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Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

uk.businessinsider.com

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Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#21

Post by pavlov »

tshanmu wrote: post #18
pavlov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. you mean Nadella?

Doh! Thanks, fixed.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#23

Post by sickbeard »

anjc wrote: post #13

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…

I think with UWP, the phone team lost control of the platform, and the core team working on UWP weren't that interested in making compromises needed for the phone. Hence the terrible and poor builds.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#24

Post by Zigurd »

tim333 wrote: post #8

I wonder how it would have played out for Nokia if Microsoft had not bought them. Rather better in some ways I'd imagine.

For the view that it would have been better without Microsoft, I'd recommend Tomi Ahonen's blog.

I agree with him to the extent that, in hindsight, it would be hard to make more destructive management decisions than what actually happened. The people inside Nokia often seemed to be trapped in a nightmare. It was a sad, hollowed-out place well before it was sold to Microsoft. Stephen Elop killed several projects that would have provided alternatives to Windows Phone. Nothing was allowed to encroach on that failing product.

All that said, Nokia had missed the boat in modern smartphone OSs, much in the way Blackberry had done. There is no guarantee they would have found a good answer on their own.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#26

Post by Maakuth »

anjc wrote: post #13

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…

> 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?

Nokia only sold their mobile phone arm and licensed the IP. This doesn't seem like the cheapest way to get those licenses.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#27

Post by sickbeard »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #25
sickbeard wrote: post #22

Can we start saying Ballmer was a better CEO than Nadella?

This is all happening because of a decision made by Ballmer. Disclosure: MS employee whose wife was a Nokia employee.

Everything was in place for UWP to take over the world, but they failed to produce a good phone OS, or produced one that was worse that what it was supposed to replace.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#28

Post by gulpahum »

Just few weeks ago, Nokia announced that Nokia branded smart phones and tablets will be entering market soon. This time they are based on Android OS. It'll be interesting to see how well they'll sell (compared to Windows Phone).

http://company.nokia.com/en/our-businesses/nokia-technologie...

http://company.nokia.com/en/news/press-releases/2016/05/18/n...

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#29

Post by ninv »

anjc wrote: post #13

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…

What was the point of this whole exercise?

Patents.

Microsoft make more money from the Android than Google ...

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#30

Post by bazqux2 »

anjc wrote: post #17
stevehiehn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

It's so when they kill it there are fewer people to complain
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