Just when you thought the love affair between Nokia and Microsoft couldn’t get any more serious, think again. Both companies have struck a new deal that’ll carry the Nokia brand name on all devices packing Bing Maps, according to Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop, in an interview with Pocket-lint. So to put this in perspective, if you own a new BlackBerry with the Bing Maps, you’d see some branding from the Finnish-based manufacturer — I know, weird.
Elop had quite a few quotes in the interview that explained his company’s relationship with Microsoft, which included a lot of stuff we already knew.
“Part of the relationship we established with Microsoft is that we are clearly placing a bet on the Windows Phone platform. [In return] they are placing a bet on our location-based platform: mapping, navigation and so forth,” said Elop.
No. Really? Of course we all know that Nokia has bet the house on Windows Phone to be successful, but adding Nokia branding to all WP devices isn’t necessarily a bad or good thing. It’s irrelevant. Google has such a strangle-hold on search that it doesn’t really matter what both companies do on mobile branding.
That said, lots of die-hard Symbian fans rave about Nokia’s location-based platform of mapping and navigation, so this union with Mr. Softy’s search engine makes sense I guess.
[via Pocket-lint]