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Why Intel Should Buy Nokia
An opinion piece at ZDNet makes the case that Intel is the best match for struggling handset-maker Nokia, arguing that Intel needs help breaking into the smartphone market and Nokia isn't tied as tightly to Qualcomm/ARM hardware as other vendors. From the article:
"Another factor in favor of a union is Nokia and Intel's shared history — albeit not the most successful — of working together in mobile, thanks to their collaboration on the Linux-based MeeGo mobile OS. What's more, Intel has a long relationship with Microsoft, handy given the impending release of Windows Phone 8 and Nokia's new-found commitment to Microsoft's platform. The fact that Intel is currently using Android, as seen with Orange's San Diego smartphone, isn't much of a hindrance; Intel has already said it hasn't written off the idea of using Windows Phone 8 in future, and due to the x86 architecture, Android phones that use Intel's Atom processor won't even run all of the apps on Google Play, suggesting the relationship between Android and Intel isn't all it could be."
Nokia is wedded to MS. Intel needs to be more flexible than that, especially since WinPhone is in freefall, and Nokia isn't even trying at tablets.
Dell or HP should buy Nokia, it's their last chance to make it in the mobile space.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Maemo / Meego is dead at Nokia. They all either got sacked or quit and formed Jolla mobile.
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Since we're speculating wildly, what about this scenario: Intel buying RIM and Qt. Nokia isn't using Qt anymore for new development and is looking for a buyer. RIM is switching to Qt and Intel has Qt experience from MeeGo. RIM is looking for a niche market rather than compete head-on with iOS and Android (see the recent interview with the CEO), so an Intel-owned RIM would be less of a direct competitor to Apple and Android manufacturers, which would increase the chances of them adopting Intel CPU's in the future. After all, getting into the mobile market would not be a goal in itself, just a way to sell more CPU's.
It's very similar to the early days of electrical distribution; when it became very clear that AC had won, you wouldn't go out and invest lots of money into companies producing DC generating equipment.
The article suggests that they step away from a Qualcomm Snapdragon based phone and move to Intel processors; but if they did so, they'd still need an ARM-based system to run the SDR on to get network connectivity, and they'd still pay the $35/device Qualcomm tax in any event to get CDMA connectivity for the U.S. Verizon/Sprint market. So a move to Intel does nothing but raise their price and their power consumption.
On the other side of the coin, Intel pretty much shot itself in the head when it comes to the mobile phone market when they sold StrongARM off to Marvell in 2006, before they had anything that could compete with it in terms of power consumption/performance ratio. Buying back into ARM now isn't going to help them in this regard.
All in all, it'd probably be a match made in hell for both companies.
Nobody is going to buy Nokia. Intel isn't a good fit. They're trimming the company down to where it can fit in a filing cabinet managed by a couple paralegals.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Nokia culture inside Nokia is practically dead. Nokia's old culture was based on Finnish post-war determination, risk taking and fundamental honesty. There were values such as respect for the individual which represented the understanding that each employee had a stake in and responsibility for the company. These values were already under attack long before even Elop joined. "Respect for the individual" had been changed into just "respect" which is a completely meaningless empty feel good phrase. Elop has brought in Microsoft culture to senior management and run around destroying every area of the business which showed individual initiative.
With Nokia culture dead there is very little to bring the company back to a sane position. The very idea of working so much with a company as immoral and corrupt as Microsoft would have been rejected by the old Nokia, and that is probably part of the reason why the best pepople have been leaving Nokia so quickly since Elop arrived. The place to look for the true Nokia is inside the companies already spun off years ago and within the groups which have been leaving Nokia in disgust recently.
For the strength that made Nokia survive before to allow it to continue again, there would have to be a very strong move from the board to completely get rid of the current Microsoft culture. That probably has to happen within six months to have a chance since Elop is putting so many of his own placement into the management. I really don't see that much chance of that being done.
Intel have never had any success in mobile...
Nokia are falling fast...
And MS are somewhere between, never had much success and also seem to be falling, albeit from a much lower height than Nokia.
Why would 3 failures of the mobile market want to get together?
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All I care about is that QT ends up surviving and being independent again. As for Nokia they can rot back in the 90s where they seem to be stuck.
If Nokia had had half a brain they would have made QT for iPhone and then Android so that people could port their iPhone apps quickly to Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, Window Mobile, and oh yes the Nokia phones. Nokia would have then become the center of the app universe while their own app library would have grown somewhat. I reluctantly learned Objective-C and have little desire to relearn Java so that I can port my iPhone apps to android. So with a C++ code once and tweak a bunch of times portability I would have been very happy.
My worry is that they will pull the rug on QT and then sell the carcass off to some group one step away from being a patent troll.
Intel dumped MeeGo at the same time they started Tizen with Samsung.
Jolla are the folks who designed the awesome N9. For merely keeping MeeGo going we should be throwing money at them but I hope they can sort the business end of it too.
Nokia has been a huge supporter of Windows for mobile phones. Microsoft has tried harder than anybody has without making any progress with their own phones. Remember the "Kin"? If Microsoft intends to continue trying, they'll have to keep Nokia's patent portfolio away from the other mobile phone manufacturers. Microsoft needs to buy Nokia for this very purpose.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
I think microsoft should beat the shit of nokia and burn them alive. enough with the crap. getting angry for waiting a decent windows phone available on all countries.
Waiting for a decent windows phone? Isn't that a little like waiting for the first openly gay, married, catholic Pope?
Apple seemed to do a fairly good job of doing it more or less on their own. Why buy one of these old dinosaurs who have (unfortunately from them) all their really critical IP available under FRAND terms?
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This takes going through a bit of a chain of events, but it's pretty clear that it was Intel's management of the people and the engineering constraints under which they operated, rather than the inability of the engineers themselves not being up to the task:
StrongARM was sold by DEC to Intel:
PP3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM#History
Former StrongARM engineers quit Intel for SiByte:
PP4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM#History
Broadcom acquires SiByte December 2000:
Row 17: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcom#Acquisitions
Founder of SiByte leaves Broadcomm to found P.A. Semi:
PP6: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_W._Dobberpuhl
P.A. Semi makes fast, power efficient Power Architecture processors (PWRficient):
PP1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi#History
P.A. Semi acquired by Apple in April 2008:
PP1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi#Acquisition_by_Apple
P.A. Semi team at Apple tasked with creation of fast, power efficient ARM processors: ...as I said: before, it's probably be a match made in hell for both companies. Intel demonstrably does not currently have the necessary management skills to deal with the problem of power consumption/performance ratio, and has little incentive to actually chase that market down, since it would cannibalize their high end performance market, given that electrical power costs continue to Enron upward.
PP2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi#Acquisition_by_Apple
It might be possible for Intel to incorporate a wholly owned subsidiary to try and keep things at arms length, but it's pretty clear that the tablet market and smart phone market are driving adoption of low power consumption/performance ratio processors pretty strongly, and things like the Motorola Atrix and ASUS Transformer are starting to target the desktop market, as well.
It's only a matter of time before Broadcom documents the GPU in the chip used in the Raspberry Pi, or someone else does something similar, and the desktop stranglehold on GPU accelerated graphics will be blown away to the point that Intel putting under-powered GPUs in their low end chips to avoid caniibalizing the market for their high end chips will completely blow them out of the low end of the market altogether.
The only reason Intel might be able to make some (short term) inroads into the smart phone market would be carrier subsidy of the handset price. This is something that's not happening in the tablet space, and so they won't get the same foothold there. As the tablet market continues to heat up with a slope much steeper than the smart phone adoption rate of anyone other than the earlier iPhone models, they aren't going to be able to rely on subsidy.
Intel could perhaps launch a "game changer" by cutting out the cellular service providers entirely, and killing the monthly billing that permits the handset subsidy in the first place (a quick way would be to deploy mesh networking with last-hop access to WiFi to undercut 3G/4G), but that is unlike Intel to be that forward thinking (e.g. you can still boot DOS 1.0 on their most recent processors, and that's limited their technology vector considerably). And doing so would vastly undercut the market for carrier subsidized handsets, which is precisely Nokia's market.
And then we are back to it being a match made in hell for both companies.
Seriously, Nokia is a handset maker, they have free choice of everything, processors, software the lot. Their problems began when they tied their own hands behind their backs, hired Elop and restricted themselves to making only Microsoft phones.
Samsung on the other hand, made Android, Bada, Microsoft, everything under the sun, and found what worked in what markets.
So I don't see how tying themselves to Intel and using the LESS popular CPU with the not so great power consumption would somehow be a good thing.
At this point they need to eject Elop, get a pragmatic COMPETENT boss in place, and start making phones that sell instead of phones they already know don't sell.
Elop is the problem here, not Nokia.
Jolla Ltd. Press Release July 7, 2012
Helsinki, Finland
Jolla Ltd.
Hiilikatu 3 | FI-00180 Helsinki, Finland
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MeeGo Smartphones and Operating System Find a New Life in Jolla Ltd.
Jolla Ltd. is an independent Finland based smartphone product company which
continues the excellent work that Nokia started with MeeGo. The Jolla team is
formed by directors and core professionals from Nokia’s MeeGo N9 organisation,
together with some of the best minds working on MeeGo in the communities.
Jussi Hurmola, CEO Jolla Ltd.: “Nokia created something wonderful – the world’s
best smartphone product. It deserves to be continued, and we will do that together
with all the bright and gifted people contributing to the MeeGo success story.”
Jolla Ltd. will design, develop and sell new MeeGo based smartphones. Together
with international private investors and partners, a new smartphone using this
MeeGo based OS will be revealed later this year.
Jolla Ltd. has been developing a new smartphone product and the OS since the end
of 2011. The OS has evolved from MeeGo OS using Mer Core and Qt with Jolla
technology including its own brand new UI.
The Jolla team consists of a substantial number of MeeGo’s core engineers and
directors, and is aggressively hiring the top MeeGo and Linux talent to contribute to
the next generation smartphone production. Company is headquartered in Helsinki,
Finland and has an R&D office in Tampere, Finland.
Sincerely,
Jolla Ltd.
Dr. Antti Saarnio – Chairman & Finance
Mr. Jussi Hurmola – CEO
Mr. Sami Pienimäki – VP, Sales & Business Development
Mr. Stefano Mosconi – CIO
Mr. Marc Dillon – COO
Further inquiries:
press@jollamobile.com
--- http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1233581&postcount=105
Who are these people?
Dr. Antti Saarnio – Finland Investor / Financier
Mr. Jussi Hurmola – in past: Director of MeeGo Computers Releases and Integration at Nokia
Mr. Sami Pienimäki – working in product management/marketing, telephone communications
Mr. Stefano Mosconi – in past: MeeGo IT Manager at Nokia
Maemo IT Team Leader at Nokia
Infrastructure Engineer at Nokia
Mr. Marc Dillon – in past: MeeGo (was Maemo, OSSO) Principal Engineer, Configuration Management at Nokia
S40 CoreSW Integrator at Nokia
Symbian Build Manager / Team Leader at Nokia
Configuration Management Administrator at Nokia
--- http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1233636&postcount=121
The most talented engineers fled as soon as the Windows announcement was made
I hate seeing this. Prove it. A lot of the MeeGo/Maemo guys stayed on to work on Meltemi. The Qt guys didn't go anywhere... so who are these talented engineers that left? I worked with the Meltemi team and can tell you that they were insanely good. That OS and Qt were the only things keeping me at the company.