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Microsoft to acquire Nokia

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Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#61

Post by msh »

cbhl wrote: post #27
kabdib wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the exception of the folks doing keyboards (which they have been serially been screwing up for the last ten years) Microsoft has some very good hardware people. The Surface was a nice piece of kit, but way expensive (for unavoidable reasons, I hear) and running the wrong software (also for unavoidable reasons).

I remember their developer evangelists were running around showing off some $3000 Samsung tablet PC prior to the Surface and Surface Pro being released. People think the Surface is expensive because they compare it to the iPad or Nexus 7/10 product lines, but it seems like Windows RT is closer to a port of Windows 8 to ARM than anything else, which makes it seem odd that you'd think to run Windows Rt on a $200 tablet…

The surface is using the same CPU as the 199$ nexus 7 (tegra 3) so the internals are more or less the same.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#62

Post by simonh »

This is the ultimate indictment of Steve Ballmer's "I like our strategy, I like it a lot" statement. This is the final admission that their strategy of licensing a mobile OS to phone manufacturers, just as they licensed desktop Windows to PC makers, has completely failed. This must have been in the works for months, so now finally the other shoe has dropped and we know why he had to leave. There's no way he could save face over something like this.

Just to be clear, the strategy itself wasn't the problem, just look at Android, the problem was that technically their product was technically deficient. They failed to execute the strategy effectively. What I have always wondered is whether this was simply due to hardware limitations of the day, or whether the old Windows Mobile was deliberately held back technically to prevent it competing with Desktop Windows. If the former then Microsoft just suffered from a form of first mover's disadvantage, and a lack of foresight. If the latter then they richly deserve all the failure they've reaped. I'd love to know.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#64

Post by joe_the_user »

kyro wrote: post #23

Great move by Microsoft. This is an acquisition that arguably puts Microsoft mobile capabilities above that of Google's, and closest to Apple's. They're getting industry veterans with great design talent. They're getting a Lumia product that has the best build quality of any non-Apple smart phone. They're acquiring proven channels to access global markets. Both Nokia and Microsoft have been floundering in the mobile…

This is an acquisition that arguably puts Microsoft mobile capabilities above that of Google's, and closest to Apple's.

To have this loltastic sentence at the top of hn makes me wonder if MS or some PR has a bunch of shill accounts they roll out for occasions like this. Seriously? As the other reply said, they were already together. And losing. Badly. And hated, broadly.

And the reason the windows phone sucks so badly is that MS tied the PC and phone UIs together into a "push-me pull-you" (Windows 8 everywhere) that can't succeed at either task. And so to escape MS will have to back out of their deal entirely, go back to designing phones and PC OSes separately, and given MS' ingrown bureaucratic insanity there that seems less than likely.

Grafting a few more limbs onto a failing Frankenstein will ... create a bigger failing Frankenstein.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#65

Post by microtonal »

yalogin wrote: post #45

Motorola and now Nokia, the last of the previous era big wigs have fallen. 13 years ago Lucent, Motorola, Ericsson, Sun, Nortel were huge. Now they are all gone. Even HP, Dell are no longer leading. That is a really short time span for a company to be on top of the world and disappear. Is this the expected life span of a tech company?

Motorola and now Nokia, the last of the previous era big wigs have fallen.

Actually, Nokia was slowly and steadily on a rebound in the markets where they were traditionally strong. E.g. market shares of Windows Phone in the five largest European economies has grown from 4.9% a year ago to 8.2% now [1]. That's almost half the marketshare of iOS (17.3%).

Most of those units were Nokia Lumias.

Sure, it's not where they were years ago percentage-wise, but the smartphone market has grown enormously since then, and WP is showing good growth (except in the US).

Source: http://www.nu.nl/tech/3565096/windows-phone-groeit-nieuwe-sm...

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#66

Post by [deleted] »

berntb wrote: post #57
Shamanmuni wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they were together already. This past time Nokia only developed Windows phones and Microsoft paid for the marketing of the Lumia. Nokia had Stephen Elop as CEO, for crying out loud. We already knew Nokia was a part of Microsoft. This is not a move, just a formality; the low price gives you another hint. If the partnership Microsoft-Nokia could have changed their positions in the mobile sector, it would have happe…

>>Nothing will change as a result of this. A good guess is that the enthusiasm at e.g. Samsung for making Windows Phones have gone down quite a bit... Windows Phones seems to be an internal Microsoft thing now, Xbox style.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#67

Post by wtracy »

simonh wrote: post #62

This is the ultimate indictment of Steve Ballmer's "I like our strategy, I like it a lot" statement. This is the final admission that their strategy of licensing a mobile OS to phone manufacturers, just as they licensed desktop Windows to PC makers, has completely failed. This must have been in the works for months, so now finally the other shoe has dropped and we know why he had to leave. There's no way he could sav…

Well, it's possible that the model of selling an OS to phone manufacturers has been destroyed by Google giving an OS to manufacturers as a loss-leader.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#68

Post by sirkneeland »

As a Nokia employee, I can't yet comment on whether this is ultimately good or bad for us and what our dreams were.

I can say that it is a very emotional time for us Nokia employees, and I can only imagine it is even more so for those of us who are also Finns.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#69

Post by tluyben2 »

devx wrote: post #50

Seems like Elop stayed true to his nickname - of a trojan horse. He never really worked for Nokia. He's been working for Microsoft the whole time, just to sell it for this low price. How the hell are the shareholders okay with this? I'm shocked it sold for under $10 billion. Nokia's total valuation is about 15 billion, and you'd have to imagine they'd have to pay a 30 percent premium when buying it, so that's $20 bil…

That's what I thought when Elop went to Nokia and even in hindsight it seems to be the case. As a share holder, I definitely would ask questions. It seems hard to prove though; their market was falling anyway, but there are a lot of what ifs: like if they would've done Android, continued with their own OS but made it really open etc.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#70

Post by abrahamsen »

phyalow wrote: post #39
SeanLuke wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moto X

> Interesting...

The Moto X has two interesting clusters of features:

1) The obvious one and only mildly interesting is the customization. I believe that will appeal to a large market segment.

2) The less obvious and more creepy one is the battery saving combined with the always on features. I believe this is very much the Google vision at play. The Moto X is always on, aware of its surroundings, and integrated with Google Now. I see this is part of the same vision that created Google Glass, and ultimately will be a Google chip in your brain.

How well it works in practice I have no idea. Google Now haven't impressed me, it best it tells me what I wanted to know 15 minutes ago. The Moto X features be utterly useless. But the direction is definitely interesting.

The phone is clearly not interesting to those mainly interested in peak CPU performance, DPI, or screen size. I'll also skip it for now. Let someone else be guinea pigs.

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