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Nokia acquired by Microsoft

blogs.technet.com

321–330 of 573 posts

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#321

To me, this is borderline criminal behaviour and shows once more that Microsoft is incapable of playing fair. Installing a trojan horse as Nokias CEO, who then proceeds to destroy any value left in that company so that Microsoft can pick it up for a cheap price. I'd be amazed if Elop is promoted to MS's CEO position for such deceitful behaviour

Its as if Ballmer wants to screw things up as much as he can before he leaves. While the behaviour, as you mentioned, is borderline criminal, this only means Microsoft wasting ridiculous amounts of money and time into a mobile platform that not many care for.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#322
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…

I think Elop's greatest achievement is to sell people the "There is no money in being an Android vendor"-lie. And people are actually buying it.

WP market is much much smaller, so, by becoming a big player in this market, which Nokia achieved in very little time, they became in fact a big player in a market where there really is no money.

Had they instead of this focused on becoming a big player in a market that actually matters, e.g. the Android market, then Nokia may still (or again) be worth a lot. (But then they wouldn't be a cheap take-over target for Microsoft.)

With Nokias connection to telcoms, they could have easily achieved a big chunk of the android market share.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#323
post #74

I called this on Friday after looking at the stock market. Too bad I didn't bet too much money on it, but I still made a bunch :) http://stocktwits.com/bluercloud/message/15522482 http://stocktwits.com/bluercloud/message/15522546 By the way, this looks like an acquihire for Elop being the next MSFT CEO.

I wonder who knew?

I love this. Virtually irrefutable evidence of insider trading, and everyone goes "meh".

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not stupid. He just said what he knows anectodically, and I can confirm from many discussions I had. As a data point just take the number of people who chose Samsung Galaxy S4 or HTC One over iPhone, even though they cost more less the same.

As I said, market share is not an appropriate measure of a user experience people consider superior. People's choices of a Galaxy S4/HTC One over an iPhone could be caused by liking the Android UX more, but there's also many other reasons for it (friends like it more, already in Google ecosystem, upgrading from previous phone, etc). There's many possible reasons for one person choosing one phone over the other, and,…

Samsung now rates higher than iPhone for user satisfaction:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2422525,00.asp

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241257/Samsung_smart...

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#326
post #162

So Elop was in fact a Trojan Horse? Wonder what this does to the already strained MSFT vendor relationships. You could now almost guarantee vendors will start to completely dump Windows on ARM and possibly even look for alternatives to Windows x86.

Elop sold Macromedia to Adobe. I used to remember Flash was cool, then it was dead for like 5 years allowing HTML5 and Unity to catch up.

I did not know that fact. thanks. Selling to Adobe resulted in the demise of every Macromedia products.There is nothing left from Macromedia in Adobe, Nokia products will meet the same fate.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#327
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…

No, a great move would have been for Microsoft to purchase RIM/BlackBerry three or four years ago, and focus on the corporate sector. They could have had the best information security story in the industry. They could have had the ultimate Exchange email experience. Together, these companies would have had a serious chance at being the indisputable third platform. On their own, they came up with a dozen incompatible…

I guess it would depend on who you are securing the information from, Skype being an obvious example of a formerly secure service that is now owned by Microsoft.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#328

To me, this is borderline criminal behaviour and shows once more that Microsoft is incapable of playing fair. Installing a trojan horse as Nokias CEO, who then proceeds to destroy any value left in that company so that Microsoft can pick it up for a cheap price. I'd be amazed if Elop is promoted to MS's CEO position for such deceitful behaviour

Maybe that was the outcome Nokia's board looked for from the start? I mean, they did choose Elop, and it was pretty clear where that would lead them. Nokia was on a downhill slope way before Elop came onboard.

There were acquisition talks in June 2013 which fell through because the price wasn't right. Elop just had to bide his time. http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2013/06/failed-microsoft-nokia-...

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#329

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.

Yes. The low-margin 80% of the market that makes few profits. Apple makes as much revenue/profits from it's 20% share as the rest of the 80% Android OEMS combined (namely, Samsung).

>There is zero chance of that changing anytime soon.

That's great, because who would really want the 80%, low margin market segment?

If it'll play like the PC Market (where Apple makes more money that the rest 4 top PC makers), then Android will be like Windows all over again. Dell, anyone?

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#330
post #11

Microsoft is becoming more and more of an integrated software and hardware company than a purely software one. Maybe it's time to change the name to something without the "soft".

They've been trying to ape Apple in consumer electronics for the last ten years. For some reason, they figure since Apple was making a butt-load manufacturing and selling their own Phones and Tablets, they should do that too. Meanwhile, Google follows the Microsoft OEM strategy and Android takes 80% of the market.

Yet Microsoft makes money on Android and Google doesn't make money on WP :).
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