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Nokia acquired by Microsoft

blogs.technet.com

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Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#221

Post by moca »

kyro wrote: post #103
rayiner wrote: post #38

This is a great move. There is no money in being an Android vendor except if you're Samsung and are totally vertically integrated. With Windows Phone, Nokia and Microsoft at least have some hope of carving out a profitable stake in the market. Anecdotally, I'm very impressed with some of the new Lumias. I got a 620 to replace my stolen iPhone, and for $200 unlocked its phenomenal phone. The build quality makes a flag…

Agreed re: Samsung. With this new acquisition, Microsoft now has the ability to control the entire mobile phone experience -- something Apple has had huge success doing for years now. They'll have a high-quality platform to promote their app store and create an interesting ecosystem. This'll also create a distinct image in consumer's minds of what the Microsoft Phone is, similar to what we imagine when we think of th…

You missed a critical issue. Carriers don't like fully controlled verticals like Apple, as they don't want to compete on a fair battle ground. Apple is too powerful in US today, but no carrier wants another Apple. Several friends from Microsoft said this over past couple of years.

Another issue is Microsoft does not have profitable consumer services other than Xbox. Even Microsoft can integrate a lot of its services with Windows Phone, it is a big money sink until Microsoft can make profit on search, maps, outlook.com, skydrive, etc. They have tried for over a decade by now.

In the end, I really like to see 3-way competition between Apple, Google, Microsoft.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#222

Post by gbog »

clarky07 wrote: post #172
macspoofing wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are a lot of people who would have picked up the attractive, well built, well engineered Nokia devices if they had the platform of Android. Yeah maybe. There is no guarantee that the outcome would have been more favorable than being bought out by Microsoft. >Apple obviously is very much in a battle with Android ... Apple already lost to Android. Last count, Android had 80% of the market. There is zero chance o…

Android has 80% worldwide market share, but it's much much closer in the US. If you take out the crap phones that are smartphone in name only, it's much closer worldwide. While Android is clearly winning by a decent margin, I'm not convinced it's over. I think the hopefully coming soon cheaper iPhone could make things a lot more interesting. Note that I don't actually want the iPhone to win. I would very much prefer…

No, please, we have such hard time moving MS out of the hot field, don't bring them back!

Remember when everyone feared MS? I mean, that was really terriying time for our industry. How forgetful is it to "wish" MS could gain a third of the phone OS market shared... Apple and Google conjugated efforts kept the wolf outside and you want to open the gates?

However, I agree that a domineering Android/Google or Android/Samsumg is harmful for the market. Let us hope some other OSes can grab a piece of it. I have some hope in Cyanogenmod, which could be forking away from Android (just like Linux forked Unix). And, if you look at it, that is just what Chinese companies are doing (xiaomi, etc.): forking Android and gain market shares.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#223

Post by [deleted] »

goblin89 wrote: post #120
undoware wrote: post #25

Wow. Some call Tomi. For copious, copious background on the MS/Nokia debacle, 'burning platform' to present: communities-dominate.blogs.com (Not affiliated, just an avid fan of this mobile industry analyst-become-blogger who does his own stats. Some of the charts are chilling.)

Tried to read a recent post there, but stopped after the statement “Nikon just recently said it plans to launch its own smartphones”. That looked like big news, so I looked it up. Turned out, Nikon's president said something along the lines of “We want to create a product that will change the concept of cameras. It could be a non-camera consumer product” early July—that is the most reliable citation on the matter I c…

[deleted]

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#224

Post by ddeck »

macspoofing wrote: post #100
corresation wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no money in being an Android vendor except if you're Samsung and are totally vertically integrated. There are a lot of people who would have picked up the attractive, well built, well engineered Nokia devices if they had the platform of Android. The core problem with the "no money in Android" argument is that you can't choose not to compete with Android if you're in the smartphone game, which is pretty obvio…

>There are a lot of people who would have picked up the attractive, well built, well engineered Nokia devices if they had the platform of Android. Yeah maybe. There is no guarantee that the outcome would have been more favorable than being bought out by Microsoft. >Apple obviously is very much in a battle with Android ... Apple already lost to Android. Last count, Android had 80% of the market. There is zero chance o…

>Apple already lost to Android. Last count, Android had 80% of the market.

That's like suggesting that Mercedes Benz have lost already to Ford because they have smaller market share. Apple produce a premium product with prices and margins that reflect that. Of course they would prefer dominant market share, as would Mercedes. But a non-majority share does not imply that they've somehow lost.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#225

Post by frank_boyd »

barista wrote: post #220
frank_boyd wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope this portends a Microsoft phone... I'm wondering, how can anyone buy and use a Microsoft phone, when we've learned that they partner with the NSA, killing our privacy?

Google does the same and their phones seems to be selling quite well.

Exactly.

And Apple too.

But we have 2 alternatives now (and they are even open-source!):

1. Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/phone

2. FirefoxOS: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/

So why does it look like everyone's already back to "whatever!"-mode as far as your right to privacy is concerned?

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#226

Post by bad_user »

mbreese wrote: post #181
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can call something a "turnaround strategy" when the result is to cause the company's value to nosedive so far that the most viable means to salvage any of their investors' money is to divest them of their stock at a significant loss. From the Nokia stockholder's perspective, even if by some miracle the company were to subsequently prosper under Microsoft, by that point they no longer own it, so how…

I'm looking at it from a "stop the bleeding" point of view. When he took over, Nokia's stock was a little less around $9... down from it's high of almost $40 3 year earlier. Things had somewhat stabilized, but it was clear that Nokia was no longer going to be the top tier phone maker they had been for a decade. The strategy at that time was to ditch their Symbian and Linux platforms and jump 100% into the Windows Pho…

When he took over, Nokia still had the in-house expertise and the resources for a turnaround. In fact Nokia N9 would have been a raging success, if Eliop wouldn't have killed it.

And another thing: the feature phone business is huge and underserved by Android. Nokia was in the best position to come up with a reasonable alternative.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#227

Post by lsc »

undoware wrote: post #48

Here's my take. Nokia's downfall has literally been the biggest business failure in the history of the planet - see communities-dominate.blogs.com for backstory. (As I mentioned in a previous post; I'm largely summarizing things Tomi proves with hard data.) My interpretation of this is that the increasingly untenable position of Stephen Elop began to incriminate the whole board, as any toppling of Elop would invite a…

>recall that the ENTIRE PC INDUSTRY is like a tenth the size of mobile. Yes, I love my PC too, but most consumers seem much happier with other devices for a wide range of use cases

Meh, a lot of this is that mobile devices are advancing really fast. I'm perfectly happy with a 5 year old desktop, but I want a new phone much more often. Once mobile devices are "good enough" you will see people buy new devices less often.

>ARM is about to make its final assault on the server closet,

I've heard a whole lot of talk about this (and I've talked about this myself; I think I am in one of the industries that could actually sell the things. I have a bunch of customers who would pay a small premium for a physical server to themselves) - but I haven't seen anything realistic. As far as I can tell, you're better of with "Four strong oxen" as it were, rather than "one thousand twenty four chickens"

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#228

Post by valleyer »

gbog wrote: post #222
clarky07 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android has 80% worldwide market share, but it's much much closer in the US. If you take out the crap phones that are smartphone in name only, it's much closer worldwide. While Android is clearly winning by a decent margin, I'm not convinced it's over. I think the hopefully coming soon cheaper iPhone could make things a lot more interesting. Note that I don't actually want the iPhone to win. I would very much prefer…

No, please, we have such hard time moving MS out of the hot field, don't bring them back! Remember when everyone feared MS? I mean, that was really terriying time for our industry. How forgetful is it to "wish" MS could gain a third of the phone OS market shared... Apple and Google conjugated efforts kept the wolf outside and you want to open the gates? However, I agree that a domineering Android/Google or Android/Sa…

Huh? Microsoft was terrifying because they dominated the PC market. This comment proposes their having 33% of the smartphone market. How is that "terrifying"?

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#230

Post by cageface »

ddeck wrote: post #224
macspoofing wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are a lot of people who would have picked up the attractive, well built, well engineered Nokia devices if they had the platform of Android. Yeah maybe. There is no guarantee that the outcome would have been more favorable than being bought out by Microsoft. >Apple obviously is very much in a battle with Android ... Apple already lost to Android. Last count, Android had 80% of the market. There is zero chance o…

>Apple already lost to Android. Last count, Android had 80% of the market. That's like suggesting that Mercedes Benz have lost already to Ford because they have smaller market share. Apple produce a premium product with prices and margins that reflect that. Of course they would prefer dominant market share, as would Mercedes. But a non-majority share does not imply that they've somehow lost.

The car analogy gets trotted out over and over again when talking about smart phone market share but it really doesn't work at all. Smart phone ecosystems have powerful network effects that just don't exist for most luxury goods.
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