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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."
Never happen. Nokia's market cap is hovering just under 10B. Dell's is 20B and HP's 35B. So for Dell to buy Nokia they would have to hand over HALF of their entire company to Nokia's current investors. HP is not in a much better ratio. Never, in a million years, could that happen.
Frankly, there are not many companies big enough to buy Nokia, particularly in the tech sector. Microsoft would be one. Google another and Apple would be about it. Apple would be buying them for the patents and the other two if they plan to go into first party manufacturing and design in a big way.
Assuming Nokia doesn't pull out of the death spiral the most likely outcome is that no one buys them outright. A big consortium of companies buys all the patents just to get them off the table and the rest of the company dies.
Your analysis seems pretty right but you've missed that breaking up Nokia can finance quite a bit of the cost of a bid.
As ever; Tommi Ahonen has about the best analysis about this. Beside the three you have named there are companies like LG or ZTE which could get quite a bit out of the "dumbphone" divisions. With Nokia's current strategy, where it's smart phones are barely selling outside Finland and the US, Nokia can't really get future value out of that division. Almost any company that can deliver Android, however, could use the dumbphone distribution network to get its self into the best position in most of the new upcoming smartphone markets.
One of the key things seems to me that a live buy of Nokia has to happen extremely soon so that Nokia still retains some experties outside the Windows phones and it looks like Steven Elop is trying to make that as difficult as possible.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
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.
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.