Despite fierce competition for the relatively small Windows Phone market, Nokia is generally pleased by the increasing number of Windows-based smartphones from other manufacturers as it increases the health of the platform overall, according to Vesa Jutila, the company’s head of smartphone marketing.
Engadget spoke with Mr. Jutila following Nokia’s Lumia 925 launch event in London this morning. He revealed that “biggest complaint [received by the company over its Windows Phone smartphones] is that customers are missing the apps they want.”
[Developer attention] is very much driven by the absolute volume of Windows Phones in the market. That’s why we’re so pleased when other manufacturers also make Windows Phones.
Nokia’s Vesa Jutila
The Windows Phone OS arrived in late 2010, years after the launches of iOS and Android. As a result, Microsoft has struggled in convincing developers to port their apps to the platform. Although Windows Phone boasts many popular apps, such as Twitter and Evernote, the platform trails significantly in terms of pure numbers. Microsoft reported last week that Windows Phone now boasts over 145,000 apps, an impressive rate of growth from last year, but far short of the more than 800,000 active apps available on both the iOS App Store and Google Play Android store.
While some industry watchers have made a “quality versus quantity” argument in favor of the Windows Phone marketplace, the fact remains that many key apps, such as Google+, Amazon Cloud Player, and Instagram, remain unavailable on Redmond’s mobile operating system.
It is therefore perhaps not surprising to learn that Nokia is eager for broader adoption of the platform, even if it means the company ends up with a smaller piece of the Windows Phone market. The 2011 partnership between Nokia and Microsoft and the collapse of Nokia’s alternative in-house Symbian smartphone OS mean that the company’s future is now largely dependent on the success of Windows Phone.
