its own search engine and taking its search results from Microsoft. This will double Bing’s share of web search at a stroke.
So we can expect Microsoft to increase its overall share of search significantly in 2011 and, along with it, its share of paid search revenue. Now might be a good time to check out your website’s rankings on Bing, and take action if it is not what it could be.
2 – One of the key attractions for Microsoft is access to Nokia’s GPS and local search system, Ovi Maps. Nokia has invested far more into this system that Microsoft has into Bing Local. It is a fully-blown mobile search and satnav application, entirely capable of competing with Google Maps on equal terms. It has the added advantage over Google that map data can be downloaded to the mobile device, which means you can use the satnav functionality without needing an internet connection.
Ovi Maps will remain a key component of Nokia’s mobile devices, and is likely to become more tightly integrated into the Windows Phone platform and Bing Mobile. If your company is not already listed on Ovi Maps, you can submit it here now.
By Bruce Townsend, ecommerce product manager and SEO specialist at Actinic. Originally published on UtalkMarketing.com.
