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Microsoft/Nokia Deal Closes
Last September Microsoft announced it would be purchasing Nokia's Devices and Services business. The terms have been worked out, the shareholders gave approval, and the regulatory issues were hurdled. As of today, it's official: Nokia's phone business is now Microsoft Mobile. The final price is around $7.5 billion, and 30,000 employees are transferring to Microsoft. "The purchase of the unprofitable division makes Microsoft the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones with about 14 percent of the market, according to researcher IDC." Here's Nokia's official statement, and a rather more personal one from an employee. According to The Verge, "Nokia's Android handsets are the most intriguing part of the deal, as they shed some light on how Microsoft might approach the messy and complex nature of shipping devices that don't run the company's Windows software. The Nokia X introduces a new "forked" version of Android that’s akin to what Amazon does with its Kindle Fire line, but it also includes a Windows Phone-like UI and an Android store that's separate to Google Play. Microsoft has the chance to control another app store, but also a solid opportunity to push its own cloud-based services." One interesting note: Nokia's phone manufacturing plant in India is not part of the deal because of an ongoing tax dispute. Nokia will continue to operate it as a contract manufacturing unit for Microsoft.
Let me be the first to welcome Microsoft to the ranks of Linux PC OEMs. Amazing times we live in, eh?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Our shareholders cannot repel executives of this magnitude!
Seriously, is there anyone in the tech industry who didn't think it was a massive trap when Elop joined?
He basically prepped nokia to be ripe for takeover by microsoft. I mean after committing so heavily to such a minority platform, who else would have wanted them? Massive inside job and apparently completely legal!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Anyone interested in how a former giant could collapse so bad would probably enjoy David Cord's The Decline and Fall of Nokia . I flipped through it at our large bookstore in Helsinki and found it gripping enough to purchase there and then. Besides press coverage, Cord bases his account on interviews with former Nokia staffers -- there are a lot of bitter Nokia veterans in the Helsinki veteran who want to get the inside story out. Also, as much as I love my N900, it is sad to see that the writing was on the wall even before that particular device came out.
Now Microsoft will have a phone you don't want to go along with the tablet you don't want.
Buying Nokia now maybe wasn't a terrible idea. Time will tell.
... as much as I love my N900, it is sad to see that the writing was on the wall even before that particular device came out.
At the time of the N900 launch Apple had only 20% of the smartphone market and Android only 5%...Why couldn't Nokia with 45% of the market succeed(or even Microsoft with 8%)...perhaps ot wasn't Nokia that couldn't succeed it was something that sounds like plop.
I wonder how much has really changed now that Microsoft officially owns Nokia? Seriously, its not like Windows phones will now dramatically fly off shelves and Windows mobile will become the most loved OS on phones. We all know that will not happen and its too late to do much about it. Microsoft and Nokia both admit
they are focusing their marketing for Windows phones on developing markets where cheaper smart phones are in demand. This is code for we hope to market to bottom feeders with marginal growth and weak margins. We cannot compete with Android or Apple so we will accept what small single digit market share we have as a success. Its pathetic when 90% or better computers in the World run Windows and Microsoft and Nokia can't do a Windows phone that can compete.
In the end Microsoft will slowly absorb Nokia into its grasp and eventually phase out Nokia as a brand. Most likely developing more Windows or Microsoft branded phones under Microsoft and trying to squeeze out a couple more percent of market share. RIP Nokia.
I expect the SpaceX article just posted will get more posts than this one. Microsoft is pretty much in the yawn phase of existence and will be following Nokia's example of an exit strategy. Eventually.
Citation needed.
"So, forgive me or not, but I don't consider Slashdot to be the place to go to get business advice. At least not the +5s."
I don't get it. They tried putting Windows on phones and it was a disaster. Other manufacturers have done OK or better by putting Android on phones.
So how was abandoning everything they had, putting Windows on their phones, and flopping so bad that Microsoft bought them at a cut-rate price the correct thing to do?
It'll be sad to see the demise of nokia's symbian-based phones. For those of us who're still not using a smartphone, the symbian no-frills mobiles have the best UI and quality than anything else on the market..
Now Microsoft will have a phone you don't want to go along with the tablet you don't want.
I am SOLD!!
I am gonna get my MS Phone and Tablet, walk up the iPhone using -iPad carrying people and say, "Hah! I'm one bad ass motherfucker! I'm bucking the trend and I don't even have tattoos!"
And I'll walk proudly into a LUG group with my Microsoft phone and tablet and when looked at disparagingly, I tell stare back and yell,"You wanna a piece of me! Huh! Yeah! Didn't think so!"
Hell yeah, I'll be one original guy! Not some sheep iThing user, not some pseudo cool Android user BUT A FUCKING MICROSOFT USER! I'll be TOUGH! Different! A lone wolf!
I got lucky when they gutted my teams because they kept the white architects. For everyone below my level, they replaced all of the white males over forty with unmarried Indians under 28. It's been a disaster since they don't understand the product.
so that their Tops responsibility base for FrreBSD distributions Dim. If *BSD is people's faces at Move forward, else to be an Moronic, dilettante Trying to dissect
Kids, be careful! This is what Windows 8 does to your brain.
... once MS lays off the bulk of the Nokia employees they "inherit".
So, yeah, the only problem is that no-one wants to buy their products.
And this is supposed to be a better business plan than building products people do want to buy?
Kalriath notes the built-in bias against Microsoft's Windows Phone. I had it, too, until my brand new Galaxy S4 went missing. So I bought a no-contract Lumia 520 runnings WP8 for $75. (The sub-$100 Android phones all suck.) After about 20 minutes, I was completely impressed. It was easy to setup and configure. The apps and navigation mostly made sense. It was no speed demon, but it WAS usable, on $75 hardware even. (The Lumia 520 runs a dual-core 1GHz CPU, with 512MB of RAM, 8GB of built-in storage and support for microSD cards. The battery is even user-replaceable.) I ended up returning the Galaxy S4.
Face it, the Android phones worth using have an inordinate amount of CPU horsepower. Windows Phone seems optimized to run better with less, and it showed. The built-in hubs for social networking (freeing me from the disastrous Facebook mobile apps) were a stroke of genius.
WP8.1 holds even more promise. It goes backward in a couple of ways (like doing away with hubs, and the new Xbox Music is, at present, a disaster). Nonetheless, it's making technological progress.
It's all precarious for Microsoft. They've got a lot of ground to regain (or gain in the first place), and Google and Apple aren't sitting still. However, you can get devices that run Windows Phone very well for very little cash. It's nice to use a sub-$400 device that actually works.
So Nokia +30,000 employees = 1/2 Whatsup !!
The timber industry won't go anywhere soon. Everyone loves Finnish wood. As an American of Finnish descent, let me assure you: Finnish wood is the best wood.
That should be ok. Quality people will find new work, in places where they can actually get things done. The underlying engineering force which brought about the Symbian world dominance is still there. And looking at how wages go up in places like China and India, without overall quality/cost ratio not really keeping up (and I don't mean ability of individual engineers, I mean the whole overhead of outsourcing), while wages aren't really going up in places like Finland, this is going to be a very competitive work force, hungry to take on new challenges.
Let the layoffs begin, indeed!
Wouldn't it be ironic, if by some stroke of fate, Jolla would manage to become "next Nokia", built up partly by the same people who were there buidling up Nokia in '90s and early '00s
How to fix Vista! (?)
1) Buy RIM, get QNX.
2) Add start-menu to QNX.
3) ?
4) Profit!
brought Snake to millions of people.
built phones that could take on a tank. That didn't need to be upgraded every two years.
became the largest phone manufacturer in the world.
became the largest camera manufacturer in the world.
only to fall prey to a trojan horse called Stephen Elop.
Ex-Nokia, Copenhagen, there for 10 years, Loved it & miss it!!
Well, I'm close to a "city" which has seen maybe a thousand, maybe 2-3 thousand (hard to say with all the subcontracting companies needing to lay off people too) Nokia jobs disappear over a few years. And as far as I have seen, transformation from stagnation to new opportunities has gone as well as one can hope. Then again I live in a "socialist" (from American point of view) economy where people have some time to find new work before being financially ruined, and while some end up relocating, there's perhaps no such urgency, as in countries like US where people are more on their own (this perhaps also answers your "free market" jab).