As the market share of Nokia Corp. is shrinking, the chairman of one of the world's largest maker of mobile phones defends the strategy of Stephen Elop, chief executive of Nokia, to transit to Windows Phone platform, but claims that the company does have emergency plan in case Windows Phone 8 platform fails to become popular.

While speaking at Yle TV talk show last Thursday, Risto Siilasmaa, the recently appointed chairman of Nokia, said that company will continue making tough cuts of workforce and manufacturing capacities until its competitiveness is re-established. Mr. Siilasmaa once again supported Stephen Elop's decision to drop Nokia's own Symbian operating system in favour of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Phone platform.

"Stephen Elop came in at a tough time. Elop’s management style has been good and transparent. [...] Symbian’s market share has come down close to zero,” said Mr. Siilasmaa.

But although Mr. Elop has been showing maximum confidence in Windows Phone platform, despite of the obvious failures of both WP 7 and WP 7.5, there is a contingency plan at Nokia in place if the Windows 8 Phone fails to become as successful as Microsoft and Nokia expect it to. Feature-wise, the WP 8 looks rather good compared to both Apple iOS and Google Android thanks to the fact that it is based on the Windows NT core with support for ARM system-on-chips and application processors.

Unfortunately, sales of Nokia mobile phones and smartphones have been dropping for over a year now and that process will unlikely stop before Nokia manages to release a broad lineup of smartphones powered by Windows Phone 8 operating system. Given the fact that Nokia still does not have big family of WP 7.5-based handsets - it only sells four Lumia models about 1.5 years after the company first announced Windows Phone transition plans - the situation does not look good for the Espoo, Finland-based company.

Tags: Nokia, Windows Phone, Lumia, Microsoft, Symbian, Android, iOS