So why does is appear that Nokia continues to struggle when it comes to the high end smartphone market? Well the problem is apparently that hardware rules at Nokia and software comes in second place.

According to an article over on Engadget by Vlad Savov, John Gruber of Daring Fireball received an email from a former Nokia software engineer which gives an insight into why Nokia struggles in the high end market. Here’s an excerpt from what the engineer says…

“Here’s the problem: Hardware Rules at Nokia. The software is written by the software groups inside of Nokia, and it is then given to the hardware group, which gets to decide what software goes on the device, and the environment in which it runs. All schedules are driven by the hardware timelines. It was not uncommon for us to give them code that ran perfectly by their own test, only to have them do things like reduce the available memory for the software to 25% the specified allocation, and then point the finger back at software when things failed in the field.”

Apparently Nokia Design Chief Marko Ahtisaari, believes that MeeGo is the way ahead, however there was no sign of MeeGo during Nokia World 2010, so Gruber poses the question that maybe it’s time for Nokia to embrace Android or even Windows Phone 7, and well now that an ex-Microsoft exec is at the Nokia helm, who knows, but if Nokia wants to do well in the high end smartphone segment then maybe they should consider dropping Symbian and the elusive MeeGo.