That Microsoft-Nokia merger you've been predicting? It's no go Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone business – the deal you probably assumed would happen sooner or later – has been scuppered before talks were even made public, according to a new report. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal wrote that Microsoft has been engaged in "advanced talks" to snap up the Finnish mobile …
"why buy now when you can wait a year and get it for a bargain basement price"
Because (as Huawei have indicated) there's other people who may be interested. So if Nokia's results are poor, and the share price falls, then you have a Dutch auction, and waiting for the price to fall low enough enables somebody else to make a deal.
Lots of potential buyers other than Microsoft: Paternt trolls, Private equity, any of the larger Chinese makers who haven't made headway in Western markets (probably about five or six companies in this category in addition to Huawei). Even industrial conglomerates who might want a piece of mobile action.
If Nokia fails with Windows Phone, Windows Phone will have failed, and Microsoft will have failed. Why would Microsoft want to add to that misery by buying a worthless phone company for too much money?
No, Microsoft needs Nokia to succeed. Microsoft buying Nokia's handset business will probably not make that handset business more successfull than it is now though.
Nokia can limp along for a while.
There are some 'crown jewels' that certain fruity companies would want. Map Data and GPS tech is very important in the mobile phone / tablet market place.
If Microsoft becomes a handset manufacturer, you can kill Windows adoption goodbye.
Had Google bought Moto earlier, half of the handset makers would have bailed on Android because Google's phone would always have an advantage.
"Had Google bought Moto earlier, half of the handset makers would have bailed on Android because Google's phone would always have an advantage."
I doubt it. Where else would they have gone? Phone software only seems to be successful if it is built by a software-focused company. When a hardware-focused company tries to do software the results are invariably grim, whether we're talking smart phones of smart TVs.
Add in that Android is free, WP is expensive, and there were no other free phone OSes ar the time. The existence of the Nexus 4 doesn't seem to be putting third party manufacturers off, nor is there a big queue for Firefox or Ubuntu phones?
They would have gone to a different OS.
The point is that if Google had introduced Android and then introduced their own handset, other phone manufacturers would have questioned why would they enter a market where Google's phone would have the latest and greatest and they would be a second tier phone.
Google can still do this via Moto Mobility.
They could do it and laugh all the way to the bank...
I was so disappointed that I would never see if the next Symbian OS up against the Android. I heard some great things about it and thought that it could be some great competition. Would it have the legs to keep up against google? If anyone could then nokia was an interesting bet.
Then when they announced the partnership that pretty much went out the window.
The MS OS is quite good, but its reputation with the Windows phone OS was really always going to put it on a back foot.
Personally, I think the best thing Nokia could do is resurrect their brilliant Debian-based phone OS Maemo.
There's still a huge community surrounding the n900, despite it being nearly 4 years old. It'd be brilliant if Nokia could take that and put it on a modern phone (a Huawei one, perhaps, if Nokia haven't got the cash to be making their own phones anymore)
Despite its age, the n900 is still the most powerful (in terms of things you can make it do) phone I have ever known. (mobile SSH terminal complete with agent, port and X11 forwarding, anyone?)
Absolute brilliance by Nokia, but it was exactly what the trojan horse Elop was (successfully) deployed to assassinate.
Yes, because everyone who owns a smartphone thinks "well, this thing is great, but it'd be much better if I could display an Xterm on it that's running on my desktop."
Give it a rest. Maemo is and always was garbage. Maybe if they'd ever got the next-gen Qt UI up and running it might have amounted to something, but as it was everything about the platform and the hardware they shipped it on sucked.
...the company has such a great success rate with acquisitions under Ballmer. Maybe it could be as successful as Aquantive, or destroy its own revenue stream like Skype. Fantastic. Microsoft can burn up more cash reserves while running a couple once great companies the rest of the way into the ground... What could go wrong?
If they bought Nokia it would be for its patent pool. That's really the only thing they'd want from them. I also imagine that's what broke down negotiations. Microsoft tried to by Nokia for a face valuation based on its current operations, and Nokia wanted that + extra for the patent pool.
I imagine that in al likelyhood if Nokia were to sell up the first thing they'd do is start to auction off packages of their patents to other companies since that could generate a hefty profit should they need it. I can quite easily see a bidding war erupt between google samsung and apple over a large number of Nokia patents.
I'm actually surprised Google haven't done more with motorola.
MS would consider buying Nokia for fear that if they don't, someone else will.
Imagine some other player buying Nokia... The likely result would be that they either stop producing WIndows Phones or at the very least start producing phones using some other O/S, and depending on the terms of existing licences, they open themselves up to increased licence fees from Nokia-held patents, and lose the ability to leverage Nokia's patents in attacks against Android.
Many takeovers are done for defensive reasons and the above reasons do not add to Nokia's book value, but they do add to the value of Nokia from a Microsoft perspective.
Nokia is not going to sell. In my opinion, Management is committed to the turnaround
As for those who think that Nokia is going to declare bankruptcy, they have a 50% stake in Nokia Siemens Networks which has had increasing profits, they have €4 Billion in liquid assets, they are receiving patent fees from every phone maker, Nokia owns Navteq, and the market share for Windows phones has been increasing worldwide. Most of those who think that Nokia is dying are only looking at the US market. Nokia has always been much stronger in Europe and Asia, and this is where they have been growing.
Some may also say that they wouldn't be discussing a merger with Microsoft if they weren't in trouble. But that viewpoint ignores the fact that as a public company, they need to perform due diligence on anything that could increase shareholder wealth.
My opinion is that Nokia will slowly but surely gain market share by developing great phones. My guess is that we will see Android phones from them when their agreement with Microsoft runs out.
Because they have the cash to float the company. If nokia dies and their windows phones leave the market, then there are very few windows phone options left. Microsoft want to keep pushing windows 8 and windows phone with the same UI, thinking that some day people will start wanting it.... I guess what they are doing (destroying nokias value, and then trying to buy them for cheap) might have insulted too many and pushed too many too far so that talks fell apart though.
Suely, there must be some "in there" who can enlighten us as to the true state of the agreement between Nokia and Microsft to sel WIndows only phones?
Surely, if they adopted Anroid and Maeo et al, they can have a better presence in the market.
We are all speculating here and its more about wishful thinking.
Just to clarify the air. ANinsider can do us all a favour here.
Forget Android, Nokia should partner with RIM.
BlackBerry gets the maps and the cameras. Nokia gets a modern platform designed for phones, not touch desktops, and is no longer in direct competition with Samsung and HTC. RIM goes back to making QWERTY phones, Nokia makes the touch versions. A Nokia 925 running BB 10 would blow the Z10 out of the water while giving the corporates everything they want in security and manageability. Neither party is hostage to the US or the Chinese. Having a choice of manufacturers gives the end users and developers confidence in the platform. Genuine third ecosystem. And both Canadians and Finns know about beer, snow and big lakes.
Errm, It's the failed Windows Phone that put Nokia in that position.
Things could have been so different had they gone with Android, competing with Samsung rather than trying to survive on sales scraps from the odd foolish punter who is mesmerised by live tiles (widgets to the rest of us) to not see the vast platfrom problems.
I think it would have been just as big a mess. (They probably would have lost less sales, but they wouldn't have had the bung from Microsoft) They should have stuck with what they were doing. Cleaning up Symbian, while developing a replacement that would provide continuity.
Ditching that completely was what caused the huge loses in market share.
There are plenty of companies 'competing' with Samsung in Android, they even produce better 'phones IMO (HTC One X for instance, Experia perhaps). However, Samsung are absolutely slaughtering them in the market, they have a enormous budget to push their products and a massive world-wide presence.
Nokia would be an also-ran in Android, even though I would buy Nokia because it would be a better 'phone with a better camera and better design and, most importantly, maps that work everywhere without a data connection. Unfortunately, the most 'phones are sold by the largest advertisers using the biggest posters etc. otherwise, why would people accept arriving in Paris and finding they have barely any way to see where they are, where to go or how to get there? all of which work on a Nokia almost as if you were in your home network. I have also actually made 'phone calls to Samsung devices; the call quality is shocking, truly awful; the noise-cancellation software is garbage and has to be turned off on a call-by-call basis (Jelly bean on an S2 in my case).
Luckily, I love WP, I love the battery lasting all day and into the night easily, I love the slick interface. I love it being non-app centred, swipe-based, concentrating on relating disparate information like interaction with people by whatever mechanism all in one place. If I liked instagram, I could use one of the many, many, apps that produce pictures to post on Facebook that look like that were taken with a crappy old 'phone. The predictive text input is the best I have seen.
I have used all the others, except BB10, which looks good from this distance and would get my attention in the unlikely event WP disappeared (rather than just getting better all the time). My iOS experience is limited (and includes iPads) but I would avoid them solely on the basis of the price let alone poor phone calls, old fashioned app-centric interface coupled with a UI that even Apple are discarding to make it more like WP.
MS buying nokia will be a great way to kill the Windows phone as an OS outside Nokia as Samsung, HTC etc would more than likely drop the OS if the major player in Windows phone became owned by the OS manufacturer. OEMs haven't liked the surface but they aren't too fussed about it now since Microsoft don't seem to be able to shift many of them.
Let's start with Nokia. THEY ARE A PHONE COMPANY. They make their money selling phone hardware.Once the phone is sold, if they want to make more money from a customer, they have to sell another phone. Nokia also never understood smart phones. Buying Qt was the smartest move they ever made and then screwed up. Nokia has a long reputation of selling phones and saying screw you to their customers. For some stupid reason, they think making bunches of different phones is a good idea. That worked before. Now, we want phones who get love from their makers afterwards. People complain about iPhone software updates, but in reality, people know they're getting love when they get updates.
Microsoft needs to make their own damn phone and do it right. Spend a year and focus on industrial design. Then, whatever you do, don't let some loser like Stephen Elop looking fat and sweaty in a suit with a tie get caught calling it cool. Steve Ballmer should never been seen in public with one. Give him a Nokia. Hire someone to make it cool. Not a pop star, but an artist with a gift for industrial design. People don't realize that John Ives is far more important than most think. He brings fashion to the devices.
All these anal-ists talk about is Nokia's smartphone sales being not up to much.
Their Featurephone sales are doing quite well, and that's bread & butter income - along with that from NSN.
I can see Nokia quietly assisting Jolla in bringing hardware to the market, if they do, we'll get phones with good RF performance, and a nice smart UI.
I'm on my "last" Nokia at the moment - a N9, it's RF performance beats wifey's Samsung S3 dramatically. We're on the same network, and I often have 1-2 bars on the display with 3G (where available) data, where hers has no service. The only Nokia I've ever had my hands on that didn't perform well "on air" is the E7-00.
Hopefully Mr Elop will leave Nokia soon and someone with guts and drive will return the great ship Nokia back to it's proper course.
I still feel the best thing Nokia should have done was to be the ones that bought Palm, and WebOS instead of HP. This would have given them a beautiful, functional, modern OS that they could have paired with their industrial design to produce some incredible products! Most importantly they would own their own platform, instead of relying on Microsoft, Google, or anyone else for that matter.
At the very least they would have certainly done more with WebOS that HP ever did. And WebOS would have at least been given a fighting chance to survive.
Sadly this did not come to pass, and WebOS has died, and Nokia well, maybe if given enough time can with MS carve out a nice small 3rd place in market share globally, if they survive that long...
Microsoft is treating Nokia like a cheap John treats a single-notcturnal-cycle-employment professional in the alternatively-attired performance-arts.
After all, Microsoft's fscked Nokia vigorously, there's little more to be had from the relationship - you pay your money, you don't put a ring on it.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
