In Nokia, Microsoft Bets on Apple-Like Revival - NYTimes.pdfVIP

13-9-7 In Nokia, Microsoft Bets on Apple-Like Revival - 纽约时报中文网 国际纵览 September 04, 2013 In Nokia, Microsoft Bets on Apple-Like Revival By NICK WINGFIELD SEATT LE — With its purchase of Nokia’s phone business, Microsoft is taking inspiration from A pple’s way of making products, bringing hardware and software under a single roof where they can be more elegantly woven together. But Microsoft already bears a striking resemblance to A pple — the A pple of two decades ago, not the trailblazer of the mobile era. The $7.2 billion Nokia deal is unlikely to change that and catapult Microsoft up the ranks in the smartphone market. That is because Microsoft, with its Windows phone operating system, is stuck in third place in that market, where all the oxygen has been drained by more established players. A pple and Google have won the hearts and minds of developers, who design the apps that lure consumers to their devices, while Samsung is the dominant maker of mobile phones, most of which run Google’s A ndroid operating system. Even though Microsoft’s and Nokia’s products have won praise for their quality, they have arrived late. “What matters is not the phone per se but a dynamic app and services ecosystem,” said Brad Silverberg, a former senior Microsoft executive who is now a venture capitalist in the Seattle area. Microsoft’s predicament is a flashback to the situation A pple found itself in during the early 1990s. At that time, A pple arguably had a superior computer product, the Macintosh, but it languished as PCs running Microsoft’s Windows operating system engulfed most of the market. One of the biggest problems for A pple then was that Microsoft had succeeded in gaining the allegiance of software developers, who produc