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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.
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.
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Not in the US, and especially not in the EU.
Too many anti-trust issues.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
Actually HTC is making the "signature" WP8 devices, not Nokia.
You should know better than to bring facts to a Slashdot Microsoft-bashing!