I wonder how it would have played out for Nokia if Microsoft had not bought them. Rather better in some ways I'd imagine.
It is clear that at this point that in 2013 Nokia was in such a bad situation, getting $7,2 billion for the handset business was a very good deal for Nokia. Nokia Chairman of Board Risto Siilasmaa has been hailed as a saviour and a magician for orchestrating it.
The interesting question is, what would have happened if Nokia had gone the Android route in 2011 instead of Windows Phone.
Hard to understand. They buy the one company division in the world who was pushing the Windows Phone brand, a company who was innovating in terms of design and cameras and who had finally cracked their own decent brand and product line etc, and they immediately start winding them down. And they're going to work on their own hardware now anyway.
At the same time they throw their own stable OS in the bin and release a buggy beta version which has ruined the experience for WP users.
What was the point of this whole exercise? A convoluted way of getting Nokia's masses of IP rights for mobile? Why not just leave Nokia to keep pushing WP?
Hard to understand. They buy the one company division in the world who was pushing the Windows Phone brand, a company who was innovating in terms of design and cameras and who had finally cracked their own decent brand and product line etc, and they immediately start winding them down. And they're going to work on their own hardware now anyway. At the same time they throw their own stable OS in the bin and release a…
Seems clear to me. They executed on a strategy and consumers weren't interested.
I wonder how it would have played out for Nokia if Microsoft had not bought them. Rather better in some ways I'd imagine.
I don't think so. Nokia got $7.2 billion from Microsoft for a loss-making device business. Nokia still exists today and swallowed Alcatel-Lucent last year. It's hard to imagine a better outcome for Nokia than Microsoft buying the phone albatross in 2013. I honestly believe that it was part of a contingency plan that had made Nokia's board approve the Windows Phone plan -- that Ballmer basically promised a buyout in c…
Either way, how was the unit worth $7.2 billion in 2013 to anyone? Why did Microsoft pay such ridiculous money for a loss-making business, only to essentially burn it down over the next two years? From April 2014, when the deal was finalized, to May 2016, when the last employees are being laid off, the damage Microsoft incurred from this deal amount to about $1.8 million per HOUR of business. Did they really think they could pull off some magic trick to make Windows Phone fly, or were they bound by some backroom deal to buy the phone business at set price in case it started to weight down on Nokia?
Hard to understand. They buy the one company division in the world who was pushing the Windows Phone brand, a company who was innovating in terms of design and cameras and who had finally cracked their own decent brand and product line etc, and they immediately start winding them down. And they're going to work on their own hardware now anyway. At the same time they throw their own stable OS in the bin and release a…
Seems clear to me. They executed on a strategy and consumers weren't interested.
Well penetration of WP is down yeah, but that only makes sense when Nokia Lumias immediately disappeared from shops upon announcement of the MS Lumia devices, and when MS did not market or promote those new devices very much. The 950 range was also largely unavailable due to stock levels. So for about two years there you couldn't buy a Lumia even if you wanted to. So it's not surprise that usage went down and that consumers weren't interested.
But my question is what was the corporate strategy? Did they see the success of the Lumia line and wanted control of it? If so, why did they immediately fire people and stop development of new devices?
I wonder how it would have played out for Nokia if Microsoft had not bought them. Rather better in some ways I'd imagine.
I don't think so. Nokia got $7.2 billion from Microsoft for a loss-making device business. Nokia still exists today and swallowed Alcatel-Lucent last year. It's hard to imagine a better outcome for Nokia than Microsoft buying the phone albatross in 2013. I honestly believe that it was part of a contingency plan that had made Nokia's board approve the Windows Phone plan -- that Ballmer basically promised a buyout in c…
> but clearly Ballmer really, really wanted Nokia's phones and Satella really, really doesn't.
I wonder how it would have played out for Nokia if Microsoft had not bought them. Rather better in some ways I'd imagine.
It is clear that at this point that in 2013 Nokia was in such a bad situation, getting $7,2 billion for the handset business was a very good deal for Nokia. Nokia Chairman of Board Risto Siilasmaa has been hailed as a saviour and a magician for orchestrating it. The interesting question is, what would have happened if Nokia had gone the Android route in 2011 instead of Windows Phone.
Amen. Likely there'd be still a strong Nokia brand producing cutting-edge Android phones and maybe some other would have vanished earlier. Who knows.
Hard to understand. They buy the one company division in the world who was pushing the Windows Phone brand, a company who was innovating in terms of design and cameras and who had finally cracked their own decent brand and product line etc, and they immediately start winding them down. And they're going to work on their own hardware now anyway. At the same time they throw their own stable OS in the bin and release a…
A lot of people believe Nokia was about to switch to releasing Android phones and Microsoft had no choice but to buy them or exit the phone business. Nokia was in dire straits at the time.