Microsoft In Talks To Buy Nokia's Smartphone Division?

lightbox32 writes "Analyst Eldar Murtazin announced today that Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer was soon to meet his Nokia counterpart Stephen Elop to finalize the purchase of Nokia's smartphone division, which would see patents, staff, and some plants transferred to Microsoft, for an undisclosed price. From the article: '“Steve Ballmer, Andy Lees and Stephen Elop and Kai Ostamo will meet in Las Vegas to finalize agreement about Nokia smartphone unit. Bye Nokia,” he tweeted on Thursday morning."

Comments

This story is a lie

[DCTech]

Nokia already said that they won't sell their smartphone division several hours ago. Why is this rumor still echoed on slashdot?

Re:This story is a lie

[sconeu]

About to post the same thing.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/05/nokia-will-sell-crown-jewels-to-microsoft/

Re:This story is a lie

[TeXMaster]

Nokia already said that they won't sell their smartphone division several hours ago...

Why would Microsoft buy it when they already got it for free?

Because Nokia can pull out of the deal at any time now, and considering how much their Linux and Symbian smartphones are still in high request compared to their WinPhones (which is ridiculous if you consider that the N9 is essential an EOL, and still there's people in Italy, where it's not officially sold, getting it from Switzerland just to be able to put their hands on it), they actually might realize they're doing the stupidest possible thing by tying their technology to the MS o.s. —if MS buys their smartphone division, MS has the o.s. and hardware under its control. Much cheaper in the long run. I wouldn't be surprised if patents get in the deal as well, just so that they might fight a legal battle with android phones (specifically the reason why Google bought Motorola).

Re:Qt

[Microlith]

The agreement still stands, and since it's LGPL you could fork from the last LGPL version and still use it in commercial projects. Of course, losing corporate support would be crippling to no small extent, which is one reason the Qt people have been working overtime to separate Qt from Nokia as much as they can short of being spun off.

Re:But...

[Nerdfest]

It means he's done enough damage to the stock price to make it affordable. It amazes me that what they did is considered legal.

Re:Not plausible

[TeXMaster]

Sold well? Who bought it ? I hardly know anyone anymore who owns a Nokia phone, just eighteen months ago half my friends had one, hell I had a N900 myself. I had high hopes for the N900, sadly Nokia didnt...

Many people with N900 didn't get an N9 because the N9 is EOL. Despite this, though, there are markets where the N9 has not been officially sold (like Italy) that have to go look for their N9s eslewhere (e.g. Switzerland) _and they do_ (there are quite a few online Italian shops that sell imported N9s).

Nokia expresselly killed their Linux line of phones, by making the N950 a "developer preview" only and only releasing the N9 in "selected" market. _Despite_ this, and their Lumia phones being everywhere, the N9 is still in high demand.