Microsoft Bribing Nokia to use its phone?

"In its statement, Nokia also revealed the amount that it receives from Microsoft for its utilisation of the Windows Phone platform, acknowledging that the Redmond-based company paid it $250 million in “support payments” over the last quarter:"

Microsoft Paid Nokia $250m for Windows Phone Use

It looks like Microsoft had to bribe Nokia to use its platform for Smartphones. There is no question now that if Nokia had started producing Android phones a couple years ago rather than trying to promote its own Linux based MeeGoo project, sales would be very different right now. That is not to say we don't like MeeGoo, but with a competitive market for ecosystems MeeGoo, along with WebOS was just to much to ask of developers who are struggling to build apps for the iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, and Symbian ecosystems as it is.

Now just because Microsoft is bribing Nokia to use its OS does not make the OS bad, Microsoft is a master of combing unfair business practices with just the right quality of product to win market share, that is until the Web went mobile.

We have been testing the Lumia a great deal lately and we like it, we like it a lot. The OS is great too look at and easy to use, and it shows JQuery mobile pages as well as iPhone or Android devices. Nokia knows how to make a camera that feels right in your hand and the excellent Lumia should be attractive to many.

But good is not demanded and one of the strange states of the market is how excellent machines again and again don't catch on. Four years ago we were excited about the netbook running a Linux like Puppy, this seemed like the obvious course of the future of computing. But it seemed people were more interested in toys like iPhones and iPads than powerful small computers with solid OSs. The quality of a product will not predict its sales, and the Windows Phone still has not proved itself in the market, and it is trying to launch in to a major economic downturn where people might decide to hold on to their iPhones, Androids and Blackberries for a few more months.