Shares of Nokia surged on Tuesday, mostly because Chinese electronics giant Huawei expressed interest in buying the struggling Finnish smartphone manufacturer. Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group, told The Financial Times that his company would be open to buying Nokia if it showed a “willingness” to merge. One aspect of Nokia’s current business plan that it will certainly have to rethink if it wants to merge with Huawei is its exclusive use of Windows Phone as its platform of choice. Yu said that Windows Phone was still a risky bet because its market share has not significantly grown in the eight months since the launch of Windows Phone 8.
“Whether Windows Phone will be successful is difficult to say,” Yu said. “It has a very small market share. [Windows Phones] are weak but still require a license fee. That’s not good. Android is free.”
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has repeatedly rejected pleas from Nokia investors to reconsider his plan to make devices exclusively with Windows Phone, even after one shareholder last month accused him of putting the company “on the road to hell.”
