Slashdot Mirror
Official: Microsoft To Acquire Nokia Devices and Services Business
Many submitted, and symbolset emailed me to wake up, sending this bit of interesting news out of Redmond: "Microsoft Corporation and Nokia Corporation today announced that the Boards of Directors for both companies have decided to enter into a transaction whereby Microsoft will purchase substantially all of Nokia's Devices & Services business, license Nokia's patents, and license and use Nokia's mapping services. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will pay EUR 3.79 billion to purchase substantially all of Nokia's Devices & Services business, and EUR 1.65 billion to license Nokia's patents, for a total transaction price of EUR 5.44 billion in cash. Microsoft will draw upon its overseas cash resources to fund the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2014, subject to approval by Nokia's shareholders, regulatory approvals and other closing conditions."
And, yep, Elop is part of the deal (quoting Ballmer): "Stephen Elop will be coming back to Microsoft, and he will lead an expanded Devices team, which includes all of our current Devices and Studios work and most of the teams coming over from Nokia, reporting to me."
A classic Trojan horse manouver pulled off in style by Steven Elop. Now he can go back to Redmond, where they'll hold a Triumph in his honor.
Microsoft CEO's email to staff on Nokia acquisition
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So Elop left Microsoft to head up Nokia, where he made supposedly very idiotic changes that had the effect of destroying Nokia's share price. Microsoft then buys Nokia at a fraction of the cost it would otherwise have been, and Elop returns to a prestigious role at Microsoft, where he's in with a shot at the CEO role.
That doesn't look the slightest bit dodgy at all.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Suddenly, the big money is being earned from hardware (a reversal of the PC industry, where hardware companies slugged it out for razor thin margins and software makers raked in billions). Both Google and Microsoft recently purchased established phone hardware manufacturers. While many hypothesized that they did it to compete with Apple, I think they did it to combat the threat from companies like Samsung, LG and HTC. If you look at Apple's sales figures, the reason is crystal clear: the iPhone is both their highest margin and most profitable product. There is no point in Google and Microsoft doing all the hard work to build and maintain a mobile operating system only to have companies like Samsung walk away with tens of billions of dollars in profit from premium handset sales each quarter. Google, Apple and Microsoft want to dominate the flagship handset market with a handful of must-have devices each year, forcing Korean and Taiwanese companies into the low end.
Microsoft succeeded in its strategy to take-down and take-over a major phone rival. First plant a CEO to destroy the company and lower its shares.... wait... and take over the company. What is left of Nokia is not likely to survive as they all had synergies with the devices unit, which will be taken-over by Microsoft.
Clearly, Nokia had problems when Elop took over... but he destroyed any potential Nokia had left (think N9/MeeGo). And now he gutted the company even further and will take the devices unit with him as a rejoins the Microsoft family he was clearly so fond of. The poor must have really missed his family.
...I keep trying but no matter how hard I work at it, no useful syllables are formed.
This probably encompasses the user experience of an MSNokia phone, so maybe that's apropos.
fifth sigma, inc.
Microsoft has been paying Nokia $1B/year. As part of a much larger organization, it will be much easier to hide how much money Microsoft is dumping into Windows Phone, including support for marketing and selling handsets below cost.
Nokia handsets, meet XBox!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Shoe! The other shoe drops. Yeesh.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I worked at Nokia from 2011-2012. Everyone was saying then that the reason for Elop (who was otherwise so useless) was to devalue Nokia enough that it would be a good deal for Microsoft. And here we are... the other shoe drops. But there will be a third shoe when he becomes CEO of Microsoft. They deserve each other.
I am certainly glad they sold off Qt first. If Microsoft got their hands on it the writing would be on the wall even in the face of pledges to KDE.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
No. What we need is not more Android but more choice. Nokia has been the only ones that has been serious about Windows 8 Phone Series for Handsets Professional Touch Edition 2013. In a world where everyone is moving toward Android we need something to balance that, and that's where Microsoft + Nokia makes sense. We should not live in a world where Google is the only choice.
How I read the open letter:
"Nokia has an identity spanning 150 years of heritage, innovation, excellence, and change. That ends today. By this evening those 150 years will be a rumor. They never happened. Think about that. Today is history. Today will be remembered. Years from now, the young will ask with wonder about this day. Today is history, and you are part of it..."
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Microsoft will now add a NSA backdoor into every Nokia phone.
If you want "more choice", Nokia had that before. It was called MeeGo, and Elop killed it.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Do you find it peculiar the Elop never sold his house in Redmond and his family didn't move to Finland though Stephen said hey would ? Can you avoid thinking of a conspiracy ?
I mean, everybody and their mother could see his "moves" were suicidal, the only reason to not expect that he was destroying the company for MS to pick it up cheap was the sheer audacity of the fact...
As a side note, I finally switched to a Galaxy S3 from a Nokia N9 over half a year ago, due to the fact nobody was developing for the abandoned platform. However, in every other way (except screen size I guess) the N9 and Maemo/Meego was so superior to S3/Android that for about 2 months I was constantly on the verge of getting another N9. In retrospect, my favorite feature of the N9 was how multitasking and switching between apps worked. On Android and iOS, apart from the fact that it is much slower to switch between apps, I am never certain my apps have not exited in the background and will launch from scratch and you have to jump some serious UI hoops if you actually want to force an app to restart. N9's swipe interface was the thing closer to a full desktop - fast switching between active apps (a swipe and a tap), exiting vs minimizing app having the same UI cost (single swipe from different side) and apps not dying by themselves in the background (at least in the same usage pattern that in iOS and Android kills them).
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Given that Microsoft all but ensured that it would be an acquisition, Elop was the person who burnt the platform.
Shame that they took over Nokia and bastardized it to be an unremarkable Windows Phone platform.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
As Quoted from: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2010/sep10/09-09statement.aspx: (Archive mirror)
Microsoft Business Division Transition
Sept. 09, 2010
E-mail to Microsoft full-time employees from Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer.
Sept. 9, 2010
I am writing to let you know that Stephen Elop has been offered and has accepted the job as CEO of Nokia and will be leaving Microsoft, effective immediately. Stephen leaves in place a strong business and technical leadership team, including Chris Capossela, Kurt DelBene, Amy Hood and Kirill Tatarinov, all of whom will report to me for the interim.
The MBD business continues to grow and thrive, with 15 percent growth in the last quarter. It has been good to see the great response to Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, the growth of our Dynamics business and the way we have been successful in extending all our MBD products and services to the cloud. I appreciate the way that Stephen has been a good steward of the brand and business in his time here, and look forward to continuing to work with him in his new role at Nokia.
Please join me in wishing Stephen well.
Steve
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
You break it, you buy it...
Microsoft is buying the nav/maps too.
Not according to the press release:
Following the transaction, Nokia plans to focus on its three established businesses, each of which is a leader in enabling mobility in its respective market segment: NSN, a leader in network infrastructure and services; HERE, a leader in mapping and location services; and Advanced Technologies, a leader in technology development and licensing.
I have a suspicion about what happens to Windows Phone sales, everywhere except the US maybe.
Of course, you're aware of MS Phone's strong growth in all markets, right?
MS does not (yet) make phones, so I doubt there's any growth at the moment... They just make a smartphone OS, and Nokia phones using this OS have seen some nice growth this year. On the other hand, sales of Microsoft's own tablets, with a sister OS... not so hot. So current growth of Nokia Lumia sales is not much of an indication of what will happen to future Microsoft phones, one way or another.
Any alternate headlines? Here are some:
"Headless software company buys brainless phone company"
"Rumours of Dinosaur extinction greatly exaggerated (And their mating habits haven't changed)"
I'm sure there's more ...
Rubbish, not insightful. Nokia were a world leader and I loved their gear until Elop threw away their technology and embraced Windows phone crap. Look at Nokia most successful products, not based on Windows phone. He deserved to be sacked, quoted as being the worst CEO ever.
MeeGo was another WebOS: late, buggy, and basically going nowhere with the organization they had and the cannon ball of Intel shackled to their leg.
Nokia would have made a glorious last stand with it, open source geeks would support them (never mind an occasional grumble about the bugs, wanton platform changes, and closed components, what's this between friends), but in the end it wouldn't bring bread to the table without substantial cultural changes and a lot of development. Yes, I'm familiar with The Legend of Spectacular N9 Sales.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Depressing Inevitability
This was the only likely scenario once Elop tied Nokia to the MS mast and cut away the lifeboats. It was always going to be we sail together and we sink together.
In many ways Nokia has fulfilled their side of the bargain by generating some hardware which is as good as any phone out there. What has held them back is the OS, which despite having some good features is always lagging behind the iphone and android, and seems incapable of introducing the needed changes at the rate required in a consumer device.
In a perfect world, Nokia would take over responsibility of the MS mobile division and it would be left alone to force the changes that the engineers of Nokia know are required. However what is more likely is that Microsoft will smother the innovative culture in Nokia to make it more like itself, so that we will get a company more concerned about how Office runs on the phone than offering the best consumer experience. I also can't wait to see how the trolls of Helsinki react to their first stack ranking session.
What is confusing about this is the timing. Is this Ballmer's last hurrah or Elop's last desperate grab for power. If your CEO had just announced he would be leaving so would not be taking long term responsibility for such a decision, as a board wouldn't you say Whoa, maybe we will get the next guy in to look at this? Lets face it with Baller's acquisition track record it may be more profitable to take the billions of dollars, pile it the middle of Oulu and set fire to it....
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
Yes, I'm familiar with The Legend of Spectacular N9 Sales.
Spectacular reviews, and terrible sales because Elop sabotaged it.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I use a Note 2, and have a Lumia 520 in the family. The thing which shone about the 520 is that, at the low price point, the touch and feel experience of the phone was simple marvellous. Nokia makes brilliant stuff. All they needed was a better OS.
A Nokia phone with Android OS would have been the killer. Nokia still has a lot of goodwill, esp outside USA, and when you say Nokia people still Gush, and are willing to sacrifice on the OS front for the hardware. Now with M$, that is gone.
I expect sales to go down due to two reasons
1. Nokia is gone. The name is gone. Its M$ now
2. The groups will be managed by Microsoft, and we all know how M$ has fared in hardware device management.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
By the time they lost the edge with symbian, they were losing money on smart phones. They tried several things before eventually ending up using only windows. The real problem was that they couldn't get back in the black fast enough and they simply didn't have the funds left to continue their own development and try to reach profit again. Maybe they were selling hand sets at a higher price than it costed to produce them, but the development costs were way higher than the profits they made on the hardware. This is why the got stuck with windows and MicroSoft saw an opportunity to trojan them.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Once you forget about what microsoft did, consider what nokia did: They received over 5 billion Euros and get to start again with a clean slate. Man what I wouldn't give to be in those shoes right now!
Nokia isn't going to enter the phone business anytime soon, but Nokia's former employees have already launched a new company called Jolla, and their phone (with Sailfish OS) is being produced as we speak.
This should be a high profile case for investigation by the EU commissioner for industry. In the end Nokia was a EU company which was the victim of a hostile takeover from a US company. We should al send a formal complaint to this guy http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/tajani/contact/commissioner/index_en.htm
iPhone has less than 2 in ten. Is that an acceptable number?
Perhaps he will replace Ballmer. He does appear to have the desired 'consumers should just shut the fsck up and buy what we tell them to' attitude to consumer relations and seems as adept at handling employees and morale to make the shift in leadership seamless.
Somehow I suspect the problem at Microsoft is the board. They aquired the stock while liking the mindset of the management and having kept Ballmer for so long they obviously want that. They'll keep running it the same way, all the way into the eventual crash into the ground.
I think it is a certainty, and the deal was done before Elop went to Nokia.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This ^^ Like you, am I the only one that remembers the Nokia Basket Case before Elop came aboard? Their phones were crap, all 300 of them in the catalogue, the N9 couldn't be bought anywhere it was supposedly available, networks were no longer foisting them on unsuspecting members of the public ("You can't afford an iPhone so here's the Next Best Thing!" *hands them a shitty Nokia 500*). Sheesh. I'm Glad no more phones will bear the Nokia name - I never forgave them from killing off the last good cellphone in the Nokia 6310i and for creating the Abomination N95 and every other Symbian/S60 POS. Nokia were the architects of their own demise, not Elop. Their arrogance and rank incompetence caused their downfall. I would cite the article where old or former Nokia employees berate the culture and organisation of the old company but can't find them. They appeared around the time Elop wrote his "Burning Platforms" memo.
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
Meh, replying to my own post. Found this:
http://www.telecoms.com/22503/nokia%E2%80%99s-problem
The N97 was the phone I was thinking of although ALL of their Nxx devices were crap.
And there were so MANY of them! Why have 5 SKUs where 500 will do? Always doing the networks' bidding...
Yes, I have also discovered HTML formatting too - sorry about original post.
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
Meego was another Maemo, not WebOS, it have its own lineage as example. Was sabotaged by Symbian fans inside Nokia first, then the days before it was released Elop said that it had no future, cut all future hopes for development for the platform, and released just one phone with it, just because already made it. Is even against that that sold pretty well. And yes, sold better than the Windows 7.x phones that Microsoft killed before they come out to the market saying that they will have no future neither (but most people that buys windows phone only hears windows phone, not version, so even with that had sales).
Anyway, wasn't the end of the road, there is hope on Qt-based cellphones still. From it derived Sailfish that is about to come out (the first batch already sold out), and Tizen, that Samsung could start making phones with it.
I know some people that have (or had) a N9. Everybody, including non-geeks, says it's the best phone ever. It's ok if you don't believe me, go check the reviews.
And, hey, It was launched even before the Windows Phone 7.5 (which actually "late, buggy"). Microsoft only made a competitive OS with WP 8, 2 years after the Meego was ALREADY in the market.
I really don't understand how so many people buys the official MS-NOKIA-ELOP version of the history, where everything points the contrary.
if they think they will find a place in my mobile phone or tablet, they are loony.
(gosh, that is how long ago I replaced Windows95 with Slackware ... and never looked back).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Bollocks to it.
We just can't let this happen, it's almost a full blown disaster, the one ray of sunshine is the patent deal.
We need to find a way to buy Nokia out before this deal goes through.
Seriously?!
Microsoft gets a free pass for all the damage they did and gets a licence to all the Nokia patents that they know they cannot survive in mobile without?
For the price of the Nokia-Siemens buyout?
So Nokia shareholders are to sell their entire mobile business to the scumbags that ruined it for just enough money to own the rump end of their own business free and clear?
Screw that.
I'll offer the Nokia board $7.5B for 51% of the whole company, less any long term investors that want to assign their proxies to me, and I'll re-organize the whole company, turf out all the losers that have managed the company into the ground and spank the living crap out of the company that did this to them. The company that deliberately did this to them.
If Microsoft thinks those patents are worth so much, stick 'em under a GPL-like licence that lets anybody play in mobile so long as they share and tell Microsoft and Apple to go screw themselves.
I posted the following on Groklaw the day it died, in the desperate hope of getting some reasoned help. I was too late.
Looks like I might be too late again.
Stuff that for a game of soldiers, Slashdot might be full of loonies and Trolls but there are still some sane voices hidden amongst the noise.
Have at it.
----------
I've been working up to posting this for weeks.
I don't really want to post it now but I may never get another chance.
I'm not ready so the link will be to nowhere till at least tomorrow.
Apologies in advance for any offence but I won't take the chance that I miss the opportunity to reach members of the Groklaw community that I may never be in contact with again.
------
I'm hoping you guys will be able to help me out.
I've been silently standing on the sidelines here almost since the very beginning. I, like you, feel very deeply that what we have been watching happen here is an outrage.
Watching monopolies desperately trying to destroy the open-source world like a bunch of petulant toddlers makes me want to bang my fists and smash things with rage. (Yes I do see the irony there.)
I have, for a long time, felt powerless to do anything about it but I have come to a decision to make a stand.
The real problem is that we lack the sort of wealth and influence that the corporate elite possess. We are forced to contend with them on a battlefield of their choosing with little or no resources.
I think it is about time we stopped putting up with that and started fighting fire with fire.
If we want to win this war we need to acquire more money and influence than our opponents and, ludicrous as that idea seems on the surface, I don't think it's something that is beyond the realm of possibility.
You see the thing is that the businesses that we face here are either monopolists or practising outmoded models, they are desperately trying to hang on to a way of doing business that has been out-evolved. They look on the surface like the 800lb Gorillas but in reality they are more like Giant Pandas. They are tottering on the edge of extinction because they are too myopic to realize that their ecological niche has gone or that they are in the process of destroying it with their own stupid greed.
So here's what I plan to do and what I think I can achieve given a bit of help.
I plan to buy Nokia.
I think Nokia could easily be re-organized into a vastly profitable enterprise and its enormous collection of patents could be used to beat the snot out of the trolls and proprietary monopolists. I think a licensing scheme similar to the GPL could be created that forced everyone in the mobile space to 'share and share alike' and to compete on merit rather than in litigation.
I want to create something that is inherently, by
Trust The Computer, The Computer is your friend.
Yep but Microsoft products certainly is not it. I would rather and Open Source platform dominate than ANY proprietary platform.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2915925&cid=40323987
I think that needs just a little more cowbell:
Windows 8 Phone Select Series for Handsets Executive Platinum Professional Touch Diamond Edition 2013
There. Done. Ship it.
--frank[at]unternet.org
Well, on the bright side there are few things that work as well for collapsing profitability as mass producing expensive hardware that nobody actually wants. While Nokia shareholders certainly and deservedly (for hiring someone with the profile of Elop with the similarities to such as Richard Beluzzo) got thoroughly screwed, this may become a significant lodestone that sinks Microsoft faster than it would risk otherwise.
Indeed, that is exactly what I said would happen at the time, too... that he made a deal to return and be Ballmer's successor once he was done doing to Nokia what Belluzo did to SGI. The similarities are strong too; remember, Microsoft then needed Belluzo to take down a unix workstation vendor to help establish market presense for it's own crappy new proprietary workstation OS that nobody would want then either; it was called NT. Thugs rarely change their MO, unless or until they are finally imprisoned for it.
"Only Samsung and Apple make money from phones."
You missed the two mainland Chinese companies. Too lazy to Google for them right now but that would be two of the following: Lenovo, Huawei or ZTE. LG is probably still porfitable until they get steamrolled by yet another rising Chinese company.
This is a classical Microsoft move, a Microsoftie join a company ruins it and then rejoins the mothership, resistance *is* futile ..
BBC failed Digital Project Cancelled
Project Kangaroo Cancelled
Highfield joins Microsoft after just four months at Project Kangaroo
BBC appoints Microsoft man to control future media
The game now isn't the devices, it's the cloud. Google v. iCloud v. Microsoft Outlook+XBox+whatever else. These days, the device is just your entry point into your cloud of choice. One of the missing pieces I see is book content. Microsoft already made an investment in Barnes and Noble. Today, Amazon announced the MatchBook program which provides either a free or $1 e-book for certain Amazon physical book purchases made as far back as 1995.
This has to sting an already reeling Barnes & Noble. I'm wondering if Microsoft is going to white knight them as well and add another piece to their cloud puzzle?
The CEO has a fiduciary duty to his company and its shareholders. Elop pretty obviously violated that duty by acting in the best interests of MS, not Nokia. It seems to me that there would be strong grounds for a Nokia shareholder lawsuit against Elop personally, and possibly against MS as well. Discovery proceedings could be quite interesting – civil attorneys can demand just about any relevant documents, emails, and so forth. Unless everything was done verbally with no record, there ought to be some evidence of Elop's malfeasance.
Who didn't see this coming? Remember Rick Belluzzo? He destroyed SGI by decimating its products, migrating huge chunks of IP to Microsoft (remember "FireGL?" It's now called "DirectX"), and sewing FUD in his own SGI customer base. Job well done, he took his golden parachute and softly landed back at MSN.
Elop is Belluzzo reincarnate. He didn't care if he destroyed the lives of thousands to improve his career. If he gets the MS CEO position after wiping out 90% of Nokia's market value because of his sophomoric blunders, it will confirm how dysfunctional corporate governance has truly become.