OF COURSE Nokia Has A Contingency Plan

There’s quite a bit of hoopla in the blogosphere today as an interview with Nokia’s Chairman, Risto Siilasmaa has begun to hit the airwaves. Despite Elop’s insistence that ‘Plan B is to make sure that Plan A is successful’, Siilasmaa cleanly stated that Nokia definitely has a contingency plan.

From there, the tech journalists and fanbois took over, drawing all sorts of crazy conclusions, mostly that Nokia will fall back to Android if Windows Phone doesn’t pan out the way they want it to. The problem is that everyone’s focusing on the wrong part of this statement. Of course they have a contingency plan. Here’s the recap from the source:

[Siilasmaa] defended the choice of Windows Phone as the platform to replace its flagging Symbian operating system, which he said had been in steady decline since 2008.

“Symbian’s market share has come down close to zero,” he said of the decision to switch to Windows.

Siilasmaa said Windows Phone had been selected after a critical and detailed study of available options.

He said the Windows Phone 8 platform is a technological first, providing users with a seamless user experience across multiple platforms, from PCs to tablets and smartphones.

According to Siilasmaa, Nokia has a contingency plan in place if the Windows 8 Phone fails to live up to expectations. But he said the company was confident that the product would be a success.

So, the real question isn’t WHAT is Nokia’s contingency plan – that doesn’t really matter much, to be honest. The more interesting question, and what everyone (especially analysts) SHOULD be focusing on is WHEN will said contingency plan be activated? What’s the trigger? 

Obviously it hinges directly upon Windows Phone 8, but there are alot of factors therein. Are they looking at consumer buy-in, units sold, revenue, activations, etc?