Microsoft/Nokia Deal Closes

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Posted by Soulskill on Friday April 25, 2014 @06:29AM from the dotted-the-s-and-crossed-the-u dept.

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.

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Let me be the first by symbolset · 2014-04-25 06:29 · Score: 5, Funny

Let me be the first to welcome Microsoft to the ranks of Linux PC OEMs. Amazing times we live in, eh?

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1. Re:Let me be the first by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2014-04-25 09:29 · Score: 1
  
  Then they lanched a new phone right before microsoft bought them. The Nokia X.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
  
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2. Re:Let me be the first by symbolset · 2014-04-25 16:23 · Score: 1
  
  Linux is not Unix. Unix was very expensive too, back in the day. You might as well have writ that they wrote OS/2 also, and for the same reason: to kill it.
  
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IT'S A TRAP! by serviscope_minor · 2014-04-25 06:32 · Score: 2

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!

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1. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by jones_supa · 2014-04-25 06:41 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe, but Nokia would still have ended up in a far worse situation without the Microsoft deal.
2. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by serviscope_minor · 2014-04-25 06:49 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Maybe, but Nokia would still have ended up in a far worse situation without the Microsoft deal.
  May have. They still had an assload of patents on almost all areas of mobile phone hardware and showed no sign of slowing down in that department. They also were still moving a metric assloads (approximately 1.1 imperial short fucktons) of dumbphones.
  Companies have turned around from worse successfully.
  
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3. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by king+neckbeard · 2014-04-25 06:52 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not sure about that. They had a decent upgrade path to convert Symbian customers to Maemo/Meego/Sailfish, and it seems like that road was getting better reception than the WP path despite MS having largely killed it by the time they had anything released. It probably would have been difficult to have tanked Nokia harder without the kind of malice that would bring on investigations from various governments.
  
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4. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-04-25 07:00 · Score: 2, Interesting
  Which Microsoft deal would that be?
  The one where they took their media fuctions from Microsoft and then Microsoft failed to deliver music?|
  The one where they took their office software from Mictosoft and then Steven Elop failed to deliver software?
  The one where they took their OS from Microsoft and then MS failed to deliver working apps?
  The one where they sold of their crippled mobile phone division to MS?
5. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by postbigbang · 2014-04-25 07:07 · Score: 1
  
  Even former pros at this, like RIM/Blackberry, HP/Palm, and others are in the ditch. Sony-Ericsson, both of them bleeding heavily. Dumb phones are going the way of the landline, and in the land of less developed areas, growth will be huge-- and those will huge portfolios of patents are already parachuting in.
  Microsoft wanted to be like Apple, and control its supply chain, which is barely do-able because they don't have the militarism of Apple when it comes to discipline. They might get a few points but it'll be a battle against Huawei, HTC, LG, Samsung, and the supply chains of Softbank, etc, that Microsoft will have to pull together.
  It's not like how Google bought then divested of Motorola. Microsoft's been making billions from Android in pre-court settlements over patent issues. It was a bastard way of soaking Google's OEMs, and it worked.
  
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6. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by jones_supa · 2014-04-25 07:25 · Score: 1
  
  They didn't put almost any meaningful resources on the Linux phones, and weren't planning to. Actually they killed all those projects. Also Sailfish is a Jolla OS and didn't exist back then at all.
  Nokia's cart was thrusting full speed down the mine shaft when Microsoft made the offer.
7. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by eulernet · 2014-04-25 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  Do you believe that Nokia was naive when Elop was hired ?
  I think that Nokia's investors realized that they were losing the mobile war.
  The company peaked a few years ago, so they wanted to recover the money they invested in it before the company didn't worth anything.
  Microsoft wanted to take a significant share in the mobile market, because they were unable to achieve it with their products.
  Buying Nokia was the easiest way to get more than 10% of this market.
  I'm sorry for all the people who believed in Nokia's marketing motto of "connecting people".
  Reality finally won and money took the best out of Nokia.
  I'm happy for Microsoft about the bargain, but let's see what they'll do now with the company they decimated.
8. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by king+neckbeard · 2014-04-25 08:05 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  That's an outright lie. They bought TrollTech, were shifting Symbian to QT, and thus would have built an app ecosystem that was at least partially shared between Symbian and Maemo. They later collaborated with Intel's Moblin project and Maemo became Meego. They released the N900, and that seemed to be what their future plan was before MS got involved.
  
  Also Sailfish is a Jolla OS and didn't exist back then at all.
  I know, but it is the successor to Meego and was a company of ex-Nokia devs, so practically speaking, Maemo, Meego, and Sailfish are the same OS.
  
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9. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by king+neckbeard · 2014-04-25 08:12 · Score: 1
  
  Seems like either of those plans would have worked out better for anyone who didn't have a golden parachute, so perhaps it isn't too bad a resource.
  
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10. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by RyuuzakiTetsuya · 2014-04-25 08:22 · Score: 2
  
  It's worse than you think
  I think though, this is the result of the bungling OPK and even a bit before him Jorma Ollila, where the company wasn't focused on putting out great products but rather became concerned with infighting and territorial control. The whole place was dysfunctional from the inside out.
  
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11. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by jones_supa · 2014-04-25 09:00 · Score: 1
  
  They released the N900, and that seemed to be what their future plan was before MS got involved.
  The Internet Tablets were only a small sidetrack and did not represent their future plan in general.
  Nokia was mostly dealing with the crusty Symbian and the competition from Android and iPhone had destroyed them almost completely. That's when Microsoft entered the scene.
12. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by Threni · 2014-04-25 10:07 · Score: 1
  
  > Do you believe that Nokia was naive when Elop was hired ?
  Yes. They knew they were losing - that's not insight; that's just looking at the figures. They needed to do something. They probably thought he was going to use his experience to help, not to make decisions which would lead to them losing enough money so that his (previous) employers could perform a takeover. I'm a little surprised there's been no lawsuit yet; perhaps now is the time for that?
13. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by CptPicard · 2014-04-25 11:09 · Score: 2
  
  Still untrue -- the MeeGo plan was the supposed future and the pre-Elop Nokia was full-on backing it. The Nokia N9 was the best mobile device I had owned, and then Elop came in and didn't give it a release in any major markets.
  
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14. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by Culture20 · 2014-04-25 11:11 · Score: 1
  
  "Buy him out boys!"
  http://vimeo.com/70498601
15. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by dos1 · 2014-04-25 12:32 · Score: 2
  
  Unfortunately, Maemo/Meego plan was internally fought over by the Symbian team, creating unnecessary, unhealthy competition inside Nokia and delaying success of any of them. When Nokia finally realized that it was Maemo that had greatest potential for future, not Symbian, they were already quite a lot behind competitors. Elop could either make risky, but potentially beneficial for the company decision in favor of Maemo/Meego, or take an easy road as a trojan horse, mostly beneficial for himself and for stakeholders in short term.
  It's a pretty sad story about major mistakes in management of a very big player, which at its last chance to return into significance after couple of bad moves was just kicked in its balls by someone who was supposed to take care of it and gradually sold cheaply.
16. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by dbIII · 2014-04-25 15:34 · Score: 1
  
  No. Elop did some active wrecking. A trust fund baby that never turned up for work would have done better.
17. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by dbIII · 2014-04-25 15:38 · Score: 1
  
  Unfortunately, Maemo/Meego plan was internally fought over by the Symbian team, creating unnecessary, unhealthy competition inside Nokia and delaying success of any of them
  Management is in place to deal with such things and earlier management said to retire Symbian and migrate to the newer system. Then Elop came in and pinned all hopes on a frankly utter crap Microsoft OS which MS abandoned not long after. Then they scrambled to do a second port to the newer and very different MS OS.
18. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by dbIII · 2014-04-25 15:42 · Score: 1
  
  Do you believe that Nokia was naive when Elop was hired
  I believe some of Nokia's board members got kickbacks starting from just before they hired Elop since among many other things that explains why they didn't throw Elop out for performance far worse than what they threw out the previous CEO for.
  Nokia was an enormous company, yet it was the first CEO gig for Elop. That smells pretty funny on it's own.
19. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by king+neckbeard · 2014-04-25 18:32 · Score: 1
  
  By all indications I had seen, that was clearly the plan. That's why both of them were using QT, which they had acquired probably for that exact purpose. They were going to leverage Symbian's market share, which was still significant, to foster a strong app ecosystem for Maemo. I recall it quite well, as I was quite enthused about it, but Nokia fanboys were practically creaming themselves over how wonderful their Maemo future would be.
  
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20. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by dos1 · 2014-04-26 09:43 · Score: 1
  
  >earlier management said to retire Symbian and migrate to the newer system
  They did, but not before years of internal competition making both teams reinvent the wheel and limiting collaboration between them. Maemo 6/Meego as seen on Nokia N9 was entirely reimplemented three times. When it all started, Symbian team was also doing transition to Qt - just like Maemo; but internal conflicts, on both management and "engineers morale" levels led them to implement completely separate, incompatible libraries, wasting time of both teams.
  Management eventually made a right decision, but it was already too late to stop Elop from destroying it all completely.
21. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by dbIII · 2014-04-26 13:32 · Score: 1
  
  Since in hindsight destruction to drive down the sale price was the aim (and removing competing technologies to Winphone another aim) any time would have been too late to stop Elop from destroying it all completely.
22. Re:IT'S A TRAP! by dos1 · 2014-04-27 08:47 · Score: 1
  
  I think that if Nokia was in better state few years ago, Elop wouldn't be chosen as a CEO at all, so he wouldn't have a possibility to destroy it. But maybe that's just me being naive :)
There's a good book on the subject by CRCulver · 2014-04-25 06:32 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.
1. Re:There's a good book on the subject by Minwee · 2014-04-25 06:54 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Strange as it may seem, there are still people in the world who enjoy reading more than 140 letters at a time.
2. Re:There's a good book on the subject by CRCulver · 2014-04-25 07:01 · Score: 1
  
  Typo for "many Nokia veterans in the Helsinki area".
3. Re:There's a good book on the subject by Culture20 · 2014-04-25 11:15 · Score: 1
  
  You can Finnish it in one sitting.
  That joke was terrible. Don't like my criticism? Suomi.
Sweet by Anonymous Coward · 2014-04-25 06:40 · Score: 5, Funny

Now Microsoft will have a phone you don't want to go along with the tablet you don't want.
1. Re:Sweet by nine-times · 2014-04-25 08:02 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I'm sure they'll also work quite well alongside the copy of Windows 8 you got stuck with, including the installation of IE you'll never use and the copy of Microsoft Office you wish you didn't need.
2. Re:Sweet by Kjella · 2014-04-25 13:44 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think Microsoft can rely on the customer being "stuck" with Win8 and MS Office much longer, according to StatCounter mobile is now 24%, tablets 6% and the desktop only 70% of web browsing. Subtract a few percent for Mac/Linux and more than one in three is no longer using Windows to browse the web. Of course web browsing != general computing but people are going to want solutions for the devices they're using, if there's an app for it they'd probably rather use that than haul out their laptop. I guess most of those 30% have a PC they could use if they wanted to, but I'm not sure casual users will in the future. I think the "PC-less" digital life is quickly becoming possible and that significant parts of the population will find they don't really need a PC. Microsoft has the enterprise by the balls, consumers much less so.
  
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3. Re:Sweet by bondsbw · 2014-04-25 16:24 · Score: 1
  
  to go along with the tablet you don't want
  As opposed to the tablet I really want, but when I buy it, realize that all it amounts to is a $500 Facebook app?
  
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4. Re:Sweet by MouseTheLuckyDog · 2014-04-25 16:36 · Score: 1
  
  They tried that once. It almost got them broken up.
Nokia two and half times the size of Apple by tuppe666 · 2014-04-25 07:09 · Score: 1

... 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.
1. Re:Nokia two and half times the size of Apple by CRCulver · 2014-04-25 07:11 · Score: 2
  
  Apple and Google didn't have the infighting that Nokia did. They could concentrate fully on pushing iOS and Android respectively, but Nokia had people territorial about Symbian and management inefficiently directing resources between different teams.
Death of symbian? by mvar · 2014-04-25 07:51 · Score: 1

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..
1. Re:Death of symbian? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-04-25 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  Symbian died years ago. Long before this deal sadly.
2. Re:Death of symbian? by jones_supa · 2014-04-25 09:06 · Score: 1
  
  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..
  That's not quite how I remember it. Symbian was extremely laggy, had a clunky UI, crashed a lot, and everyone hated developing apps for it.
3. Re:Death of symbian? by Kalriath · 2014-04-25 10:19 · Score: 2
  
  Can confirm, I have/had an S60 mobile. Terribly slow UI, constantly crashing, but at least the apps had a consistent(ly bad) design.
  The phone also randomly rebooted in the middle of phone calls. That was cool too.
  
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4. Re:Death of symbian? by blackpaw · 2014-04-25 16:48 · Score: 1
  
  I did S60 apps - worst dev system I have every seen - incredibly arcane and convulated dev chain, the C++ library had over *1200* classes. For a fucking mobile phone. And the class hierarchy was just perverse.
5. Re:Death of symbian? by mvar · 2014-04-26 02:06 · Score: 1
  
  I can't talk about developing applications, my opinion is from a user's perspective. Never had any issues with UI or lag on my 5130v2 which, after 5 years, died by being crushed under my car's wheels. And the 105 that i got for $20 does its job as expected
For the REAL radical dudes! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-04-25 08:01 · Score: 2, Funny

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!
Re:Beta Sucks by Kalriath · 2014-04-25 10:15 · Score: 1

Except that Windows Phone actually isn't bad. The only reason people aren't going for it is that retailers don't push it, and everyone's got this "OMG Microsoft! They killed my dog!" mentality.

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Re:Beta Sucks by Kalriath · 2014-04-25 10:29 · Score: 1

The point is that people don't want to buy them for the wrong reasons. I mean, I once gave my iPhone, Android and Windows Phone to my mother and asked which was easier to use. To be honest even I was surprised that apparently the Windows Phone was the most intuitive of the three.
They're also roughly the same price as Android devices, and with hardware on par with the Android equivalents. In this case, I actually feel it's more down to shitty marketing than anything else (perhaps they should hire Apple to do it, since they're a marketi... er, computer company).

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He's right. Windows Phone is pretty decent by darylb · 2014-04-25 10:55 · Score: 1

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 = 1/2 Whatsup !! by giorgist · 2014-04-25 10:58 · Score: 1

So Nokia +30,000 employees = 1/2 Whatsup !!
Re:Beta Sucks by blackpaw · 2014-04-25 16:44 · Score: 1

Agreed, shitty Marketing. I moved from my Sona Xperia Sola to a Lumia 525 - roughly the same price (contract free), heaps better phone - snappier, nicer to use.
This may be changing, seeing a lot more public awareness & pushing of the Lumia's in Australia.
Side Note:Development for Android and Windows Phone is pretty straightforward. I did some Symbian S60 dev in the past and that was just vile.
Re:And Now by Urkki · 2014-04-25 18:32 · Score: 1

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
Re:I still think they should have bought RIM in 20 by aliquis · 2014-04-25 20:20 · Score: 1

How to fix Vista! (?)
1) Buy RIM, get QNX.
2) Add start-menu to QNX.
3) ?
4) Profit!
Herin lies the company that: by colablizzard · 2014-04-25 21:13 · Score: 1

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.
Re:And Now by Urkki · 2014-04-26 11:07 · Score: 1

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).
Re: Beta Sucks by Kalriath · 2014-04-26 11:30 · Score: 1

You're proving my point. Well done.
Windows Phone is not second tier. Anyone I know that owns one (and I know quite a few) actually prefer it.

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