Actually, it makes a lot of sense. I don't know why this author is bringing up Android as an option that was somehow on the table recently for Nokia. That's not the case and it shows a complete lack of understanding of how difficult it would be for Nokia to port all their software assets (maps, camera stuff, other apps) to Android. That would take years, just like it took years to do on Windows Phone. That never was going to happen. If they had wanted to do that, it would have been much easier to add Android support to Meego. However, they got out of that business two years ago and layed off all the related R&D staff.
Microsoft just bought a growing phone business that is projected to claim the #3 position in the smart phone market this year and that currently holds a solid grip on the #2 position in the overall phone market. There are a lot of people that sort try to portray this as a very negative thing but in reality all phone manufacturers except Apple and Samsung are doing much worse in terms of market share, growth, margins, and profits.
So, that's a somewhat better spending of money than e.g. Google buying the crumbled remains of Motorola for double the money and effectively no marketshare worth talking about at all.
Still the question is valid as to how Microsoft should proceed in merging the two companies. Luckily, Elop has already cut a lot of the dead wood in Nokia and prepared it for this event. Several tens of thousands of people have already been layed off and what remains is pretty well organized (hence the recent turnaround in growth for Nokia). Microsoft never had much in terms of logistics, production, and in the field people that make up much of the 30K people that remain in Nokia. One reason why Nokia was so successful a few years ago is that it had feet on the ground in most countries and good relations with the hundreds of operators world wide. It's the same reason why Apple is struggling in many markets (e.g. China, the largest market for Smart phones): they never had that.
Most of the R&D org is already nicely split up between Asha and Lumia. They can run Asha as is for as long as it is profitable, sell it off as a whole, or properly kill it when the time comes. Nokia has been milking that cash cow for ten years already and recently revamped it to be able to continue to do that for years to come. Samsung is the only competitor in this space for them and the market for this segment is measured in billions of people.
So, this is very different from the past mergers mentioned in the article where there was poor alignment at the organizational and business level. Microsoft got a bargain here. There's plenty of ways that they can mess this up but if they play it right, they'll dethrone Apple as the #2 in just a few short years take a nice bite out of Samsung's business as well.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
