Nokia acquired by Microsoft

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2013/09/02/the-next-chapter-an-open-letter-from-steve-ballmer-and-stephen-elop.aspx

by jasonpbecker • 13 years ago

865 548 13 years ago

blogs.technet.com

alex_c• 13 years ago

Well, this makes all the speculation about Elop succeeding Ballmer that much more interesting.

nestlequ1k• 13 years ago

Yeah, it would be interesting to see if any MSFT shareholders are that dumb. Elop's idiocy destroyed Nokia, now let's sic him on Microsoft too.

mbreese7• 13 years ago

Nokia was well on its way down before Elop. It's not fair to pin that on him. But, it did seem pretty clear (even then) that his turnaround strategy involved a Microsoft purchase.

macspoofing7• 13 years ago

Nokia, like RIM, Microsoft, and Palm, was caught with their pants down, TWICE. First with Apple's iPhone, then with Google's Android. Basically two tech companies with no presence in mobility, took the market away from the incumbents. In hindsight, when Elop took the CEO job, it was too late to fight the iOS and Android behemoths.

What could have Elop done? Gone down the Blackberry route and try to have a competing platform? Or maybe try to fight Samsung by releasing an Android phone - with no guarantees that Nokia would fare better than others who tried (looking at you HTC, Sony, LG, etc.)

slurry2• 13 years ago

It's especially interesting in light of shareholder activism by Value Act. Value Act had been against the devices strategy. Two days ago they struck a deal to get a seat on MSFT's board[0]. Was this part of the deal? Or is this an upraised finger in the rearview mirror?

The kremlinology of all this is very complex.

[0] http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/31/micr...

pedalpete5• 13 years ago

That actually could be a benefit to Microsoft having valueact on the board, though it isn't easy, I suspect opposing views are what make a board stronger, rather than weaker.

wesleyd• 13 years ago

Gee, we didn't see that coming.

Moto74515• 13 years ago

Wow, interesting timing. I wonder if Elop will end up in the running for CEO of MS as part of this.

blinkingled3• 13 years ago

So Elop was in fact a Trojan Horse?

Wonder what this does to the already strained MSFT vendor relationships. You could now almost guarantee vendors will start to completely dump Windows on ARM and possibly even look for alternatives to Windows x86.

Moto74515• 13 years ago

I disagree. I doubt purchasing Nokia's phone business would make PC vendors any more worried than Surface/Surface Pro did. Windows is still king of the desktop and unless Android becomes a desktop OS or Apple starts licensing OS X there aren't any real alternatives with consumer brand recognition. If Ubuntu were the answer then System 76 would be more than a boutique PC maker. If MS starts making desktops, laptops, and servers... Then yeah it'll be a hectic day for the people responsible for Windows OEM relationships.

The worry here for MS, as I see it, is really that they loose HTC and Samsung and any other potential Windows Phone partner. I'm guessing they're prepared to deal with the consequences.

schuke2• 13 years ago

HTC and Sumsung are almost irrelevant in the Windows Phone ecosystem anyway. They obviously made little effort and aren't likely to make more, with or without the acquisition.

kbaker• 13 years ago

Idk, sounds like the year of Linux on the desktop is closer than it has ever been. :)

But you should really look at Chromebooks/ChromeOS for one glimpse of what a consumer-friendly, non-MS system would really look like. Right now it is the #1 selling laptop on Amazon, and reviews are pretty positive.

If I was a shareholder in MSFT, I would seriously be worried for the future of the whole Windows platform, mobile and desktop.

blinkingled3• 13 years ago

With every passing day Windows is becoming more and more irrelevant - iPads, Chromebooks, non-Windows SmartPhones/Tablets etc. are really the future of consumer computing. So it isn't as far fetched as it was few years ago that OEMs will successfully back Ubuntu/Fedora/Android/ChromeOS and give consumers a laptop that can do everything Windows does for them today.

The only holdouts would be power users that rely on Windows software and the Enterprise users - they aren't the majority user base of Windows though.

pedalpete5• 13 years ago

You may be correct, but google's acquisition of Motorola didn't limit the growth of android at all. If canonical plays it's hand well, they could benefit, as could firefox on mobile, but displacing microsoft on desktops is still a huge challenge.

Windows 8 'lackluster performance' still has greater market share then osx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...

I know some will say 'but iOS/android...', but those are in addition too, not a replacement.

sremani4• 13 years ago

Every thing that happens in real life is not Stephen King novel. Elop may have affinity with Microsoft given he worked couple of years there. He worked for number of other respectable companies, so to label Elop as a Microsoft man is a bit of stretch.

est• 13 years ago

Elop sold Macromedia to Adobe.

I used to remember Flash was cool, then it was dead for like 5 years allowing HTML5 and Unity to catch up.

camus• 13 years ago

I did not know that fact. thanks. Selling to Adobe resulted in the demise of every Macromedia products.There is nothing left from Macromedia in Adobe, Nokia products will meet the same fate.

jpalomaki2• 13 years ago

About of month ago there was some complains from Nokia about Microsoft not making progress fast enough with the software [1]. Some other reports also stated that Windows Phone 8.1 was about to be postponed to early 2014. [2]

Both news (if true) were bad for Nokia which was quite dependent on the success of their higher end mobile phones on short term. I believe Nokia was little bit short of cash and their credit ratings are bad. IF Microsoft would have wanted to cause trouble for Nokia to drive down the acquisition price (or maybe even force them to acquisition), this would have been one way to do it.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/29/4567046/nokia-frustrated-b... [2] http://www.wpcentral.com/microsoft-testing-windows-phone-81-...

signa11• 13 years ago

msft is buying "Nokia’s Devices & Services". nokia does other things as well, for example, nokia-siemens-network (NSN) is a significant player in the EPC (enhanced-packet-core) market as well...

adw• 13 years ago

Yep, this looks more like Sony buying Ericsson out (and leaving Ericsson with a very nice, profitable core business)

speeder• 13 years ago

That was more or less expected...

But I think it is really sad too. I really enjoyed the pre-Microsoft Nokia, I had account in their dev forums, and loved their SDKs, community, Sybian, whatnot.

To me, when they suddenly dropped Sybian while they were still ahead AND expanding in some markets (like Brazil, Russia...) and switched to MS, it was really sad, and I felt like they dropped the ball.

Their Lumia phones DO pull some interesting hardware sometimes, but it was never the same.

Now with MS outright buying them, not only the ball is dropped, but kicked way out of the stadium.

obiterdictum• 13 years ago

I really enjoyed the pre-Microsoft Nokia, I had account in their dev forums, and loved their SDKs, community, Sybian, whatnot.

Really?

I thought their SDK circa 2007 (especially the emulator) and API docs were terrible, and Symbian C++ was a real pain to work with. Also, segregation between regular developers and Nokia partners (who paid to have access to extra private APIs) put unnecessary barriers to development.

I won't miss it.

pavlov• 13 years ago

The defunct smartphone OS was named Symbian. Sybian is a sex toy brand, I believe.

You're the first person I've ever heard praising the Symbian SDK. It was a miserable mess without clear ownership or direction - Nokia made the UI while Symbian Ltd made the base OS, and neither gave a damn about third parties unless they had bags of money for special API access.

vineet• 13 years ago

What else is part of Nokia other than their 'Nokia Devices & Services'?

bsimpson2• 13 years ago

- here.com maps

- mobile broadband

- r&d

citation: http://press.nokia.com/2013/09/03/nokia-to-sell-devices-serv...

wmt2• 13 years ago

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) is also not small

elithrar2• 13 years ago

What else is part of Nokia other than their 'Nokia Devices & Services'?

As of recently, all their enterprise/industrial gear: DSLAMs, muxes, 3G/LTE gear, carrier hardware, etc. when they bought Siemens share of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), noting that Nokia was originally flying solo with this stuff before the JV with Siemens.

iamshs3• 13 years ago

More here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2013/Sep13/09-02An...

feniv• 13 years ago

Microsoft is becoming more and more of an integrated software and hardware company than a purely software one. Maybe it's time to change the name to something without the "soft".

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

Or Microsofthard? I'm not very good at this.

damianknz• 13 years ago

How about: Microkia Softnok

jacques_chester• 13 years ago

When the Windows NT kernel began driving mainframe-class hardware they weren't selling software for microcomputers either.

It's just a name.

macspoofing7• 13 years ago

They've been trying to ape Apple in consumer electronics for the last ten years. For some reason, they figure since Apple was making a butt-load manufacturing and selling their own Phones and Tablets, they should do that too. Meanwhile, Google follows the Microsoft OEM strategy and Android takes 80% of the market.

benihana• 13 years ago

Google doesn't make the money on Android that Microsoft made on Windows though.

CmonDev• 13 years ago

Yet Microsoft makes money on Android and Google doesn't make money on WP :).

MichaelGG5• 13 years ago

10 years? I wish. Microsoft has relied on idiotic low-margin "partners" like Dell and HP to execute its ideas. Like tablets. I had a Toshiba tablet 10 years ago. Browsing was great, the rest of Windows, not so much. And the hardware wasn't neat. If MS had shipped a tablet 10+ years ago and actually cared about the end-to-end experience instead of just selling Windows licenses, we'd be in a different world.

Or like music players (instead they let Creative license the OS/audio+video software). Or like Media Center: great software, but PITA to setup, no simple OOBE like Apple TV, now it's been EOL'd.

Microsoft had over 80% of the smartphone market before. They are well aware of the Android OEM strategy. But I don't think anyone really LOVED their Windows CE mobile devices, so they know they needed to do better this time around. Just like most of the Android phones are crap and Google is now trying to clean that up.

jemeshsu• 13 years ago

I expect no name change this time. Microsoft will attempt again to buy Yahoo! under its new CEO, and become Microhoo!.

nl• 13 years ago

~$7 Billion for the device & services business and Nokia's patents. Seems like a good price now, but one you wouldn't have ever predicted before 2007 & the launch of the iPhone.

In 2003 Nokia was worth $245 billion[1]

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/22/the-sad-tale-of-nokias-sink...

psbp4• 13 years ago

There's no doubt that Nokia has been buoyed by Microsoft leading up to this acquisition. The lack of android devices would have been completely illogical if this wasn't the long game.

bthomas• 13 years ago

I think "end game" is more appropriate than "long game"

notimetorelax• 13 years ago

Please see this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6318882 they are not buying patents.

Lusake• 13 years ago

Considering that Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5b, $7b for Nokia doesnt look expensive.

tanzam757• 13 years ago

In 2007 RIM had a market cap of $120 billion.

Disruption is no fun for the disrupted.

snorkel• 13 years ago

Why is this not reported in mainstream media yet?

Tuna-Fish• 13 years ago

The release came out 15 minutes ago. They are simply not that fast.

schuke2• 13 years ago

Because most people in Europe and North America have to wake up first? ;)

Qantourisc• 13 years ago

I concur, I'm just awake, good morning.

tzs• 13 years ago

At the time of your comment, it was already on the Wall Street Journal and on Rueters. Within the next 20 minutes it was on Forbes, BBC, New Zealand Herald, and Synfney Morning Herald. 10 minutes after that, it was on Seattle Times and ABC.

ali-• 13 years ago

"From January 2008 to September 2010, Elop worked for Microsoft as the head of the Business Division, responsible for the Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics line of products, and as a member of the company's senior leadership team. It was during this time that Microsoft's Business Division released Office 2010.[15]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop

Don't believe he'll be the next CEO but certainly a possibility given his previous engagement with MSFT...

aaronbrethorst6• 13 years ago

To everyone speculating about what this means for the possibility of Elop succeeding Ballmer: this means that Elop is succeeding Ballmer. End of story.

edit: I would love to know why this is getting downvoted.

edit2: fair enough.

Two key facts:

1. Microsoft needs a new CEO.

They have a limited pool to choose from. The following are seemingly reasonable candidates:

- Mark Zuckerberg (never going to happen, he wouldn't agree to it)

- Steve Sinofsky (that ship has sailed)

- Tony Bates (seems like a reasonable choice; relative outsider, smart, has a tech background)

- Another member of Steve's SLT (some would be better than others. I think a sizable portion of the company would revolt if KT was chosen).

- Sheryl Sandberg (doubt it, since I think she's gunning for the US Senate)

- Carly Fiorina (MS's board would never agree to it)

- Stephen Elop (reasonably obvious choice: insider, devices experience, has CEO experience, but there's that pesky Nokia thing)

2. Microsoft has a new, relatively large, soon-to-be-on-the-board activist share holder in ValueAct. ValueAct will have a significant amount of authority over yea'ing or nay'ing acquisitions and over who the new CEO will be.

I can't imagine there's any way Elop would agree to working under someone else again. He also seems like a not-unreasonable choice for CEO of Microsoft, outside of the fact that he hasn't exactly made Nokia back into a rip-roaring success, and doesn't represent much of a change from business as usual at Microsoft.

eli• 13 years ago

I'm not down voting you, but "end of story" is not a great way to begin a dialogue on your unsupported opinion.

Apocryphon3• 13 years ago

How come Paul Allen left MS and never looked back?

aaronbrethorst6• 13 years ago

Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and a really bad falling out with Bill.

nemothekid2• 13 years ago

Why would Zuckerberg or Sandberg be good candidates from Microsoft CEO? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to slight Facebook, but in my mind Facebook and Microsoft operate on two completely different wavelengths. I'm confident they wouldn't perform poorly, but I find it hard to believe they could provide the type of leadership and vision Microsoft needs right now. I'm just interested in hearing your thinking.

Also not really thrilled about Carly Fiorina, didn't she gut HP R&D division? I'm not sure your list is actually serious. Either way I'm doubtful Elop will become CEO given that he wasn't really able to make anything good come from Nokia.

aaronbrethorst6• 13 years ago

I was going for either people who are 'hip' enough or 'steady' enough to run Microsoft. Fiorina would be a total, unmitigated disaster.

Swannie3• 13 years ago

Yeah, I strongly agree. I never understood why people think Sandberg or Zuckerberg would every be considered by the board. Facebook is such a totally different business to one building software and hardware for operating systems, office tools, web and email platforms, cloud services, systems management, identity management, mobile platforms, gaming platform development, unified communications, collaboration software, CRM, etc. etc. etc. (the list goes on and on).

A much better fit would be someone from Oracle or IBM. Or even someone from a large enterprise systems company with deep software background (e.g. someone from SAP, Cisco, CA).

sremani4• 13 years ago

What ever I have seen in the media was bring in bunch of known names of execs in tech space and start speculation. They do not have any official hints or reliable sources guiding them. How about Mr.X. The whole argument can be discredited from the fact Ms.Sandberg is being discussed along with Mark Zukerberg, can we be reasonable people here. You might as well pick your local butcher to spice up the discussions.

aaronbrethorst6• 13 years ago

I am being reasonable. I'm saying Elop will be the next CEO.

fauigerzigerk• 13 years ago

I think Diane Greene would be a much better choice than anyone on your list.

general_failure3• 13 years ago

Zuckerberg, Sheryl, Carly?? Seriously? I hope you are not on MS board of directors.

sker• 13 years ago

That kills my hopes for a Nokia Android phone.

Also, Elop seems like the least interesting character to succeed Ballmer. What does he bring to the table? What has he done? Guy looks like a careerist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#Career

bsimpson2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure that was ever likely with Elop at the helm, but Nokia is now out of the phone business until at least 2016.

jpalomaki2• 13 years ago

I believe the press release only speaks about the brand. There does not seem to be any limitations for Nokia to enter into phone business. They would just need to have some other brand.

X4• 13 years ago

Oouh.. that reads like he managed to get every company he worked for to fade away, go bancrupt or loose competitive strength in a very short time. This. Or he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, very often.

    * DEAD: Lotus Development Corporation
    * DEAD: Boston Chicken
    * SOLD: Macromedia's
    * ALIVE: Juniper Networks
    * DECLINING: Microsoft Dynamics

I don't know this guy, but if that's the best they can get..

chollida12• 13 years ago

DECLINING: Microsoft Dynamics

Ummm, Microsoft dynamics has grown revenue every year for the past 4 years. But hey don't let the facts get int eh way of your rage:)

http://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earn...

hga• 13 years ago

I don't know of anyone who blames Boston Chicken's IT on it's bankruptcy. He was their CIO and I doubt he had any influence on their notorious franchising strategy. Plus they're also still alive after rebranding as Boston Market, and while I couldn't find any location numbers, they boast of serving 15 million pounds of mashed potatoes and 80 million pieces of cornbread a year.

He was per Wikipedia "a director of consulting" at Lotus ... again, not an area that determined their decline and fall.

devnetfx• 13 years ago

Considering the amount paid for Motorola by Google, isn't it cheap?

arron61• 13 years ago

Google bought Motorola for 12.5 billion and then sold off it's Home division for 2.3 billion. At the time of the purchase, Motorola had 2 billion in cash so in the end, Google probably paid 8 billion ish for Motorola. Considering that in those 1.5 years, Moto and Nokia's values have been decreasing as well, I think they are pretty close in value.

undoware2• 13 years ago

Wow. Some call Tomi.

For copious, copious background on the MS/Nokia debacle, 'burning platform' to present: communities-dominate.blogs.com

(Not affiliated, just an avid fan of this mobile industry analyst-become-blogger who does his own stats. Some of the charts are chilling.)

goblin89• 13 years ago

Tried to read a recent post there, but stopped after the statement “Nikon just recently said it plans to launch its own smartphones”.

That looked like big news, so I looked it up. Turned out, Nikon's president said something along the lines of “We want to create a product that will change the concept of cameras. It could be a non-camera consumer product” early July—that is the most reliable citation on the matter I could find.

So it was author's speculation, which he presented as fact on his blog. Maybe there is some useful information there, but the hassle of verifying each statement wasn't worth it for me.

iamshs3• 13 years ago

Tomi Ahonen is as anti-Nokia and MS as it gets, and hence I do not enjoy his blog. As his narrative stretches the truth a lot, and prime example is his Nokia analysis. Nokia was already in decline with Symbian, but go on his blog and he presents very contorted factoids.

jpatokal• 13 years ago

Actually, Tomi's latest blog post series theorized that Ballmer wanted to buy Nokia, Gates vetoed this and that's why Ballmer's getting kicked out:

Gates looked at the real performance of this partnership. Gates said in public that Ballmer has made mistakes and singled out Windows Phone project as 'clearly a mistake' and so badly mismanaged, that recovery was no longer possible. Thats what Gates said on Charlie Rose in February 2013. This is when the decision was made to not buy Nokia. So we know, Ballmer wanted to buy Nokia, but Gates stepped in to override that decision. And at that moment, Ballmer's career as Microsoft CEO was ended (as I said on this blog). Gates gave Ballmer six months to quietly sort out his future but clearly said in February to Ballmer, get out. And Gates vetoed the Nokia purchase.

Now Nokia has been gutted, all its options destroyed, and its up the proverbial shit's creek without a paddle.

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/08/ballmer...

Doesn't quite pan out in light of MS actually buying Nokia.

emilyst• 13 years ago

Do we imagine Elop tanked Nokia on purpose to cheapen the cost of this acquisition (and shutter the patents under one roof)?

jotm• 13 years ago

Well, it finally happened...

adamwintle• 13 years ago

Nokia sold to Microsoft for ~$1.5 billion less than what Skype was sold for

netforay• 13 years ago

It is $7.17 http://allthingsd.com/20130902/microsoft-to-buy-nokias-devic...

But still less than $8.5 paid for Skype. (Which I think is total waste of money)

bender803• 13 years ago

Well it's not all of Nokia.

the_economist• 13 years ago

Skype accounted for an ungodly 167 billion international call minutes in 2012. It is perhaps not fair to belittle them.

capkutay2• 13 years ago

Wow. So he kept nokia stagnant while samsung and apple exploded in the smartphone market and now he gets to be CEO of another company thats been stagnant for years(he was already passed up for being CEO at MSFT before he left to nokia). I guess microsoft's strategy is to keep chasing after the devices market.

pedalpete5• 13 years ago

I'm not sure what world your on. Elop would not have been in the running as CEO of Microsoft. I don't believe he would have had enough experience at that time. Was there anybody other than Ballmer and ray Ozzie epwho would have been considered.

He's actually brought Nokia back from the brink and kept a sinking ship somewhat afloat, in my opinion. At the same time, I don't think he is enough of a visionary to lead Microsoft.

elithrar2• 13 years ago

He's actually brought Nokia back from the brink and kept a sinking ship somewhat afloat, in my opinion. At the same time, I don't think he is enough of a visionary to lead Microsoft.

I share the same opinion. I think Elop cops a lot of flak from mobile enthusiasts, but the Nokia he took over had a lot of downward inertia that he needed to overcome and their new devices are actually pretty nice. They might never catch up (although I hope they do) on the ecosystem front. I believe that Nokia + Android and/or Nokia + Maemo were untenable, especially given the internal software politics Nokia was known to suffer.

capkutay2• 13 years ago

Ok well...MSFT could either choose to focus on enterprise or pick up Nokia and their CEO as a pat on the back for only losing 25% of its value every year. This plan seems more like a hail mary to catch up to apple. It could pay off but its certainly the riskiest and least logical route. I think there's significant room for innovation and profit in enterprise tech right now and much more room for failure in mobile.

throwaway19792• 13 years ago

<quote>Two turkeys don't make an eagle</quote>

nivla3• 13 years ago

But it does feed a family of ten... keeping useless jokes aside; Despite loving my Lumia Windows phone, I am not too thrilled about this acquisition either. I just hope Microsoft's internal politics doesn't ruin Nokia's future!

asenna• 13 years ago

I just hope Microsoft's internal politics doesn't ruin Nokia's future!

How bright do you think Nokia's future was prior to this?

rayiner7• 13 years ago

This is a great move. There is no money in being an Android vendor except if you're Samsung and are totally vertically integrated. With Windows Phone, Nokia and Microsoft at least have some hope of carving out a profitable stake in the market.

Anecdotally, I'm very impressed with some of the new Lumias. I got a 620 to replace my stolen iPhone, and for $200 unlocked its phenomenal phone. The build quality makes a flagship Samsung feel like cheap plastic crap. And Windows Phone flies despite the modest specs. I was disappointed in the 920 I had earlier, but at this price point the shoe is on the other foot.

I hope this is portends a Microsoft phone...

nigelsampson• 13 years ago

The market certainly seems to be agreeing with you in that the 520 and 620 are the most popular models.

flyt• 13 years ago

How well does the first party Instagram app run on that Lumia?

nickbarnwell2• 13 years ago

Pretty well: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/6tag/7d795cdf-fb...

usaphp• 13 years ago

Better than nokia maps and nokia transit on your iphone/android.

300bps2• 13 years ago

I like your little "first party" qualification to make sure your snark was accurate.

Anyway, there are plenty of great Instagram apps on Windows Phone 8:

http://www.wpcentral.com/tags/instagram

smackfu• 13 years ago

Instagram didn't even make an Android first-party app for 16 months after the iOS one.

shmerl8• 13 years ago

There is nothing great in notorious patent aggressor (MS) getting tons of mobile related patents...

corresation8• 13 years ago

Some reports are incorrectly stating that Microsoft is buying the patents, while Microsoft's own press release clearly states that they are only licensing them for a term of 10 years.

This is almost certainly to satisfy regulators who will have final say over whether this transaction will close.

corresation8• 13 years ago

There is no money in being an Android vendor except if you're Samsung and are totally vertically integrated.

There are a lot of people who would have picked up the attractive, well built, well engineered Nokia devices if they had the platform of Android.

The core problem with the "no money in Android" argument is that you can't choose not to compete with Android if you're in the smartphone game, which is pretty obvious given that we're talking about a company that went from hero to zero largely at the hands of Android (RIM being another example).

WP8 just isn't compelling compared to Android for a lot of users, which led to a lot of people moaning that they wish they could get one of those nice Nokia devices...but WP7/8.... Apple obviously is very much in a battle with Android, though they're in a much better position, and it's one that Microsoft isn't going to be able to emulate bringing hardware in house (especially given that it was already effectively in house. This new arrangement changes essentially nothing, but makes official what people long assumed).

macspoofing7• 13 years ago

There are a lot of people who would have picked up the attractive, well built, well engineered Nokia devices if they had the platform of Android.

Yeah maybe. There is no guarantee that the outcome would have been more favorable than being bought out by Microsoft.

Apple obviously is very much in a battle with Android ...

Apple already lost to Android. Last count, Android had 80% of the market. There is zero chance of that changing anytime soon. Apple's saving grace is that they can cut themselves a nice little niche, and make some good margins based on the strength of their brand much like they do with Macs. This will be doubly true if HTML pushes out native apps and and makes the platform largely superfluous again. The war is over however.

StandardFuture2• 13 years ago

This new arrangement changes essentially nothing, but makes official what people long assumed

Precisely! There is no "new" move here. This was just the next step in a series of moves that have already been in motion.

I am curious as to how this will affect Microsoft's relationships with Samsung, HTC, and others.

This does open the door to more hardware options for them which could integrate with their other devices e.g. Kinect, One, potentially any PC running Windows, etc.

I remember Bill Gates talking about Microsoft research in pervasive computing. I imagine Microsoft may be trying to use Nokia's solid hardware business to start delivering 'pervasive' devices/services.

Joeri• 13 years ago

WP8 suffers more from a perception problem than anything else. I just switched from android to wp8 and the way i see it i got the smooth interaction and ease of use of iOS at the price point of android. The US market is a special beast because the subsidies erase most of the price difference, but in markets where people buy unlocked I think WP8 can take a lot of market share away from android by virtue of its better experience at the same price. The apps are a red herring. The Nokia devices ship with so much out of the box functionality that most people probably won't even install any.

grey-area• 13 years ago

about a company that went from hero to zero largely at the hands of Android (RIM being another example).

I think iOS had a lot more to do with Nokia's decline than Android. iOS came first and dominated the high end of mobile phones for years, displacing Nokia in that niche, and then Android also undermined them, but it was hardly all down to Android. Nokia used to sell a lot of high end phones, which they made money on, as well as dominating the low-end.

Fuxy• 13 years ago

Nokia is an excellent company and they built the best mobile phones before the smartphone craze. Just as a testament to how good they are there are still pre-smarphone craze Nokia phones available and their probably the best choice if you tend to drop your phones very often or get mad easily and like to trow them to relieve some anger.

I was very disappointed when they choose to sell their new Lumia phones with windows. I would have bought a Nokia with Android in a heartbeat but the fact that they choose Microsoft made me think twice and I eventually went with Samsung.

I just hope Microsoft doesn't ruin Nokia they're still one of the better hardware manufacturers unfortunately they were never very good at software.

rayiner7• 13 years ago

The fact that a lot of people would have bought the phone doesn't mean it would result in profit. Lots of people by HTC phones, but that company is circling the drain. The problem is that an Android phone is a commodity. Its hard to differentiate yourself on the product side. That means you're in extreme price/specs competition. That drives profits towards zero, just as they are on other commodity platforms like the PC (Acer and Lenovo, for example, have abysmal margins). With Windows phone, Microsoft mostly keeps the spec war in check, and WP8 runs fine on 1G/dual 1.5 Ghz on a "flagship" phone.

cdf• 13 years ago

I think WP8 is ok. The biggest challenge is the image of Microsoft. In the hands of Apple, WP8 would be lauded insanely great too. The next CEO of Microsoft has to repair this image, and give Microsoft a new reason to be cool again.

kyro3• 13 years ago

Agreed re: Samsung. With this new acquisition, Microsoft now has the ability to control the entire mobile phone experience -- something Apple has had huge success doing for years now. They'll have a high-quality platform to promote their app store and create an interesting ecosystem. This'll also create a distinct image in consumer's minds of what the Microsoft Phone is, similar to what we imagine when we think of the Apple iPhone. Google doesn't have that control, and that puts them at a disadvantage. If I were Google, I would be looking for ways to create a very clear image of what it means to be using a Google Phone that doesn't include X number of vendor handsets running X^^2 versions of Android.

asdfs2• 13 years ago

Google has Motorola and the Nexus line. As for Microsoft, their spectacular failure with the Surface suggests that having control of both hardware and software does not necessarily result in success.

noisy_boy2• 13 years ago

Microsoft has already done that end-to-end experience thing with Surface and that didn't turn out all that well. Windows phone has been critically acclaimed but that hasn't really made much dent on the IPhone/Android duopoly. And the relatively more successful windows phone devices aren't exactly sub-standard, infact they are quite high quality handsets made by the same manufacturer they just acquired. I'm doubtful how much of incremental improvement end-to-end will do this case.

moca• 13 years ago

You missed a critical issue. Carriers don't like fully controlled verticals like Apple, as they don't want to compete on a fair battle ground. Apple is too powerful in US today, but no carrier wants another Apple. Several friends from Microsoft said this over past couple of years.

Another issue is Microsoft does not have profitable consumer services other than Xbox. Even Microsoft can integrate a lot of its services with Windows Phone, it is a big money sink until Microsoft can make profit on search, maps, outlook.com, skydrive, etc. They have tried for over a decade by now.

In the end, I really like to see 3-way competition between Apple, Google, Microsoft.

sjwright2• 13 years ago

No, a great move would have been for Microsoft to purchase RIM/BlackBerry three or four years ago, and focus on the corporate sector. They could have had the best information security story in the industry. They could have had the ultimate Exchange email experience.

Together, these companies would have had a serious chance at being the indisputable third platform.

On their own, they came up with a dozen incompatible variants of Windows Mobile, and PlayBook. Now both companies and both platforms are teetering on the edge of oblivion.

psbp4• 13 years ago

Yes, a brilliant strategy to have an aging company buy a device maker that markets to an aging customer base.

sudomal• 13 years ago

I guess it would depend on who you are securing the information from, Skype being an obvious example of a formerly secure service that is now owned by Microsoft.

gtirloni3• 13 years ago

BYOD. There is no corporate market for smartphones anymore.

Most execs want iPhones or similar.

leaffig4• 13 years ago

According to Bloomberg TV, Elop is returning to Microsoft, and Siilasmaa will serve as Nokia's interim CEO.

My guess is that Elop will become MS CEO, and is not a bad choice. In his interviews, he comes across as someone really smart and eloquent. He is one of the few CEOs in the world with both enterprise and consumer experience that a future MS CEO badly needs.

mbreese7• 13 years ago

In which case, for Elop, running Nokia really was the trial run that everyone feared it was when he started. The end-game was for him to be in position to take over Microsoft when Balmer stepped down. I guess he passed Microsoft's test then...

frank_boyd3• 13 years ago

I hope this portends a Microsoft phone...

I'm wondering, how can anyone buy and use a Microsoft phone, when we've learned that they partner with the NSA, killing our privacy?

barista• 13 years ago

Google does the same and their phones seems to be selling quite well.

devx• 13 years ago

Apparently there's no money in being a WP8 vendor either. Why do you think Nokia is selling out? And no other WP vendor makes any real money since all of their market share combined is less than 1 percent of the smartphone market.

BuddhaSource2• 13 years ago

Its great, Why do I feel 7.2B is very low?

The acquisition includes distribution channels around the world, factories, devices, R&D and softwares including google maps replacement Nokia Here, which in my opinion very good too.

When we compare this to a software starup Tumblr with 1.2B this seems very less. I could be wrong and missing something big.

justincormack• 13 years ago

Nokia has lots of debt too, which makes It cheaper

Nux2• 13 years ago

This is not a great move. A great move would've been to sell Android phones, even in the 25th hour.

Suicide by Microsoft.

ZeroGravitas7• 13 years ago

There is no money in being an Android vendor except if you're Samsung and are totally vertically integrated.

I remember when the consensus was that there was no money in being an Android vendor, period.

I'm also not sure how the $10 billion valuation of Xiaomi, on sales of $2 billion Android phones figures into this "not making money" thing. Weirdly, those charts you see every few months that tell that "Only Samsung makes money from Android" don't include any of the top 5 smartphone sellers in China. I mean Lenovo is hardly an unknown name in tech.

rayiner7• 13 years ago

Lenovo doesn't make any money. $500m on $30bn revenue. No point in being in that game.

For the downvoters: Nokia is losing money right now, but managed to post a profit for Q4 2012, which at $585m was more than Lenovo made in all of 2012, and about 5-6 times more than ZTE made in 2012.

Beyond a certain point, market share is much less important than profits, much more so in the phone space because it's not like the desktop operating system space where people are building up large systems that will be hard to port in the future.

hippiefahrzeug4• 13 years ago

I think Elop's greatest achievement is to sell people the "There is no money in being an Android vendor"-lie. And people are actually buying it.

WP market is much much smaller, so, by becoming a big player in this market, which Nokia achieved in very little time, they became in fact a big player in a market where there really is no money.

Had they instead of this focused on becoming a big player in a market that actually matters, e.g. the Android market, then Nokia may still (or again) be worth a lot. (But then they wouldn't be a cheap take-over target for Microsoft.)

With Nokias connection to telcoms, they could have easily achieved a big chunk of the android market share.

threeseed• 13 years ago

Hilarious. How is that river of money working out for HTC, Sony, LG, Motorola ?

zobzu2• 13 years ago

Im not sure why its better for Nokia to be under MS than working with MS.

It seems to be a great move for MS if anything. That'd be fine if it wasn't a move that was planned by planting a CEO with a plan to decimate the company until MS could buy it. It might be legal but it's certainly not moral.

gnaffle9• 13 years ago

Actually I don't think that was intentional at all. Nokia failing so miserably with Windows Phone can't have been anyones plan. And if they had succeeded like expected, Nokia would still be worth too much for Microsoft to consider buying it.

gnaffle9• 13 years ago

"There's no money in being an Android vendor if except if you're Samsung" is a silly statement. Nokia _could_ have done just like Amazon, and created their own platform based off Android, but with no ties to the Google ecosystem. With Meego, they could even have made a compatibility layer allowing developers to easily port their Android apps.

However, that plan would only have worked if they did it just around the time when Android became popular. Now it's probably too late.

rayiner7• 13 years ago

No, they couldn't have for the same reason no other android vendor can: they have no compelling way of differentiating an Android spin off, unlike Amazon who has tremendous media store resources. Its just shitty skins like Sense and Touchwiz.

fnordfnordfnord6• 13 years ago

It is the inevitable move. MS can't let Nokia founder after going all-in for MS.

With Windows Phone, Nokia and Microsoft at least have some hope of carving out a profitable stake in the market.

I think you mean Microsoft, Nokia is no more. You think they'll really do it this time? They've only been trying since before the iPhone. I dunno, maybe without Ballmer, they can make something happen.

for $200 unlocked its phenomenal phone.

Don't get used to that. It's because they overestimated demand.

euroclydon• 13 years ago

and for $200 unlocked its phenomenal phone

What does this mean? You paid $200 for the phone? You paid $200 to unlock it? What do these phones cost, with contract, without?

tanzam757• 13 years ago

He bought a phone for $200, all-in. The phone came unlocked, without a contract. Just put in a SIM and use it on any carrier -- including a prepaid carrier -- with or without a data plan.

The way it works in most of the world.

A more descriptive term might've been "$200 unlocked, off-contract."

cpursley• 13 years ago

I bought a 521 for $100 and am super impressed. Put it on my petl plan and my phone bill is about $10 per month.

wslh2• 13 years ago

The new Nokia mobile can be great but business is business and if they can't build an ecosystem it does not matter if your mobile has billion of megapixels. I love that Blackberries are using QNX but this is not enough.

My other concern is if Microsoft is being negligent instead of if they are right or wrong. For example, I think Skype acquisition was negligent in a moment where this kind of technology was moving to the browser (WebRTC), being commoditized, and with a few lines of code everyone can technically replicate the technical parts of the service. Nokia acquisition and Microsoft recent write-offs will scare investors.

In others aspects I also experienced a general degradation in the Microsoft relationship with partners/developers that can obviously harm their business and developers ecosystem. For example, they didn't release the latest Windows 8.1 version to MSDN customers, only to a few vendors. Companies need the latest release to test their software in new environments.

There are a lot of positive things that Microsoft is doing right related to the cloud such as Hyper-V, App-V, Azure, and development tools. The main concern is if they only understand the infrastructure and not the end user and if this issue is embedded in their DNA. When I deal with some of their commercial hosted web services, like Microsoft Exchange, it seems like nobody in Microsoft used GMail, AdWords, or Google Analytics before...

makomk2• 13 years ago

Not really. WebRTC makes the technical part of voice and video messaging easier, but it doesn't solve the problem of getting enough people on your service to make it worth joining.

WebRTC makes sense if you have a web service that the majority of people already have accounts on, have open in their browser whenever they're online, and already know their friends' usernames on - something like for example GMail. Which is probably why Google have been pushing it so hard.

smegel• 13 years ago

Hey guys, stop it, April 1st is like 8 months away!

IanChiles• 13 years ago

3 walled gardens is a very, very bad thing. Couple this with what Google's doing with the new Play Services and Motorola and with what Apple's been doing the entire time, and we could be in for a world of hurt when there are no "open" platforms (as in, for OEMs to build for).

Apocryphon3• 13 years ago

2013 is the debut year of Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish OS, and Samsung's supposed flagship Tizen phone. Now, the question is if carriers, consumers and OEMs will respond to them with any enthusiasm, or treat them like third parties in American politics.

Karunamon• 13 years ago

That would depend entirely on how they present themselves. If those players decide to come off like Linux on the desktop does (where "open"-ness is the main selling point, something utterly irrelevant to people who aren't a particular breed of techie), nobody will care.

Nobody ever successfully sold a platform based on its political leanings.

elorant• 13 years ago

So Microsoft just handed the entire Asian manufacturers’ bunch to the Android ecosystem. Not that they’re not already there but it would be hard for any manufacturer now to invest on Windows when they would think that MS is already giving the edge to Nokia.

Also this comes like an acceptance from MS that they can’t penetrate the smartphone market. So they prefer to invest heavily on devices they own. Which is a first in their 30+ years of building software. Could this mean a similar approach in tablets?

The price though is a bargain. It’s significant less than what Google paid to buy Motorola and Nokia is in a pretty much better state than Motorola in many aspects.

rst• 13 years ago

To be fair, Google also owns a phone manufacturer (Motorola), also bought on the cheap after a few years of flagging sales. They've managed to keep relationships with other phone manufacturers going despite this, so far, but it is a similar problem.

It's conceivable that some of the asian manufacturers might want a foot in each camp (so long as each looked viable at all) just for leverage to use against the other.

engrenage2• 13 years ago

The other manufacturers don't have any alternative but to stay with Google despite Motorola and the tightening noose of Play Services.

sremani4• 13 years ago

The real loss is only one OEM - HTC, other than that there is not a single one worth mentioning

fpgeek• 13 years ago

Um, Samsung makes/made Windows Phones, too. They're heart might not have been in it, but if the platform was ever going to scale quickly they had to be involved. It would have been easier to convince them to make more/better Windows Phones than to get a big slice of their flash and RAM production some other way...

undoware2• 13 years ago

Here's my take. Nokia's downfall has literally been the biggest business failure in the history of the planet - see communities-dominate.blogs.com for backstory. (As I mentioned in a previous post; I'm largely summarizing things Tomi proves with hard data.)

My interpretation of this is that the increasingly untenable position of Stephen Elop began to incriminate the whole board, as any toppling of Elop would invite all sorts of questions as to why he wasn't booted yonks ago. The only way that Microsoft had of avoiding another black eye for Windows was to buy Nokia to appease investors (seriously, how many black eyes can one platform get? Is it a potato?)

Consider: Had the headline read, "Microsoft deal destroys World's Leading Manufacturer of Mobile" (which incidentally is the actual, ink-on-paper market position held by Nokia circa Elop's hire, shows Tomi) and it could have destabilized the larger Windows ecosystem too.

If this claim seems histrionic, recall that the ENTIRE PC INDUSTRY is like a tenth the size of mobile. Yes, I love my PC too, but most consumers seem much happier with other devices for a wide range of use cases. Therefore, getting Windows on those devices mattered. Windows Phone mattered. Windows RT mattered. Intel is on its back leg, and ARM is about to make its final assault on the server closet, where Windows Server is melting away faster than ice on a VAX.

And yet I don't think people realize exactly how vulnerable Microsoft is. The one good thing Ballmer did is notice. Way too late, though. It seems strange to me that there are others who are even less clueful than Ballmer. If your business depends in ANY WAY on Microsoft -- and it probably does -- plan accordingly.

pedalpete5• 13 years ago

We may see the strength in Microsoft server future come from azure, and not from software. Though it is more difficult to get people to try azure over other platforms, I have heard amazing things about it. Personally, I've just always stayed away from Microsoft dev environments, even though I prefer my pc and windows phone to my apple/android variants.

nemothekid2• 13 years ago

Is there a specific post you wanted to highlight on communities-dominate.blogs.com?

b1daly• 13 years ago

You can start here to get a sense of the depth of this man's obsession to highlight how far Nokia has fallen. I find him to be a reasonably entertaining writer, he's crafted a dramatic narrative around the foibles of Nokia.

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/08/ballmer...

throwawaykf027• 13 years ago

I know a couple of savvy guys working for Intel's competitors moaning about how Intel is going to demolish them. Haswell and its descendants, it seems, are the real deal, and in the long term, they hold out little hope for ARM in the mobile space, let alone the server space.

I dunno about Microsoft, but I wouldn't be betting against Intel. (Just to be clear, I have no stock in or position on any of the companies mentioned on this entire thread.)

gnaffle9• 13 years ago

In the server space I agree. However, in the mobile space, ARM has a huge advantage of licensing their cores to dozens of SoC manufacturers that provide very appealing, integrated, low cost chips for mobile vendors to build products on. It's like the Android of the mobile processor market.

If Intel ever start leasing out their manufacturing process to SoC vendors to allow them to build whatever chips they want, then I'll be more optimistic about Intel on mobile.

twoodfin• 13 years ago

It'll be fascinating to see how this plays out. What's Tim Cook's magic number for price/performance in the iPad to justify an architecture swap, and can Intel hit it? I would have thought no a few months ago, but ULV Haswell looks like it's the precursor to something very, very nice.

It's hard to underestimate just how easy a platform swap would be for Apple (and Google already supports both in shipping products).

lsc2• 13 years ago

recall that the ENTIRE PC INDUSTRY is like a tenth the size of mobile. Yes, I love my PC too, but most consumers seem much happier with other devices for a wide range of use cases

Meh, a lot of this is that mobile devices are advancing really fast. I'm perfectly happy with a 5 year old desktop, but I want a new phone much more often. Once mobile devices are "good enough" you will see people buy new devices less often.

ARM is about to make its final assault on the server closet,

I've heard a whole lot of talk about this (and I've talked about this myself; I think I am in one of the industries that could actually sell the things. I have a bunch of customers who would pay a small premium for a physical server to themselves) - but I haven't seen anything realistic. As far as I can tell, you're better of with "Four strong oxen" as it were, rather than "one thousand twenty four chickens"

iamshs3• 13 years ago

Quoting TOmi Ahonen's blog here should be blasphemy , to be frank. He presents a very contorted narrative, with unjustified venom. As for as his summarizing things with hard data, take a look here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6319063 He said Gates vetoed Ballmer's decision to purchase Nokia, and hence gave him 6 months to chart his way out. He squarely blamed Nokia-MS partnership for Ballmer's retiring. Now look at today.

shmerl8• 13 years ago

It was expected all along since Elop ditched Meego which was key to Nokia's success. It won't help Microsoft though, but expect a lot of damage from this. Nokia already attacked VP8 codec with their patents. Now Microsoft will use all Nokia's patents to bring patent trolling to new heights.

jmspring2• 13 years ago

Not sure how not ready, not shipping on devices, no app support makes it "key to success". With that argument sticking to System 40 and System 60 would have made more sense.

shmerl8• 13 years ago

Key to success since it allowed Nokia developing modern and versatile system. Not sure what you meant by no support and not shipping. It was cancelled, obviously. What kind of support do you expect from a cancelled system? Elop cut off that road for Nokia, and their independence was doomed ever since. It was probably the plan all along.

It's good that we have Jolla folks now, who continue Meego heritage. But now they will be increasingly threatened by Microsoft trolling.

ojbyrne• 13 years ago

My initial thought was "didn't that already happen?" It's an easy mistake to make.

bender803• 13 years ago

Anyone know price per share? I was not able to find it in the press release.

bender803• 13 years ago

Nevermind. Nokia itself was not purchased by microsoft. Only part of the company (Devices & Services buinesss) was purchased.

tlogan• 13 years ago

It seems like this will be very interesting fight between Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Samsung in next few years. I assume the first three will do relatively well - the only looser here will be Samsung.

sanxiyn• 13 years ago

Why do you assume so?

leaffig4• 13 years ago

I called this on Friday after looking at the stock market. Too bad I didn't bet too much money on it, but I still made a bunch :)

http://stocktwits.com/bluercloud/message/15522482

http://stocktwits.com/bluercloud/message/15522546

By the way, this looks like an acquihire for Elop being the next MSFT CEO.

RachelF2• 13 years ago

I wonder who knew?

dTal• 13 years ago

I love this. Virtually irrefutable evidence of insider trading, and everyone goes "meh".

hiyou102• 13 years ago

Nokia Solutions and Networks still makes plenty for money so they aren't dead quite yet. I think this makes sense for Microsoft seeing as how the redesign of Windows phone hasn't made back the money they put into it. It's becoming unprofitable for windows phones to be made so they are ensuring they have hardware.

joezydeco2• 13 years ago

Well, at least Qt got warp-core ejected before all of this. God only knows what would have happened in this transaction.

aroman• 13 years ago

This. Even though I personally throw in with the GTK+ crowd as both a user and developer, the competition between the two camps is definitely good for innovation and makes for strong, compelling alternatives on the Linux desktop.

carmackty• 13 years ago

"This." This what? What does that mean?

alxbrun2• 13 years ago

1 living dead + 1 living dead = ...

nivla3• 13 years ago

an unproductive comment on HN?

alxbrun2• 13 years ago

at least you're honest with yourself!

wmt2• 13 years ago

Nokia was not acquired by MS, Nokia sold them their burning platform, their phone department.

MichaelMoser123• 13 years ago

In Tel Aviv we have the Nokia stadium (that's because Nokia sponsored the reconstruction of the thing); will we now have a Microsoft stadium instead ?

throwawaykf027• 13 years ago

There was some credible speculation back then that Google bought up Mototorola because its CEO threatened patent warfare with other Android manufacturers, something Google really did not want happening.

Along similar lines, I speculate that Microsoft snapped up Nokia because they threatened starting an Android line of phones.

I think there's a significant business lesson in here somewhere... Something along the lines off "partner with a giant, then become dangerous to it"

Funnily enough, MS also gets a nice patent bonus along with its purchase as Google did with Motorola. However, I think Nokia's patent portfolio is much, much more powerful than Motorola's. This is for three reasons, two publicly evident and one anecdotal:

1) Apple admitted defeat in its patent fight with Nokia, something it hasn't done with anybody else;

2) Nokia has multiple patent lawsuits ongoing, and none of them involve standards essential patents, the one thing most likely to invoke the ire of the antitrust gods;

3) A previous boss of mine knew the head of Nokia R&D in America, and he regaled me with stories of smartphone apps they had working in their labs way back in 2006 that made me go "how the hell do they do that?" Unfortunately, any two-bit app developer can do those things today on any modern smartphone platform using publicly documented API. But I am still curious about what goodies they have hidden away in their labs today.

Anechoic• 13 years ago

I speculate that Microsoft snapped up Nokia because they threatened starting an Android line of phones.

Remember that MS makes money off Android phones.

MS also gets a nice patent bonus along [..] Apple admitted defeat in its patent fight with Nokia, something it hasn't done with anybody else

Apple has (well had but I'd bet dollars to donuts it was renewed) a patent cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft so this could be a win for Apple as well.

corresation8• 13 years ago

Remember that MS makes money off Android phones.

Purportedly. I engaged in a debate on here before which involved trying to find the supposedly enormous sums of money that Microsoft makes from Android in their quarterly financial statements. At best it has to amount to what would be chump change to a company like Microsoft.

Instead we hear about supposed agreements where vendors who all happen to also be Windows Phone makers pay some unknown sum to Microsoft, which for all we know is used towards their WP licensing.

If Nokia released Android phones it would been devastating to Microsoft's mobile platform. It would have ruined it.

throwawaykf027• 13 years ago

I have no specific knowledge at all of any cross-licensing here (and if I did, I surely won't comment on it in public), but from the few license deals I very tangentially know of, they happen in terms of portfolios of assets valid at a given time for a given period. That is, you get rights to portfolio X of N issued patents for M years, and I get rights to portfolio Y of P issued patents for Q years. We negotiate to assign some value to those portfolios, and if they don't even out, somebody pays the other a royalty.

However, I cannot imagine anybody signing an eternal, all-encompassing cross-licensing deal to each others' portfolios. This is for many reasons, one simply being that one never knows what could be invented, and another being one simply doesn't know when the other will stop inventing and thus, reciprocating.

Yes, Apple certainly has a cross-license deal in place with MS (in addition to the one from the 90s, given the number of UI features WP shares with iOS but has not been sued over). But I would be very surprised if this acquisition was included in those deals. Rather, the relevant cross-licenses were made when Apple settled with Nokia.

null_ptr• 13 years ago

Remember that MS makes money off Android phones.

Yes, but I assume not nearly as much as they'd make from the sale of their own phone system tied into their own application and media ecosystem. On average, this coupling would keep producing revenue long after the original sale.

corresation8• 13 years ago

Microsoft's own press release makes clear that they are not buying any patents. They are buying a 10-year license to Nokia's patents.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2013/Sep13/09-02An...

This is almost certainly to lubricate regulatory approval, and because it unleashes a Nokia patent monster upon the lands.

wmboy2• 13 years ago

...they are not buying any patents. They are buying a 10-year license to Nokia's patents.

That's basically the same isn't it? A patent can only remain active for 20 years, assuming most of the patents are several years old the majority of them will be pretty close to expiration in 10 years time.

Note: I'm basing this on NZ patent law, but I assuming it's the same for any 1st world country...

molmalo• 13 years ago

You seem to be right. Here's an article [1] with details about the transaction.

The main points of the deal are:

- Microsoft pays € 5.44 Billions for all of its Devices & Services business, including the Mobile Phones and Smart Devices business units as well as an industry-leading design team, operations including all Nokia Devices & Services production facilities, Devices & Services-related sales and marketing activities, and related support functions.

- Nokia will grant Microsoft a 10 year non-exclusive license to its patents as of the time of the closing (with option to extend to perpetuity), and Microsoft will grant Nokia reciprocal rights related to HERE services.

- Microsoft will become a strategic licensee of the HERE platform, and will separately pay Nokia for a four year license.

- Microsoft has agreed to make immediately available to Nokia EUR 1.5 billion of financing in the form of three EUR 500 million tranches of convertible bonds to be issued by Nokia maturing in 5, 6 and 7 years respectively. It is at Nokia’s discretion if it chooses to draw down all or some of these tranches.

- To avoid the perception of any potential conflict of interest between now and the pending closure of the transaction, Stephen Elop will step aside as President and CEO of Nokia Corporation, resign from the Board of Directors, and will become Executive Vice President, Devices & Services

[1] http://www.efinancehub.com/nokia-corporation-adr-nysenok-doi...

throwawaykf027• 13 years ago

Why yes, you're right! I totally missed that. And your rationale makes sense as well.

As for the Nokia patent monster, well... it's already been rampaging the countryside for a few months now. I haven't thought through the ramifications of this deal, but I wonder if it would allow them the same immunity that trolls enjoy?

CoffeeDregs• 13 years ago

This is largely OT, but I consider this to be a critical factor in online communities, so...

    I speculate that

I upvoted you just for this bit. Smart people who note when they're speculating are rare ##. I hear speculation spoken as though it were experience or authority depressingly often.

Reading your comment further: I agree.

## I'm worried that I'm sounding prejudiced and that's not my intention. Not-smart people speculate constantly and I doubt they recognize it; it's hard to recognize speculation in our society. Smart people are the worst: their speculations sound reasonable/smart. Smart people silently-speculating are like Homer's sirens: sounds good until you're dashed on the rocks.

hdivider• 13 years ago

Excellent points. Wish I had written this comment. =]

Denoting when you're speculating is definitely important. It can help to deconstruct the problem - a bit like a well-placed assert statement.

pinaceae• 13 years ago

MS paid less for Nokia handset business than for Skype.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Goodbye to the Nokia brand, soon only to be mentioned in rose-tinted lookbacks. Mobile phones, built like a brick, running for days.

dagw2• 13 years ago

Mobile phones, built like a brick, running for days

The sad thing is that someone at Nokia seems to have just remembered those days and they've just announced the Nokia 515. A solidly designed aluminium and gorilla glass 'dumb phone' with a 30+ day standby time.

sjf• 13 years ago

Eh, they've been selling brick phones to literally billions of people in the developing world for years.

plinkplonk• 13 years ago

So now the Nokia employees who aren't let go can now experience the pleasures of Microsoft Stack Ranking.

zmmmmm• 13 years ago

Theory: Nokia went to Microsoft and said "we're going Android". This was the (intended) result?

tlb• 13 years ago

The combined company makes a lot of sense and will be well-positioned to compete in mobile, blah blah.

I'm sad, because Nokia stood for something: something I generally liked even though I didn't own one. As did Microsoft: something I disliked mildly, but that needed to exist.

Now those two brands can't stand for two separate things any more. The combined company will stand for maximizing shareholder value through leveraging synergies, or something.

Meanwhile, the iPhone has lost most of its personality, and Ubuntu phone isn't shipping (and it'll be a watery product anyway).

Can someone please start a smartphone company to make a phone I care about?

asdfs2• 13 years ago

Jolla might interest you, though I have no idea about their current state.

morkbot• 13 years ago

Firefox OS might grow up into something serious in a year or two (but that's more of a hope than any prediction).

general_failure3• 13 years ago

So, it's lesser than the price for Skype? Wow. This makes no sense to me though. I mean Nokia has a lot more value than Skype!

RachelF2• 13 years ago

Yes, hard to believe they paid more for Skype!

X-Istence2• 13 years ago

What does this mean for Qt?

taspeotis• 13 years ago

What do you expect it to mean?

[In March 2011] Nokia announced the sale of Qt's commercial licensing and professional services to Digia [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(framework)

X-Istence2• 13 years ago

Nokia is still one of the primary developers behind Qt, or at least they were... has that changed?

fmax302• 13 years ago

This was pretty much almost expected. What microsoft did was made nokia very much dependent upon microsoft. Then it buys it, a stroke of genius i tell you.

fmax302• 13 years ago

Might I know the reason for the DownVote ? I just presented my observation , if you disagree then please by all means let us have a gentleman's discussion.

rburhum• 13 years ago

Among many other things, with this, MS can now compete with Google Maps. Although they already had a partnership with Nokia, having them with a tighter team integration is a different story. I am sure both MS and Google will do drastic innovations with this renewed competition.

altano• 13 years ago

The acquisition does NOT include:

  - HERE Maps
  - Nokia NSN (Nokia Siemens Networks, its "network infrastructure")
  - Advanced Technologies (I couldn't find any info on what this means, given the name)

aaronsnoswell• 13 years ago

Please correct the title on this post - Microsoft is only acquiring the devices and services branch of Nokia - they do have other departments (e.g. mapping).

rurounijones• 13 years ago

Elop: Mission accomplished

stugs• 13 years ago

Cue Snake on Windows RT jokes

test001only• 13 years ago

What would this mean for all the Nokia feature phones ? The latest Asha series was very good and selling pretty well atleast in India. How would this figure in MS strategy? Are they going to ditch it? That would be sad, because Nokia still makes phones that can withstand rough use.

On the other side would Nokia start manufacturing Laptop in future. I would really like Nokia design team to come up with a good Windows laptop!

abrowne• 13 years ago

I'm wondering the same. My main phone now is an Asha 501 — great phone for a light user who wants a small, light device with a long battery life.

SnowProblem• 13 years ago

Seems like it could be a great move, but it raises some questions. Given Microsoft's perspective, they know they need to increase Windows Phone share. The iPhone is on its way to become a niche device, so I doubt they would look to Apple and try to turn Microsoft+Nokia into the one-stop-shop for Windows Phone devices like I've seen speculated in many places. That's too big of a gamble. Instead, I think they'd model after Android, which now has 80% of the market, and continue strong on the OEM route, with Nokia-based devices just acting as a leader. The way I see it, this aligns much better with what's worked historically for Microsoft and what shareholders expect, especially given the Surface blunder. At least I hope so.

The problem is that Samsung, HTC and LG are all focused on Android, and Microsoft needs to change that. Can the Nokia buy help with that? I wonder. What would stop Microsoft from using Nokia's patents aggressively (rather than defensively) to "motivate" the other phone manufacturers to produce, market and license more Windows Phone devices, or face additional lawsuits against their majority-Android lines? Nokia alone didn't have the incentive to push to increase WP share outside their lines before, and Microsoft appears to already have a strong patent portfolio for mobile (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_wars). If so, this deal could be especially sweet for Microsoft, and also could benefit Nokia too, since it would retain premium WP status when a true third ecosystem develops. Thoughts?

i386• 13 years ago

Very interesting, since Stephen Elop was tipped to replace Ballmer after his departure.

I think the real coup is the access to the dumb phone market in places like Africa and India where Nokia is strong today but where their growing middle class will want to move to smart phones over the next 10 years.

faddotio• 13 years ago

CEO reverse acquisition? Elop 4 MS CEO 2014?

ommunist• 13 years ago

The fall of giant. A domino effect may result in Samsung buying Microsoft in 3-5 years.

dotcoma• 13 years ago

For less money than they spent on Skype.

RomP• 13 years ago

Once more we marvel the prophecy of this designer: http://stocklogos.com/topic/past-and-future-famous-logos First he predicted next Microsoft logo, now Nokia. Bravo!

lsc2• 13 years ago

It is a sad day. I have been joking with friends that we should have a funeral in sunnyvale. Probably, though, that would be in poor taste.

On the upside for nokia shareholders, well, when nokia switched to windows phone, it was widely reported that "Microsoft bought Nokia for zero dollars" - now, at least, the Nokia shareholders are getting paid for it.

milesf• 13 years ago

So a has-been has been acquired by another has-been. Together they will unseat the Apple/Google juggernaut by beating IOS/Android.

No, I don't believe it either.

jcrei• 13 years ago

The old fat couple in the room had a dance and microsoft just ran out of things to say, so in order to avoid an awkward moment (high end sales are abysmal) he proposed. nokia looked around, didn't want to die alone, and like any scared middle aged woman, said yes.

marcamillion4• 13 years ago

Why would MSFT highlight the fact that the cash is coming from overseas in the PR? Is there a tax benefit to doing something like that?

Specifically:

Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will pay EUR 3.79 billion to purchase substantially all of Nokia’s Devices & Services business, and EUR 1.65 billion to license Nokia’s patents, for a total transaction price of EUR 5.44 billion in cash. Microsoft will draw upon its overseas cash resources to fund the transaction.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2013/Sep13/09-02An...

sseveran• 13 years ago

It doesn't have to pay US taxes on money overseas to fund the transaction.

marcamillion4• 13 years ago

That's interesting.

karthikeyahegde• 13 years ago

Ohh my GOD... now MS introduces the bugs, not only in OS, it will be in phone HardWare also.

itsbits• 13 years ago

PLease microsoft..just make Visual Studio free and you will lead mobile market in no time..

maybe_someday• 13 years ago

They already have a free version for creating WP apps.

Nux2• 13 years ago

What a tragic end to the sad story of Nokia.

It was a long time coming now, but I'm still gobsmacked.

Looking back it's as if Elop and whoever his puppeteer is did all they could to undermine this company.

Sold to Microsoft for bits. Even Motorola sold for twice as much.

Nokia would have made money from Android. The market is massive and still growing.

There is no bright future with Microsoft. People don't buy or recommend Windows phone, not at a rate that matters they don't.

What a sad day. Farewell, Nokia.

doe88• 13 years ago

Nokia 7.2bn$

Skype 8.5bn$

I think, it is reasonnable to say it seems to be a better move this time.

patrikr• 13 years ago

The title is wrong. Nokia is not being acquired, it's selling the phone business.

sirkneeland• 13 years ago

As a Nokia employee, I can't yet comment on whether this is ultimately good or bad for us and what our dreams were.

I can say that it is a very emotional time for us Nokia employees, and I can only imagine it is even more so for those of us who are also Finns.

JoachimS3• 13 years ago

This is a great move - for Nokia. Now Nokia has a huge pile of money to take on Huawei, Ericsson and Cisco etc in the mobile network field. Remember, Nokia bought out Siemens from NSN as recent as July this year:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-30/nokia-said-to-ag...

With the money from the MS deal, the headache of a failing mobile phone business while retaining the patents and maps I think Nokia will be in a much better position witch a clearer focus.

JoachimS3• 13 years ago

The deal is also very interesting as it clearly points to what the board of MS sees as the future - to truly become a device vendor. They have had success with Xbox, but failed with Zune and first generation Surface.

Can they really transform MS into a prosperous device company while not alienating their partners and affect their core enterprise SW business? I have my doubts and that they don't acquire the patents, just license them makes their position imho much weaker.

Also, the new Nokia feature phone, will it even appear on the market now before being killed?

ville• 13 years ago

Nowadays I measure acquisitions in Instagrams. At $7.2B Nokia cost Microsoft ~7 Instagrams. That sounds crazy when you think that Instagram had 13 employees, compared to 30000 employees moving to Microsoft from Nokia.

DominikR5• 13 years ago

To me, this is borderline criminal behaviour and shows once more that Microsoft is incapable of playing fair.

Installing a trojan horse as Nokias CEO, who then proceeds to destroy any value left in that company so that Microsoft can pick it up for a cheap price.

I'd be amazed if Elop is promoted to MS's CEO position for such deceitful behaviour

itry• 13 years ago

Interesting theory. Might indeed have been a plan. Microsoft was afraid that no hw manufacturer needed their os anymore. So they decided to build their own hardware. Fast way: Buy an exisiting Phone manufacturer.

general_failure3• 13 years ago

I don't think elop was a Trojan horse, I don't think any of this was preplanned.

But I do think elop is a weasel and a scum and it would be seriously disgusting to have him as Microsoft CEO. He did a gross disservice to nokia and nobody I know has any iota of respect for him. He has no leadership qualities whatsoever. In fact, he is what you call a corporate whore. He pleases others and wins favors. Like now he has done ms a favor and they will make him CEO.

yulaow2• 13 years ago

I would prefer to say that the Board of nokia is gone full retard hiring him as ceo. OR they knew since the start that M$ was gonna buying them.

buster• 13 years ago

I think the exact same thing...

  - get ex MS employee to be Nokia CEO
  - fire lots of Nokia employees
  - run the company down
  - buy Nokia, hire ex MS employee to run that part

It's a shame, i never had a Nokia, but the featurephones atleast have been decent hardware and quality. They haven't been marketleader for nothing..

Oh, and by the way, the next step will be:

  - buy all Nokia patents (if they haven't as well)
  - sue rest of the market

Nokia must be sitting on a huge pile of relevant mobile and networking patents (although the networking stuff may stay with NSN).

markdown• 13 years ago

This deal includes a purchase of Nokia's handset division, and a licensing of a lot of their patents.

mcintyre19943• 13 years ago

If you believe this was a conspiracy, you might be inclined to believe Microsoft will have influence over the remains of Nokia too. If that is the case, it's better to have Nokia sue the market over them patents, much less space to be attacked back without a devices division.

zem• 13 years ago

their dumbphones were superb too. the nokia 1100 is probably the most usable phone i've ever had, in terms of being a phone (voice calls and sms). comfortable to hold, comfortable buttons, nigh indestructible, and an insanely long battery life.

hannibal5• 13 years ago

MS is known for it's ruthless business tactics. Nokia joins the long list of MS partners who got hosed. It's impossible to say how well planned this whole thing was, or if there was any gaps. But it's certainly possible.

1. Elop is the new rising star in MS.

2. Big American shareholders (who own more MS stock than Nokia) force Ollila to pick guy from America.

3. Elop commits to MS software almost instantly.

4. Widely criticized "burning platform" speech kills the revenue making phone business almost overnight. Nokia must commit to MS and it can't look sideways.

3. Elop's family has been living in Redmond all these years. They did not move as Elop initially said.

4. Ballmer announces retirement just before Nokia deal.

5. Nokia sells cheap just when sales show small hope.

brador2• 13 years ago

How does 4. ballmer retirement play into things?

malaporte• 13 years ago

Maybe that was the outcome Nokia's board looked for from the start? I mean, they did choose Elop, and it was pretty clear where that would lead them. Nokia was on a downhill slope way before Elop came onboard.

shrikant• 13 years ago

There were acquisition talks in June 2013 which fell through because the price wasn't right. Elop just had to bide his time. http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2013/06/failed-microsoft-nokia-...

nextw33k• 13 years ago

The problem is that you could never prove it in a court of law.

chris_wot4• 13 years ago

It's not illegal, unless strong arm tactics were used to force the board into it against their will.

x0x0• 13 years ago

I dunno about criminal, and nokia seems like an incompetent company (the smartphone market was theirs to lose and lose it they did), but I have to stand amazed at a couple players. Elop is returning to microsoft and Mark Penn, strategist from the hillary clinton presidential campaign, will be running marketing. Those two sure have the gift of failing up.

anuragramdasan• 13 years ago

Its as if Ballmer wants to screw things up as much as he can before he leaves. While the behaviour, as you mentioned, is borderline criminal, this only means Microsoft wasting ridiculous amounts of money and time into a mobile platform that not many care for.

chollida12• 13 years ago

To me, this is borderline criminal behaviour and shows once more that Microsoft is incapable of playing fair.

This is a perfect example of a comment that has no business on hacker news.

Installing a trojan horse as Nokias CEO, who then proceeds to destroy any value left in that company so that Microsoft can pick it up for a cheap price

You do realize that Microsoft doesn't get to appoint the CEO of other companies right? Nokia picked Elop on their own. There was buzz at the time about how they had "stolen" him away from Microsoft.

crucialfelix• 13 years ago

This also probably means that Nokias very good map technology will now merge into or replace Bing's.

meerita• 13 years ago

If you think this gonna bring better phones, with better OSs, you're wrong. Look back into the history of these companies.

ulfw• 13 years ago

7.2 Billion USD for Nokia sounds like a much better deal to me than 12.5 B for Motorola. Kudos to MSFT on finally making that move!

dodyg• 13 years ago

iPhone destroyed Microsoft, BlackBerry and Nokia high end smartphone products. Android crushed the rest. End of story.

caberus2• 13 years ago

maybe it sounds irrelevant, but always i wonder that, why Nokia pays less attention to Linux, a Finnish company and an OS born in Finland? Only a few Nokia devices run some kind of Linux and i think they are not so bad (my favorite is N9, btw).

caberus2• 13 years ago

this makes Elop the most dangerous trojan horse of all times

JoachimS3• 13 years ago

Here is the Microsoft Strategic Rationale presetation: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.c...

mathattack• 13 years ago

Expensive signing bonus to pick up their new CEO?

thspimpolds• 13 years ago

Well, RIM is now RIP. Microsoft was their last hope

dmead• 13 years ago

"hi everybody, i'm bill gates. buy this phone and 15 dollars will go to support malaria research".... is what i want to see on tv.

ghshephard• 13 years ago

Clearly Elop agreeing on the acquisition by Microsoft was contingent on Ballmer resigning from Microsoft, Setting Elop up as the next CEO of Microsoft. So, not only was Ballmer fired, his replacement has likely already been chosen.

moron4hire• 13 years ago

Actually, I'd be really interested to see if Microkia could pull it off, could make an awesome phone that seriously challenged the iOS/Android hegemony. I think they have the resources to be able to do it in a way that Mozilla or Ubuntu or any other strictly software/no experience in hardware company could do. And if Microsoft can reinvent itself and snatch victory out of this, then that means the market is actually wide open. Ultimately, I'd like to see a true, open source, Linux phone, and Microsoft quite ironically could do a lot to prove that one could be successful.

In other words, Microsoft gets to take chances that anyone else gets to learn from. More competition is a good thing.

rbanffy• 13 years ago

... and this is the part I say "I told you so".

Elop never really left Microsoft. All he did at Nokia's helm was to trim down the company to facilitate this acquisition.

gpvos• 13 years ago

Nokia Windows Phones the fastest-growing smartphones in the world

Huh?

arkj• 13 years ago

Ballmer trumps his critics. Well done - Sir.

There is a lot of potential to eat from both iPhone and Android cakes. Android needs a beefy h/w, c'mon guys let's admit it. Windows is way faster even on the low-end lumias. Also don't forget MS Office - the sleeping giant on windows phones.

History likes to repeat itself. First Jobs wouldn't licence MacOS, and Billy rode the wave he created. Then google got the second wave. Why? The same reason, he wouldn't license iOS.

From a user perspective iOS is the best, but the new Lumias makes me think of Apollo as no less great. No matter what google does, lumia will eat big from Android's share. But I waiting to see how big a bite it's gonna be on the apple.

In the enterprise world Office on Phones is gonna pay a big role. This is death toll for blackberry, sorry to say that.

C'mon Cook, partner on. Let others make "cheap" apples. License iOS before it's too late.

forgottenpaswrd• 13 years ago

I hate to say that, but I told you so! :-D

More than two or more years ago, I wrote in different places, and probably in HN that when Microsoft partners he is always the winner, and the other is the looser, and that Microsoft was going to buy Nokia at a discount in the future.

History repeats itself.

mcintyre19943• 13 years ago

It'll be interesting to see what happens with Windows Phone from here. As far as I know, nobody except Nokia was doing 'better' with WP than Android, and didn't seem to be putting much effort into it really. I imagine they might be further deterred by Microsoft buying the dominant manufacturer too. This seems to put all the momentum of WP with Microsoft, and it seems like the only real place to go from here is competing with the iPhone/iOS head on.

tytso• 13 years ago

One thing which I haven't seen anyone mention yet. Nokia, like Skype, was a non-US company, which means Microsoft could use cash which is trapped in Europe.

So you have to take the purchase price and discount it by as much as the US Corporate tax rate (which Microsoft would have to pay if the money was going to be repatriated back to the States, as would be needed if that cash was going to be used to pay dividends or to purchase a company based in the US).

simba-hiiipower2• 13 years ago

yeah, in one of their releases they specifically mention the transaction will be completed using offshore funds.

and while i'd generally like to see some movement on policy to encourage large us-based multinationals to bring-home more of their offshore earnings (for reinvestment domestically), the current environment does play-out nicely for foreign m&a - which is at-least (in my opinion) a better use of funds than dividends and buybacks.

shubb2• 13 years ago

Money from work and sales outside the US should be repatriated and invested domestically, just because the company is notionally based in the US?

Sounds a tad imperialistic?

I think getting companies pay tax in the US for sales in the US would be less internationally antisocial...

pasiaj• 13 years ago

M&As are generally value destroying activities. Why do you think dividends and buybacks are inferior?

jaakl• 13 years ago

This title is here more than 50% wrong. Microsoft bought Devices and Services business, and large portion of patents. This is about 50% of Nokia revenues, less than 50% of employees, and about 0% of the profits.

hauget• 13 years ago

Always loved #Nokia's design but hated their sw. One of my favorite designed phones EVER will always be the E71 http://bit.ly/14nbnC7 On that note, Microsoft should buy Blackberry too. Nokia design & hardware +WinPhone8 software +Blackberry's customers might be a winning combination.

st2p• 13 years ago

Misleading title - Microsoft acquired the handset division; Nokia lives on in infrastructure and maps.

niuzeta• 13 years ago

I wonder if it's the last present Ballmer left to whoever succeeds him, or the last spat.

kailuowang• 13 years ago

Ballmer confirms what we all knew: Elop candidate for Microsoft CEO job http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/03/microlop/

AndrewDucker2• 13 years ago

What does this mean for Nokia's remaining feature-phone business?

I was under the impression that there was still a global market for people wanting cheap, low-function, phones.

mrweasel• 13 years ago

I was thinking the same thing. What is Microsoft going to do with that part of the business, that's the part that's doing well.

Nokias feature phones are still huge in Africa and large parts of Asia. If Microsoft is just going to ignore that part of the business, then they are opening the marked for the competitors. If they just bought Nokia for their smartphone, then they are making a giant mistake.

mongol• 13 years ago

I think they will operate it as long as it runs a decent profit.

cevaris• 13 years ago

damn. would have really like to see an Nokia based android phone.

vmarsy• 13 years ago

All the other comments are too focused on the front-end Nokia Lumia vs iPhone vs Android.

Microsoft buying Nokia is kind of the same as Google buying Motorola for 12 billion $ :

Nokia has 10k patents in the mobile phone world.

So a 10-year license to its patents has its importance

sharpneli• 13 years ago

That pretty much means that the biggest owner of patents for mobiles does not manufacture them anymore. Thus the mutually assured destruction does not hinder them anymore.

I'm not surprised if we'll see a bunch of patent lawsuits against everyone else except Microsoft within an year.

j45• 13 years ago

Anyone else see this and think of their Nokian Tyres? Nokia has an interesting history, including owning Nokian which makes some very good winter tires.

TerraHertz• 13 years ago

Now we find out if Failure has a critical mass.

stefek99• 13 years ago

If you wonder how the market reacted: http://nokiastock.tumblr.com/post/60266789816/here-the-answe...

AliaksandrH• 13 years ago

I feel like there are fundamental problems with MSFT (or INTC)succeeding in the mobile world

After the platform wars of 90s, the industry has scars (70% of economics went to two vendors - MSFT and INTC - Wintel)and would not want any potential repeat of the history

In many ways, ARM Holdings is anti-Intel. Same way, one can claim that Android is anti-Windows model (in many respects)

I am really curious what will happen here - and who are people in U.S. who still don't own a smartphone? (still 39% of the population - http://mashable.com/2013/06/06/smartphones-61-percent/)

Nokia acquired by Microsoft

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