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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."
.. 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!
Microsoft is only licensing Nokias patents. Nokia is only selling the mobile phone business, while it keeps it's mapping, patents and mobile network infrastructure business. So Microsoft cannot sue anybody with what it is buying.
Yes, because it would have been a much better proposition to start churning out more disposable Android phones in an already over saturated market. At least wp8 gives them some market differential.
Actually, it would have. It's a much better sell to have a 41 megapixel camera that can upload the pictures it takes to Instagram. They could differentiate themselves in the market by offering Nokia Music and Nokia Maps, yes, things duplicated by Google to some extent, but still worthy properties to help differentiate themselves. Nokia was legendary for having phones that were difficult to break, and while Lumias might not be as indestructible as some of their older candy bar phones, even if they beat out iPhones and Galaxy units by 15%, that would be significant enough to differentiate them.
Finally, if they wanted to stand out and not spend a mint, they could have given consumers the option, at least - allowing users to install either WP8 or Android, depending on which suited them better. Yes, it's a support nightmare and I understand that..but if we're talking about differentiating features, then you don't get much more different from the current crop of phones than to have the ability to pick your OS.
Being different is good. Being different in a way that the market has generally deemed undesirable is not a way to increase sales.
Maemo and Meego were Nokia's "skunk works" projects, kept far away from their mainstream consumer phone business. Trust me, Microsoft didn't have to kill off that area. It was dead even while S60 was riding high.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
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.
Actually this was: N770, N800, N810, N900, (n990), N9.
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.
I thought it was more "You break it, you buy it". ;)