Slashdot Mirror
The Case That Apple Should Buy Nokia
Hugh Pickens writes "Nokia has seen better days. The Finnish phone maker continues to struggle to gain traction in a marketplace dominated by Apple and Android, and its new flagship device, the Windows-powered Lumia 920, failed to impress investors when it was announced last month, subsequently causing the company's stock to dive. Now Tristan Louis argues that there are four good reasons Apple should dig into its deep pockets and buy Nokia. First Nokia has really powerful mapping technology. Apple Maps isn't very good, and Apple has been feeling the heat from a critical tech press but Nokia has been doing maps 'for a long time now, and they a have access to even more data than Google.' Next, Nokia has a treasure chest of patents and as Apple's recent smackdown of Samsung proves, the future of the mobile space 'will be dictated by the availability and ownership of patents.' Nokia's exhaustive portfolio of patents might be worth as much as $6 billion to $10 billion, a drop in the bucket from Apple's $100 billion war chest. Nokia could also help with TV. If Apple truly wants to dominate the TV arena, it'll have to beam shows and movies to iPhones or iPads in real time, and that's a field Nokia has some expertise in. Finally Microsoft has a lot riding on the release of Windows Phone 8, and Nokia is its primary launch partner. Buying Nokia would 'knock Microsoft on its heels,' says Forbes' Upbin."
Besides, isn't Nokia Microsoft's bitch?
Apple: it must look good, work out of the box, and be very simple so that even a hipster in skinny jeans and Ray-Bans can do it.
Nokia: it must be solid as a rock, work for 10,000 years, and the interface must exist. If it is convenient, that is a bonus, but not important.
These companies are opposites. Merging them together will just get us stylized Nokias that lack the legendary bulletproof Nokia quality.
Apple has enough patents of their own to hold their ground
Maps will get better with time
They built a great phone on their first attempt. I dont think they really need Nokias expertise to beam TV shows.
I foresee trouble in that area.
none
10% of their cash isn't a drop in the bucket, and that's just for the patents - the rest of the company wouldn't be free.
Knocking out WIndows Mobile through a buyout would make Apple even more hated and even more like MS of the 1990s, as would beginning a whole new range of lawsuits based on Nokia's patents.
Bad idea.
I know I am being picayune, but 10% is not a drop in the bucket. Not even in the colloquial sense. Unless it is a teeny tiny bucket that only holds 10 drops.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Not in the US, and especially not in the EU.
Too many anti-trust issues.
Nokia's patents may be purchasable, but buying the entire company would be a huge investment for Apple, one which would provide hardly any value outside of the patent portfolio - Nokia's products, philosophy, almost everything are completely orthogonal to Apple's. This is a terrible idea.
buying your 4th (or 5th) largest competitor so that your 3rd largest competitor can't survive in the market could be called "anti-trust". Something MSFT knows all about...
Microsoft is *already* on it's heels. Apple is worth far more than Microsoft and appears to have a better strategy going forward. Taking any opportunity to knock Microsoft down makes no business sense and distracts from their mission.
The last comment about knocking out WP8 does seem like it would come dangerously close to violating the Sherman Anti-Trust act. Granted, HTC and Droid all exist, but it still doesn't sound like it would end well.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Tristan Louis is an Internet veteran, having worked in the Internet industry since 1993. Throughout the years, Mr. Louis has been known as the founder of Internet.com, a co-founder of Earthweb's developer.com, the interim CTO for Boo.com, and has held many other roles at start-ups during the first dotcom boom.
And this guy is commenting on why Apple should buy Nokia? Really? That's "news" to us? It's basically a list of half baked points. I know how this works, I've seen it in my uncle. He used to play sports in high school and when we watch a Vikings game he is just exasperated at how terrible the coaches are. Why, if he was in that game, he'd know exactly what plays to call and he could probably even be the quarterback and throw this football clear over them mountains.
The piece fails to explain why Apple shouldn't merely license Nokia's map services instead of kicking $10 billion out for it (oh, by the way, 10% of your total liquid assets is not a "drop in the bucket"). It fails to analyze many of the other assets of Nokia (oh, come on, like Apple would continue making Nokia's candy bar phones) and just assumes Apple would like to pay for all that stuff. It doesn't consider all the EU approvals that Apple would need and he ends this list with Apple doing "a double-reverse with a flip" which sounds a lot like the plays my uncle would call in a professional football game.
In short, build your own $100 billion dollar empire and then you can throw it away yourself. Until then, I don't think this shallow "analysis" of two phone makers was ever worth my time. It could at least be comprehensive and delve into the financials of the deal and possible repercussions (like yet another little guy dying and the market becoming more inbred with less options).
My work here is dung.
No one has yet mentioned one other important thing if Apple bought Nokia. Nokia is Microsoft's flagship handset manufacturer for it's Winphones. If Apple did nothing more than announce they were considering buying Nokia, that would generate a tremendous amount of FUD that could decimate Microsoft's mobile plans.
Lately, we have been seeing a LOT of attention on the problem of patents. Not just software patents, but patents in general. If Apple bought Nokia now, they will either have to exploit those patents now or face losing all of their value.
When I start hearing lay people discuss the problems of patents, (and I have heard this recently) I know it's not just geek interest any longer. Now it's getting in the way of their next gadget purchase and they are taking notice.
The only case Apple should buy for Nokia is a basket.
The best patents from Nokia are in Mosaid, a Canadian patent troll they created to try to extract money from Android handset makers without ever having to face a challenge from Google, (and helping them avoid litigation from Google via the shell company) and Sisvel a similar troll.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57445061-75/google-blasts-microsoft-nokia-for-hiding-behind-patent-trolls/
This was part of the $2 billion Elop got for going with the Windows 7 phone.
They don't really have much else left, Windows phone isn't selling, so Apple doesn't need to buy them to kill it. The patents are gone, the maps? Again they were signed over to Windows Phone as part of the $2 billion. Microsoft cherry picked it all, the core is left, but Elop will quickly turn that into a rotting carcass. Presumably that will be sold to Microsoft at a knockdown price, and Elop will emerge somehow as richer than before.
In short, Apple doesn't need Nokia. Nokia has reinvented itself many times since it made shoes and tires, and it's WELL OVERDUE to do that again. The problem is cell phones are effectively all it does, and it's tragically lacking innovation there (FWIW, I worked for Nokia, and made detailed suggestions over ten years ago about more storage, touch screens, and more battery life, and there was repeated immediate dismissal over how impossible it would be). The sad part is Nokia went to Microsoft rather than it's dedicated developers to find that innovation. Microsoft will even help kill Nokia partly because Nokia doesn't seem to know what to do, and mostly because they forgot Balmer doesn't care about Nokia any more than it can work as a stepping stone for Microsoft to "get back on top." Yes, buying Nokia would give Microsoft one less out for Windows, but sadly for Nokia (and to be fair, IMNSHO) Microsoft's overwhelming priority is to do its own work for Windows 8 after getting Nokia to abandoning [small] teams of [highly] devoted Symbian developers as part of the fallout in committing to The Balmer; proof.
Agreed...Apple has absolutely nothing to fear from Microsoft. Microsoft is destroying themselves from the inside. For Apple to buy Nokia, that might cause Microsoft to wake the fuck up and start building their own phones, like Apple does.
If Apple really wants to see Microsoft fail, the best option is to let them continue down the path they are currently on.
I think I agree with the commentor on the Forbes site who put this squarely in the realm of fantasyland. Microsoft has already given Nokia $2 billion and Elop seems committed to Microsoft's camp. Aren't there other Maps providers on the internet that Apple could potentially partner with? Mapquest? Somebody?
Nokia's exhaustive portfolio of patents might be worth as much as $6 billion to $10 billion, a drop in the bucket from Apple's $100 billion war chest.
However, Nokia the company would cost significantly more, perhaps more than Apple would be willing to spend. Currently their assets+equity comes in at about $48 billion and they have an annual revenue of $38 billion. Nokia wouldn't sell their patent portfolio as it'd leave them crippled.
Finally Microsoft has a lot riding on the release of Windows Phone 8, and Nokia is its primary launch partner. Buying Nokia would 'knock Microsoft on its heels,'
If Apple bought Nokia, then Nokia the legal entity would still exist. All their existing contracts would still be valid. So they'd be contractually be obliged to continue with the Windows 8 launch. Further in the future you could block new deals sure, but that wouldn't help at all with the current competition.
The truth hurts, apparently
This is never happening.
Nokia is a sinking ship; they can't do things well when handed them on a silver platter (look at all that Qt phone stuff; absolutely beautiful, but they did nothing with their alliance with Intel, letting Intel do all the dev work on MeeGo et al). Why would Apple want to buy Nokia except to gut it and use it as a manufacturing arm and discard everything else save Navteq? Is Navteq really worth burning pretty much ALL of their money to buy? IIRC, Samsung produces some of the iPhone's parts and Foxcon is on strike, so a change in manufacturing may be wise, but it still seems far too pricey to pull off, especially given all the anti-trust trouble it would create.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
No comments. Fix it.
[...] doing maps 'for a long time now, and they a href="http://www.cultofmac.com/194130/why-apple-should-buy-nokia-to-fix-their-mapping-disaster/">have access to even more data than Google." Next, Nokia has a treasure [...]
I'd rather have microsofts revenue than apples, even if apples is larger. Reason? Apples revenue comes from consumer electronics. That can change overnight if Apple just blows it once with a new release. Microsoft has a huge corporate revenue stream as well as a lot more lock-in from software. To put it another way: microsoft can release vista fiv times over without losing much revenue to e.g. Mac OS. If the iPhone6 is crap and samsung's offering is brilliant then Apple is in trouble. Apple have to deliver continuously, MS not so much.
Never get past EU regulators.
Motorola made Android phones, but didn't make Android. Google makes Android and doesn't make any phones. Google buying Motorola is vertical integration within Android, and doesn't lead to any reduction in choice for consumers - the same set of phones are available with the same OS.
Apple makes iOS and iOS phones. Nokia makes Windows 8 phones (and is the ONLY maker of Windows 8 phones). Apple buying Nokia at best reduces the commitment to Windows phones in the market (and possibly eliminates them from the market if Apple decided to axe them). Apple buying Nokia a.) likely reduces the options available to consumers in the short term, and b.) quite possibly destroys one of the four major phone OS options, leading to reduced choices in the future.
From an antitrust point of view, that's a seismic difference.
why-apple-should-buy-nokia-to-fix-their-mapping-disaster
Maps is a disaster. But what about the other iOS6 problems (some here). What about the recent Apple lack of innovation, and the reported lack of staff motivation? As a owner of 2 Macs, 2 iPhones and an iPad, I'm just worrying. During the past year, new devices are mere incremental updates, and nothing revolutionary came from the software dept (OSes and applications). And the general update trend slowed down, compared to 2 years ago. This appears to me as a management problem.
To be fair, Tim Cook has to be vigilant - Apple sells a lot thanks to the nice and innovative ergonomics and design inertia coming from the iPhone 3~4 era. Taking a different direction would definitely mark that new era as the real beginning of the Cook epoch - and at the same time end the Jobs one forever. And who knows what would be the outcome of that.
In my opinion, Tim Cook will keep sticking to the Jobs background for a while - maybe 2 years - while Apple staff will feel more and more the gap between what image Cook wants to show to the world (ie Jobs-like) and the day-to-day internal management. Updates slowness, substantial mistakes and bugs will increase over time, while disheartened (and good) people will leave the company. It will be a hard time for Cook, having to choose between working (hard) to maintain that fading image from the past, or cope with a dramatically different management requirement.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
These "insights" keep popping up every few months. A little while ago, everybody was telling Apple and MS to buy RIM. Following the herd is for sheep
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
First off, everyone was impressed with the Lumia 920. The problem was that they didn't say when it's available, and where. Second, Nokia employs over 100,000 people, many of them in Europe, meaning that it's very expensive to get rid of them. Buying Nokia would take at least 50 billion EUR. Not even Apple can afford it. Third, it's not up for sale.
Call me cynical, but as soon as a I read this article I thought that someone is hoping for either bump in the stock or that this mad idea would take hold. That way they could dump their stock. Or maybe just plain wishful thinking... just to sooth the butt hurt of having bought their stock. XD
1)Microsoft would almost without question fight any buyout offer for Nokia by Apple tooth and nail and Microsoft has a war chest big enough to buy Nokia themselves. There is no way Apple would be able to buy the company for a reasonable price. Microsoft needs Nokia worse than Apple does right now.
2)Nokia has committed to the Microsoft platform and changing direction at this point would be tremendously costly. In fact it would probably kill the Nokia to try at this point.
3)Nokia does a lot of business with low margin products that are definitely not in Apple's wheelhouse. Apple already makes most of the profit in the cell phone industry. They would have to take on a lot of products in markets that they don't know well that make essentially no profit if they bought Nokia.
4)There would be huge company culture issues. Apple has a very unique company culture and a big acquisition would bring a lot of problems.
5) If Nokia goes under, Apple can probably buy assets it needs without the extra baggage of the rest of a troubled company
6)Apple's problems with their Maps is a fixable problem without involving Nokia. Yeah, they dropped the ball but they have the resources to make it work so long as they don't screw a lot of other things up at the same time.
Agreed...Apple has absolutely nothing to fear from Microsoft. Microsoft is destroying themselves from the inside. For Apple to buy Nokia, that might cause Microsoft to wake the fuck up and start building their own phones, like Apple does.
If Apple really wants to see Microsoft fail, the best option is to let them continue down the path they are currently on.
Apple make a lot of money producing one phone! with propriety hardware! proprietary software! Only Differentiating with older models and storage! have proprietary connections! Leaving of more Useful features [memory card; ethernet; usb]! Falling behind in Marketshare; Hardware; Software...but have massive mindshare [both media; public; government], and because of these are able to have massive mark-ups on products. You really think Microsoft could pull this off...in an established market, with strong players with enough money not to be bought off; bullied; bribed; outlasted on price cuts. Other than pissing off established parties [HTC] it has fail written all over it.
Personally I think selling the software to third parties is the right method. Its just a shame they don't have a compelling product like Android.
Let's say Apple buy Nokia for those reasons (Maps, patents and Fuck Microsoft). Apple now has to fire 95% of the company (they only keep the IP lawyers and the mapheads). Nokia has 122,000 employees, many of them in Europe were they cannot be fired easily. That's 116,000 pink slips. A $100000 redundancy payment per person seems about right ("Apple is loaded"). That's about $12 billions. Combine that with Nokia's market cap (about $10bn) and the price rises to $22bn. I guess Apple could technically afford it, but the damage to their image could cost them even more.
Nobox: Only simple products.
Sounds like somebody is trying to offload their Nokia stock.
Nokia: it must be solid as a rock, work for 10,000 years, and the interface must exist. If it is convenient, that is a bonus, but not important.
Maybe you are talking about their hardware from WAY back when. Nokia's software absolutely sucks. It's not solid, barely interfaces with anything, it is not well designed and certainly isn't convenient to use. I used Nokia phones for about 10 years before finally getting fed up. The hardware was ok, not great (and not rock solid) but acceptable at the time. Their software was horrendous.
maybe it should be Samsung? This would be a blow to most of the big players, as well as de-risking any Android power play by Google via their Motorola acquisition. Plus, it would expand their (already large) market share, give them control of more patents and put a lot of pressure on Apple.
It's trivial to port Android to Nokia platforms, hobbyists do it all the time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcpFvbPX580
Nokia could tomorrow make an Android phone. It would take a big chunk of Samsung's new found market share in the process. FFS, companies like Oppo, a tiny tiny Chinese maker, can make Android phones in a few months, Nokia certainly can. The hardware is the same, the assembly line the same, most of the component identical, the software need compiled and a few tweaks to a few drivers and they're done.
It doesn't do that because Elop made some deal with Microsoft which Nokia has to pay with this suicide.
Where the hell are the Nokia Board in this? He had his WP7 strategy, it flopped so badly, at what point are they going to do their job and chuck him overboard???
I'd rather have revenue that comes from hardware than software. Software is sort of like a bubble because once free alternatives crop up that are of sufficient quality, the bubble pops. In the long term Microsoft has to change their business strategy because they won't be able to maintain that Office lock-in forever. And once they lose the Office lock-in (which LibreOffice and Google Docs are already working on doing), they put Windows in vulnerable situation to lose its lock-in to a Linux variant.
There was a time when the FOSS naysayers claimed that OOo would never match the quality/usability/compatibility of MS Office but every year since the LibreOffice fork that gap has narrowed more and more. LibreOffice, being free, doesn't have to close that gap completely, it just has to close it enough for the gap to be irrelevant.
Linux is the same way. It's sort of a mess right now, but it does continuously improve and remains free. Just look at Android. It's too bad that Google hasn't thrown its weight behind a serious Linux variant rather than Chrome OS, or the year of the Linux desktop might have already been. Remember, Microsoft is jumping into the hardware space for a reason: they know that consumer software isn't sustainable in the long term. Software has a $0 replication and distribution cost, thus driving the price to $0 dollars. Hardware will never have this issue.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I can't believe I'm seeing a piece on slashdot that's seriously saying that thinning out the marketplace is a good thing.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Honestly, what is this obsession with people spending other people's (company's) money?
God forbid they'd have cash-on-hand vs. being leveraged beyond all recognition.
Hey, it worked for the banks . . . if you fail, mea culpa and go back to doing it the same way.
Spend your own money and stop anal-ising others . . .
I'd rather have microsofts revenue than apples, even if apples is larger. Reason? Apples revenue comes from consumer electronics. That can change overnight if Apple just blows it once with a new release. Microsoft has a huge corporate revenue stream as well as a lot more lock-in from software. To put it another way: microsoft can release vista fiv times over without losing much revenue to e.g. Mac OS. If the iPhone6 is crap and samsung's offering is brilliant then Apple is in trouble. Apple have to deliver continuously, MS not so much.
Worse, Apple's value is entirely coupled to the close association of a narrow set of consumer hardware to a walled garden set of media. Loss of market in either will start to very quickly erode the other because they, effectively, have all their eggs in one big basket. Microsoft has several *thousand* products. (Half of which, I'd hazard a guess, virtually no one outside of a fairly narrow space has ever even heard of.)
As someone with a fairly large investment in both companies, I think you're absolutely right. Apple is a high yield, high risk stock. Microsoft's stock is rock stable in price specifically because investors know its not going anywhere. Its a long term investment that pays good dividends and is a safe place to put it. Apple's stock is best to day-trade, because it rides 10% swings constantly. Microsoft's value doesn't concern me at all... it'll slowly rise, it'll slowly fall but its too diversified to do either quickly. Apple's a constant game of worry -- hoping it doesn't implode before some particular block of stock in my portfolio ticks over to a long-term cap gain rather than short term, and wondering if its best to take the short term cap gain hit and get out before it implodes.
Consumers, to your point, are fickle. Sony was the Apple of the 90's, and it didn't last. Apple likely won't either... and their "innovation" (or complete lack thereof) since Jobs' death should (and does) significantly worry investors.
What a bunch of hogwash. This entire map controversy is nothing and overblown. Google maps on the iphone stunk. While apple has a lot of work to do to match the functionality of google maps on Android the apple app is good enough. More importantly it add in my opinion the most important thing to consumers, turn by turn navigation. Besides tech journalists and newspapers that write Apple in every headline to attract the trolls there are few other people who care about the apple map app.
It was nice knowing you, Nokia.
Good luck, Jolla.
The stock didn't "dive" after the 920 announcement (Sept 5th) and it didn't go down because of any disappointment. If that was the case, explain the bullish stock run from the 7th to the 16th. If investors were so disappointment with the announcement, why would people be buying the stock?
Most tech stock exhibit a similar pattern right after a product announcement. One of the sayings in the stock market today is "Buy the Rumor, Sell the News". Rumors and expectations create buzz that influences stock prices. In this case, the people selling Nokia after the announcement were the speculators who understand that they can make a quick buck from the buzz. It had nothing to do with the reception of the product itself.
While Windows phones have not been selling well in the US, they have been increasing market share in the rest of the world. Some people seem to forget that there are billions of people outside of the US who also buy cell phones.
My prediction is that Nokia will continue to plod along, gradually increasing their market share as they continue to introduce additional products to their line-up. They have the cash to ride out the storm and come back as a #3 or #4 phone maker. Unlike RIMM, they do know how to make phones with features that people want.
I have been waiting for a long time for my next phone - Nokia running on Android ..
The day a company starts to innovate thru buying other corporations instead of creating stuff itself is the day it starts to die.
I'd rather have microsofts revenue than apples, even if apples is larger. Reason? Apples revenue comes from consumer electronics.
That's misleading though, since Apple's revenue comes from electronics in multiple distinct fields:
1) mobile connected devices (iPhone)
1.5) tablets/iPad
2) Laptops
3) Desktops
4) iPod class devices (iPod, iPod Touch)
5) AppleTV (weak by growing).
I grouped them that way because even if one of those areas suffered a severe blow to sales, the other aspects would remain untouched without completely separate efforts of attack by different companies.
All of that is also discounting Apple having major software inroads in lots of ways, mobile application sales and music and movies and so on.
Far from Apple being weak because they are mostly hardware, Apple has built a giant platform of stability that insures success unless a LOT of things in a LOT of markets goes wrong for them. Only one leg (item 1, possibly 1.5) is an aspect that mere fashion trends can really impact and honestly I would argue even that is not the case.
When you consider that every leg on which the Apple platform is built is growing, it's hard to really find enough weakness in Apple currently to claim it's a less stable company than Microsoft.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What a crappy post. Nokia would be an extremely poor fit for Apple culturally, technologically, logistically, and managerially. Chalk me up with the other posters who suspect the author of wanting to cash out their Nokia stock.
1. the level of detail isn't as nice
I find it nicer, I think the maps are more readable. The detail is generally there if you zoom in a bit more. Also if you change the map font to "small" the map will show more details on screen.
2. the GIS database appears to have a higher rate of error
I know this is true for some, but I have not found this to be the case in my area. I have been using Apple Maps steadily for navigation since the later betas, and it's been working pretty well for things you actually look for day to day - hotels, restaurants, so on. The Apple Maps turn-by-turn also works really well, even when you are going through areas with zero data access (as long as you load up the instructions before you lose data).
5. satellite data isn't as complete as google maps
Varies by region. Again where I live, Apple's satellite data is more recent.
3. the 3D fly over is a gimmic and not new.
It totally replaces Street View for the only thing I ever used Street View for - to check out the area I plan to visit, and to look at what a storefront looks like. There is enough resolution for that in an area where 3D maps are supported...
Even where 3D data is not present, the terrain deformation alone also makes the 3D mode useful. I can now use Apple Maps for a lot of the things I used to use Google Earth for in trip planning, to see what terrain is like and how steep a road really is. For seeing where you might want to bike around a city it is great.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What are the chances of survival of a Mac without Microsoft Office?
Software has a $0 replication and distribution cost, thus driving the price to $0 dollars. Hardware will never have this issue.
Following that line of economic thought, all prices are driven towards marginal cost. You don't make any more money selling $100 hardware units at $100 each than you do selling $0 copies of software at $0 each.
Apple has been making huge money in the other end of the market, high-end smartphones. That is a much higher margin business and still growing. Nokia has been losing market share, to Samsung among others. Also, as others have noted, they are deep in bed with Microsoft already, so that is another reason for Apple to pass.
You are dead on target here.
The last time Apple collapsed, it was because they were arrogant and hostile towards third party application developers and sought to control every aspect of the software channel. Steve Jobs, the genius who push Apple to its dominant position in the early 80's also, as the control freak he was, laid the foundation for the collapse. They also sought to squash third party peripherals providers by tightly controlling the hardware interfaces and BIOS. You could not expand the RAM or, in most cases, add third party peripherals to a Macintosh. I tried to help a friend with a third party RAM expansion on one of those lunch box shaped Macs with the teeny tiny screen. What an abortion - DIP clips clamped onto address latches, extract one of the very few socketed EPROMS to plug in the daughter board, then secure it with a cable tie and som RTV Silcone to an electrolytic capacitor. Apple Fanboys accepted that all of these limitations were usability features - a built in display, no RAM upgrades, limited hard drive upgrades, a one button mouse, etc. Steve Jobs lost a power struggle with the Apple Board and left Apple shortly before it's market share collapsed. Scully is blamed (much of it deservedly) for the collapse and none of the business model failure stick to Jobs.
Fast forward 20 years - in 2008, Apple dominated the smartphone market with the iPhone. iPhone has a very tightly controlled third party app channel, and "features" no Micro SD card, no Micro USB slot and a non-replaceable battery. Their competitor has all of these things, plus a customizable UI, no limitations of 3rd party in-app content and a wider variety of free (or ad supported) apps. Once again, the company has show arrogance and often anti-competitiveness with third party application and content developers. Now Jobs has left the company again - unavoidable this time, but the company has lost none of its arrogance or hostility to third party innovators for the platform. Lets see who gets blamed for the next collapse.
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Are you smoking crack? Practically all hardware is proprietary. And every yearly update improves on the last, a strategy that has served the car industry for decades. Phones with ethernet? You really are smoking something (and plenty of smartphones are without memory card slots). Also: Marketshare is not money.
Why do you think all Mac owners have MS Office? I sure don't. Plus, LibreOffice looks more like "good old" MS Office anyway.
all prices are driven towards marginal cost
Yes, that is the promise of the theoretical construct called the "free market".
Oh great. Nokia still makes the best phones. Americans don't like Symbian because it's not familiar, not because it's not good. It's the Symbian xenophobes in the US. They also believe the hype about iOS, even though it's not nearly as competent as WinMobile or Android, but Apple ads are so kool! WinMobile is surprisingly good.
I don't have an iPhone, thank goodness--too breakable; my son broke two already. Now what? Guess I'll keep my Symbian phones running, and save up for a PureView 808, then a Windows phone with a memory card slot, a PureView camera...USB...HDMI.
The worst thing about Apple is that they've locked down everything. I can't even back up my iTouch without hacking it. iTunes wants to wipe it. The notebooks and portables are glued together and also have proprietary screws.
OTOH my Nokia phone talks to our Macs and PCs, but not the iTouch. I blame the iTouch. Apple will screw up Nokia even worse than M$ will.
Hardware will always have a cost, whereas software doesn't necessarily.
If hardware costs $100, and you're willing to pay $100, then it is also probable that you'll be willing to part with $101 (and the company will make a profit).
If software costs $0, and you're only willing to pay $0, it's very difficult to convince you to even pay $1.
Typical empty-headed pundit puppet bullshit. Spread like it's in some way a general view, instead of just the delusion of one single big-headed idiot.
a) Apple wouldn't do this b) Microsoft wouldn't allow Apple to do this While Apple is a "larger" company (per the equities market) Microsoft still has tons and tons and tons...and TONS of cash laying around. Microsoft would never allow Apple to do this...and Apple and Microsoft are in cahoots in some ways, so it's not like Apple really wants to antagonize Microsoft at this point. It's clear they both have a shared goal of taking out Google.
I think it would be far cheaper and more effective for Apple to "contract" their map data (and services?) from Nokia than to buy Nokia outright. I could see Nokia liking such a "buy" for the cash-flow it would bring them while they try to figure out how to survive the lambasting they've been getting for their Windows 8 phone series.
I'm sure Apple would like to acquire Nokia's patents, but buying the whole company to get them when they could lease the map data would be crazy, not to mention it would be rife with anti-trust issues around the world.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Great idea! Apple could use those Nokia Hakapelitta snow tires as shockproof cases for iPhones.
Power iUsers could stick studded Hakapelitta cases down their pockets.
Why is it that the words of analyst and journalists who have no clue about technology are considered important?
Apple buys Nokia. Great. Then what. They are stuck with a multi-year exclusive contract to sell phones based on a Microsoft OS, yup Apple would love that. Buy them for maps? Why? If Apple want Nokia maps, they can license them. What on earth do they get out of owning them that they don't get from licensing?
Just because they have a hundred billion dollars in cash doesn't mean they have to buy companies just because the cost seems relatively insignificant. This is more of someone wondering 'hey if I had hundred billion dollars, what would I do?' Well, you don't. And you never will. And if Apple were as stupid as that, they would never have either. They got there by being a lot smarter than some two bit journalist.
Apple made that kind of money by doing precisely the opposite of what this guy suggests. They have the most limited product line of any such company. They are never afraid of killing off products, like the Macbook pro 17". They are extremely selective about which segments they get into, and then take their time planning it. The companies they acquire are companies that will let Apple make their products and services better, like Siri.
... the tech press, or just about anyone else, because of the quality of the product but because it didn't reveal anything. No carrier information was given, no price points stated and the folks who got a look at the phone couldn't do anything with it. They couldn't phone, text, surf the Web, or do anything else with the phone. MS and Nokia would have been better off waiting until the the phone was finished. How could anyone know the quality of what they were looking at? Much like MS's reveal of their tablets. They couldn't even be touched! The presentation was obviously hurried to beat the expected release of the Apple iPhone 5.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
repeat after me... "Why should good companies dump billions into the crapper buying junk companies they've already whipped?"
repeat 10,000 times.
and now re-examine your faulty analysis.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I like that the summary thinks $6 to $10 billion is a "drop in the bucket" compared to $100 billion. How big a drop fills up 6 to 10% of a bucket?
Glass will shatter,
Sorry, I must have been on Nokia phones for too long. So you drop your phone and the glass is supposed to shatter? It never does for me.
All materials come with a tradeoff.
It must be scratch resistance for my Lumia phone. Its glass front has got one fairly pronounced scratch (an ideal arc, must have pivoted on something) and a few small ones. It doesn't bother me much, but it may be unbearable for some iPhone users.
I think the material debate is kind of absurd anyway, since hardly anyone goes caseless.
Here we go again. You have to use a case with your phone?
Oh, I dropped my phone again while writing this. Big freaking deal.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
it won't happen because that would bring Apple too close to being a real monopoly force in the industry, and that would bring on more regulation by Governments etc. Just as MS needed Apple in the old days to be able to say that MS didn't have a monopoly in the PC industry.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Slashdot is full of blowhards these days.
It's been clear since the 9210 that mobile phones would replace the desktop, maybe not in every respect but most of them. Anyone with half a brain has been watching the mobile space closely. That seems to exclude most of Slashdot though, why don't know this stuff, what's wrong with you?
Nokia is the 2nd largest phone manufacturer on the planet, marginally behind Samsung. Apple is trailing a long way off in the distance.
Their new generation of smartphones are about two years ahead of the competition, maybe three years ahead of Apple. You'll see the features from the Lumia 920 in the iPhone 7 or 8 if you're lucky, but looking at the iPhone 5 vs 4s, I frankly doubt it.
They have turned their S40 "dumb" phones into smartphones, of which they're selling 70 million a quarter at less than 1/5th the price of an iPhone and making a profit doing it.
They are one of the biggest mapping companies as well, rivalling or surpassing Google but nobody here had a god damned clue. It's come as a total surprise to everybody.
Apple don't have 100 billion in cash; they have it invested in the markets and should Apple attempt to buy Nokia, it's likely their market capitalisation would double or more so they're never going to get the company for the current price. Should MSFT attempt to buy Nokia OTOH, someone will be going to prison. Putting it clearly, Nokia's market cap is currently priced for bankruptcy despite the fact that only the smartphone division is now losing money and while Q3 is probably going to suck due to their announcement timing, as I pointed out anyone who's looked at recent reviews anywhere, their new stuff is noticeably ahead of all the competition and due out next month.
So, I hope you're happy fondling the APPL stock you bought at $700, the hedge funds will send you a thank you card for your support I'm sure in due course. I am of course talking my book with NOK that I bought when the world was ending, as it does so often.
Deleted
Are you smoking crack? Practically all hardware is proprietary. And every yearly update improves on the last, a strategy that has served the car industry for decades. Phones with ethernet? You really are smoking something (and plenty of smartphones are without memory card slots). Also: Marketshare is not money.
And the point of my post is Microsoft doesn't have you :) Sorry about you not understanding what I meant by proprietary Apple have electronic devices...with an encrypted database which is connected by a unique Apple cable to a closed API software program. As opposed to every other device which is Mass storage/USB. You are right though not all the competitive has card slots just most of them, and the most popular like the Samsung Galaxy III - but your actually arguing that is a good thing that a device doesn't have one. As for Marketshare being Money...you will never be an accountant, either way though its not a good thing to have shrinking market share. ...but like I say look at the vileness of your comment over a device costing $100 and sold for $650. The point is Apple can incite people like yourself to such extremes, but people will laugh at Microsoft.
I don't agree with this analysis:
Maps: I can't say how badly Apple needs more mapping data, but I doubt they need to buy all of Nokia to fill the gaps. In my short experience, the Apple maps are actually a lot better than Googles in some places.
Patents: Again, I can't say the value of them, but if Apple has survived up till now without them, I doubt this is a very compelling reason.
TV: As if Apple needs technical know how in this area.
Hurting Microsoft: Hard to put a value on, but since the rumour is that MS is planning their own hardware launch, I doubt its worth the price of admission.
One of the cool things about Apple is that they don't feel the need to make major acquisitions to get their job done. Sometimes they make smaller ones, but I'd argue that even these ones mostly weren't really necessary. If Apple bought everything that the pundits said they should, they would have blown through all their war-chest already.
but most of those are FRAND anyway.
It wouldn't knock MSFT out, MSFT already has a phone in development. Apple doesn't need some lead weight to drag it down. If you look at Apple's acquisition history, it's very frugal in that they only buy companies on the cheap. Apple doesn't really need maps, there's TeleAtlas so that they can buy from TomTom.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Apple's stock is best to day-trade, because it rides 10% swings constantly.
As someone who has actually invested in Apple for a few years, this didn't sound right to me. So I checked. The last time AAPL had a daily change larger than 10% was on 11/24/2008, when it jumped 12.55% from 82.23 to 92.55.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So much pure dumb in your post. The Mac didn't even become a success until after Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple, and the story was much more nuanced than "Apple was a pure arrogant evil bastard company which made life hell for third parties".
1984 - Original 128K Mac goes on sale. Widely regarded as revolutionary, but sales are slow. If the Mac were Apple's only product, Apple probably would've been in trouble, but the Apple II business was still strong.
1985 - Steve out on his keister. Apple releases the 512K Mac, the LaserWriter, and AppleTalk networking. The Mac still hasn't taken off, but the combination of Mac + LW + AppleTalk begins to turn heads. Apple hasn't collapsed (Apple II forever!).
1986 - The Mac's breakout year. It finds its legs as the best platform for the new desktop publishing market, based on Apple's computers, printers, and networking plus 3rd party application software. Mysteriously, Apple is still not collapsing.
1987 - Mac II (a big box expandable model) goes on sale. Macintosh is now clearly a real success, and both the II and the Plus are a big part of it. Apple is still not collapsing.
About that Mac II... It had SIMM slots for memory expansion, six NuBus card slots, multiple internal HDD bays, and no built-in display. NuBus was a true open standards bus (unlike ISA on the PC side, which was 'open' only by being easy to reverse engineer). Apple's firmware interface for NuBus cards was well documented and Apple encouraged others to make cards for it.
Your made-up history has a hyper-closed Apple enjoying success but then being punished because it didn't make the Mac open. Real history has the early Mac being a slow burn while a 3rd party software ecosystem developed. Once that happened, there was an emerging need for expandable color Macs in some applications (pro graphics / publishing), and Apple responded to that need. The platform then enjoyed a long period of good health.
That good health did not come to an end because Apple went super gonzo closed. If anything, they kept flirting with being more open (e.g. by licensing MacOS to Mac cloners), and kept converging on PC hardware (e.g. by adopting PCI). The real problem was that by the mid-90s, MacOS was aging very badly, and Apple had failed to deliver on multiple projects intended to replace or enhance it. These failures were so spectacularly dysfunctional, with so much public dirty laundry, that nobody in the industry thought Apple could successfully manage large software projects any more. Apple was also in the midst of years of underwhelming hardware. Apple's users and 3rd party developer ecosystem were abandoning the Mac for Windows simply because Apple was in total disarray and the Mac was falling behind.
When Jobs turned things around, part of his successful formula was to make the Mac platform less open. He demanded so much more money to license MacOS that the Mac clone market died off overnight. But another part of the formula was to become much more open in other areas. He okayed the release of OS X kernel source under an open source license, and Apple became a user of and a contributor to several open source projects. Most important of all, however, was that he won the power struggle, purged lots of old bad management, installed lots of his guys brought over from NeXT, and Apple finally, slowly, began to be able to deliver on its projects again.
My point in all this isn't to stake a claim about whether "open" is good or bad, just that your ideas about how openness has related to Apple's successes and failures are vapid. Sometimes "open" has hurt them, other times it has been beneficial, other times it's been a mix. Same goes for closed. Generally speaking, neither has ever been the first-order reason why Apple succeeds or fails -- that has always been Apple's execution.
The fall of Nokia is not a mistake or a result of government's passivity. Some 9 years ago Finland wanted to buy US-made cruise missiles of the type JASSM-158, to arm its fleet of F-18 Hornet fighter-bomber jets for semi-strategical ground target strikes. The US White House vetoed that time, in order not to upset the neighbouring russians.
Finland asked again 3 years ago and the hugely expensive JASSM-158's export was granted this time, on the condition of exiting the finnish infocomms business all-together (USA is also after Samsung and LG, in order to force ALL modern telecomms vendors to be US-controlled, to make NSA's job easier.) After that deal, the Helsinki government served Nokia on a plate for culling, for which purpose an ex-M$ top exec was hired as the executioner. Allegedly, the small but big-mouth finnish antivirus vendor F-Secure is slated next for the culling as a sacrifice in the cruise missile deal and the bargain also involves re-purposing of the STX Turku shipyard, which will no longer be allowed to compete in the lucrative mega-giga-sized luxury cruise ship construction business (think vessels 1.5x the size of Costa Concordia).
One must wonder if it was worth for Finland to butcher its best high-tech industries for a bunch of advanced JASSM-158 cruise missiles? Obviously, those JASSM-158 are meant against Russia, but the bear can match them 3 to 1 with more deadly, longer range "Iskander" theathre ballistic missiles from the Kaliningrad base. Not to mention Moscow can strike nuclear or just drop in a GRU paratrooper commando unit to burn the finnish missile cruise stockpile.
Anyhow, Finland could have bought very similar, european-made air-launched cruise missiles instead of the american JASSM-158 type. Either the british-made Storm Shadow or the german's KEPD-350 Taurus is really fine and probably have better stealth, due to shaping. Neither comes with "hang yourself" political conditions that only the mighty US can impose on smaller countries. One cannot understand why Finland clings so hard onto the JASSM-158 deal?
There is also the risk of US and Israel exporting rooted dummy weapons, as has been the case with Georgia, whose extensive super-modern israeli-made missile arsenal simply quit working as soon as their mode switches were set to "actual war" comms-guidance frequencies and no russian invader tanks and planes could be hit. The georgie troops simply ran away seeing all their wunderwaffe turn into toys by US/IL treachery. That little country was sold wholesale to the Kremlin. It is so easy to install a hidden kill switch in tamperproof digital control chips of modern weaponry and there is no guarantee the finnish will be able to find or circumvent these lock / export degradation codes. That would effectively make Finland's JASSM-158 projectiles a parade-only armament.
(Finnish and Hungarians are related by their ancient uralic language. I suspect there is a so-called "Jacob's ladder" embedded in the tamperproof memory of Hungary's export-grade AIM-120 AMRAAM air combat missiles, via which a "holier"-graded attacker can neutralize the active-radar guidance head, by emitting their assigned secret digital signature codes from the invading fighter jet's onboard radar and/or IFF antenna. This trick puts hungarian Gripen jets back to using 1980's era short range AIM-9L infrared-seeking missiles and autocannon, when facing a "holier" (according to USA) attacker, say Romania or Slovakia. The AMRAAM would work fine against a "less holy" graded attacker, say Berengaria or Shamballa, except none of those remote countries can or would wish to attack Hungary...
Soviet-made export-to-WARPAC weapons were much degraded capability compared to what their domestic "guard's units" used, but at least the degraded export combat capability aka "monkey edition" was hard there, since the reds knew no digital electronic disabling trickery. They just used nice big, glowing, vodka-cooled analog vacuum valves, not transistors, which were not resistant to nuclear strike's EMP.)
Anyhow, Nokia was felled in exchange for a bunch of american export parade-only weapontry for the Finnish Air Force.
First of all, it says "... might be worth as much as $6 to $10 billion", which is supposedly a drop in a Apple's $100 billion war chest. Firstly, Apple's cash reserves are not a "war chest" to be used for empire building, they are liquid assets owned by the stockholders. Every penny spent on litigation, etc. (including patents) is essentially money wasted instead of spend on R&D or returned to the shareholders.
If the future of everything depends on the "availability" of patents, then the patent system will be so broken that it will be fixed by force one way or the other eventually.
Even if Apple buying Nokia would be good for Apple, it wouldn't be good for the industry in general or for consumers, so I wouldn't advocate such a thing publicly. The only good reason for Apple to buy Nokia that would help the general public would be to put [Windows Mobile/8/CE/whatever it's called this week] out of it's misery quickly instead of letting it languish on and having it slowly die.
What encrypted database? What does the "closed API program" - I assume you mean iTunes - matter? The files are on the file system, only the star ratings you give are unavailable to any other program. The "mass storage" just means you increase the skill required to know where things have to go in order to be found - I remember that from the PSP. Also, they made a design decision to isolate apps from each other making the platform more secure - a bit like having non-root users on a Linux system, which most people agree is a smart idea. Now this design decision is different from what Android Inc. decided, but apparently you are not allowed to make different design decisions...
Again: Leave the crack pipe alone before posting. Then try to start a business where you sell goods to the consumers just for the cost of materials... you will soon see there are plenty of other expenses you need to cover.
The last thing the mobile industry needs is Apple buying out its competitors as this would create less choice. Nokia does indeed have an agreement in place with MS for them to provide Windows mobile for their smartphone devices so I don't see how a buyout of Nokia could go ahead with that in place. Nokia really shot themselves in the foot by not adapting to change in the mobile market. They have made stupid decisons like killing off their Meego line of devices and not adopting Android.
What encrypted database? What does the "closed API program" - I assume you mean iTunes - matter? The files are on the file system, only the star ratings you give are unavailable to any other program. The "mass storage" just means you increase the skill required to know where things have to go in order to be found - I remember that from the PSP. Also, they made a design decision to isolate apps from each other making the platform more secure - a bit like having non-root users on a Linux system, which most people agree is a smart idea. Now this design decision is different from what Android Inc. decided, but apparently you are not allowed to make different design decisions...
Again: Leave the crack pipe alone before posting. Then try to start a business where you sell goods to the consumers just for the cost of materials... you will soon see there are plenty of other expenses you need to cover.
My original post was Microsoft can't be Apple. Having had time to reflect on your posts. I enjoy your fanaticism. I personally will enjoy better value; more open; standard following; competitor like the majority do. I think Microsoft chasing Apples shrinking market share of people who pay more for less is a poor choice.
Personally though I love the idea of you calling my a crack addict!? I think its screen envy ;)