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Nokia Shareholders Approve Sale To Microsoft
mrspoonsi writes "Nokia shareholders met today at an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to vote on whether or not to accept the terms of the company's proposed sale of its devices and services business to Microsoft. The deal, which was first announced in September, is worth €5.44bn EUR ($7.35bn USD / £4.57bn GBP), and also includes provisions for Microsoft to license patents from the Finnish company. 78% of those eligible to vote had already voted before the EGM. Of those early votes, a staggering 99% had voted in favour of the sale to Microsoft."
A sad day for the mobile biz.
.. buys other increasingly irrelevant tech dinosaur for lots of money.
News at 11
which is totally what she said
Elop has succeeded in destroying Nokia. Hopefully, it will take Microsoft with it!
The two choices:
A) sell out to Microsoft and get some cash for the shareholders;
B) go bankrupt and lose everything.
Yeah, I'd choose A too. Interesting that Blackberry, in pretty much the same position, chose B.
I understand the journalistic desire to phrase things dramatically, but there is nothing staggering about a struggling company accepting a buyout from a company with a perceived strong market position.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Next up: They sue Google, Apple, Samsung, and all the others for infringing on "their" work.
Patent litigation is ridiculous.
They played a great game here. First they convinced Nokia to tank their phone business further by throwing out any linux development and installing a hap-dash blinkenlights hail-mary operating system onto their phones to further tank their value before buying them out... ...wait.
But truthfully, you've been sliding towards the grave for some time now. It's not all Microsoft's fault.
That people reference Nokia as a failure due to Elop, as if it was doing so well in the smartphone arena before he took over? Have a sense of reality folks. Nokia was dying fast, and while the MS integration may or not have been a great idea, something had to be done. I will let history judge the actions, but in many parts of Europe, Nokia is overtaking the iPhone in sales... so there is that.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Exit, stage right.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So Snapchat is worth about 40% of Nokia. Interesting.
Mission Accomplished!
Nothing says" irrelevant" like running on 95% of the world's computers!
...for a very specific subset of "computers":
i.e.: big desktop machines, in homes and offices.
Absolutely every other device with similar computing specs that is interracted directly with, or that is relied behind-the-scene on, runs something else.
(Tablets, Smartphones, home wifi router/modem, home micro-NAS for backups, the set-top box or media under the TV and/or the TV itself, the infotainment system in the Car: i.e. everything at home beside the laptop [the single device running Windows] and the Microwave Oven [still powered by a micro-controller, not enough power for a full-blown OS])
mostly shared between Linux (either GNU or Android), *BSD, and specialised OSes like QNX.
(and at work, as long as it's not a SOHO who is dependant on Microsoft Directory Service and Sharepoint, you can bet that pretty much everything behind the scene run some flavour of Unix)
In short, the "year of Linux on everything except the desktop" has come since long time.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Steven Elop works for microsoft. Steven Elop goes to Nokia. Steven Elop restructures and retools Nokia to be a Microsoft shop. Steven Elop cuts Nokia's market cap in half. Microsoft buys Nokia. Steven Elop becomes CEO of Microsoft in a few years (after Ballmer's successor resigns after 2 years). You guys connect the dots yet? I'm sure Nokia has a lot of patents Microsoft wants.
It's not worth much anymore.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Mr Elop maybe an undercover MS employee whose sole mission is to crash nokia so MS can buy it at a bargain. Just saying :-) Cheers.
The horrible thing is that they could have had a great marketing advantage by being able to say, "Our phones' OS, design, legal control, and manufacturing all take place in a country that will take your security seriously. We do not answer to the whims of US officials and will, in fact, be abusive to their requests."
This would have garnered them a nice chunk of the market.
That is gone now.
Nokia has been assimilated by Microsoft. ...why did /. change its icon for MS again? The old one is so appropriate! Who wants to photoshop Elop into it?
http://kaioa.com/b/1102/svgjng/images/microsoft_64.png
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I had an N95, it was great for its time but became an anachronism the day the iPhone was released. Today you can buy Nokia phones that do more than iPhone for less money. Really, /. Nobody likes Microsoft but it's time to accept that Winphone is a good product, that people like it, and that it is going to seriously challenge Apple and Google.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
Most figure it's even lower than that. M$ market share is only around 20%, old numbers did not include phones. When you count phones, tablets, servers, super computers, and so on, M$ is well on its way to becoming irrelevant. It's only the nasty mess and the legacy of dirty business practices that they leave behind for us.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Microsoft has shafted every single partner its had. Secondly, it was in decline. Thirdly, it's a very unpopular brand.
So your first step is to rule out Microsoft.
The other thing you don't do is tell people your two main platforms are dead. Especially when one of them was easily the best phone operating system at the time, your first product based on it was done, was beautiful and would end up with some of the most positive reviews in the history of the industry.
Now maybe it would never have attracted developer support but in spite of being a dead-end phone that Nokia refused to sell in their main markets, it still sold 1-3 million units.
Personally, I would have supported Android and Meego on the same hardware: default Android but dual boot and shared data. Meanwhile, I'd have bought out OpenMobile or Alien Dalvik and got Android apps running on Meego, just as Jolla have on Sailfish.
Would it have worked? Not necessarily, but it's not hard to see the N9 selling 3+ million units and that's a good enough start for anyone. They had the best hardware division period and some nice software up their sleeves. They also had prototype Meego tablets. Symbian would have tailed off more slowly.
At best, you can say that, things looked different then than they do now. Android and Apple were at the height of their popularity. Blackberry 10 was "due". Microsoft may have stayed relevant if they hadn't messed up Windows 8 and sold the Surface (Pro) at cost.
Also, who looks more incompetent, Elop with his $25m sale-of-Nokia bonus or the board of directors?
Microsoft's purchase of Nokia might be bad news for... Blackberry! Yes, Blackberry's current niche is with enterprise is basically that they own the hardware, the software and they have server software for the back end. Really tight Exchange and Active Directory integration on mobile devices would be something a few companies would love to have. Most companies already have Microsoft's Windows Server deployed with Active Directory and a good chunk of them already have Exchange. Tack on integration with other Microsoft technologies like Sharepoint, Remote Desktop, WSUS, SCCM and full-featured versions of good 'ol Office and Microsoft might be in a great position to command a strong niche market for enterprises.
Windows 8 based phones and tablets may never be popular with consumers, but Microsoft doesn't necessarily need to have them be their customers. Enterprises are already using Windows Server to manage their computers so some might naturally veer towards using mobile devices that can be managed in the same way.
The Gospel according to lolcat
Nokia can still turn around things.