Nokia's CEO Says Carriers Hate Skype, And Its ... - Business Insider

It appears as though there's another new problem for Microsoft and Nokia's smartphone partnership.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told shareholders carriers are hesitant to sell the Nokia Lumia phones because Microsoft owns Skype, Tomi T Ahonen writes on his blog (via Asymco):

The second big news that came from the Shareholders' Meeting is the issue about Skype. Elop was asked by a shareholder "Nokia seems to be having a problem with the distribution channel due to Skype" asking how will Nokia deal with this problem. Elop answered "If the operator doesn't want us, it doesn't want us. We will appeal to them with other arguments. We have more to offer to them. It is a good point to start the discussion from Skype." (source HS website. Text in Finnish, translation is mine).

UPDATE May 4 - again our reader Asko who says he was personally present at that meeting, adds that Elop had explained, that Nokia, together with Microsoft, is now attempting to convince carriers/operators to accept Skype against their wills, by marketing/pricing/sales gimmicks. This admission says to me, that the carriers are truly hostile towards Nokia about the matter and this negotiation attempt is futile.

Nonetheless,?Elop clearly admits that there is a reseller problem relating explicitly to Skype. He furthermore admits, the Skype issue has resulted in some carriers actually refusing to carry Lumia. (Read the full thing here >)

When Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop announced their partnership, one of the big lines Ballmer repeated over and over again was, "operator friendly." It looks like Microsoft can't be "operator friendly" and push Skype, which it bought for $8.5 billion last year.

It's important to note that the Lumia doesn't have Skype pre-installed yet. But just the fact that Microsoft owns Skype, and Nokia is so closely aligned with Microsoft appears to be affecting Nokia handset sales.

In Windows Phone 8, Microsoft will be pre-installing Skype. We'll see if it really has an affect on carrier relations then or not.

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