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Microsoft to acquire Nokia

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Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#81

Post by whattssonn »

microtonal wrote: post #65
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…

Are those WP's in the hands of customers or still in the sales chanel? I suspect the last, and i do not trust those numbers. It's MS after all. If you don't know what i mean with that last sentence then learn the "classics" first.

Btw, nu.nl is not a source, really not a source. Tweakers.net is also not a source, too biased (i know you didn't mention tweakers, just sayin').

Sent from my iPad

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#82

Post by microtonal »

whattssonn wrote: post #81
microtonal wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are those WP's in the hands of customers or still in the sales chanel? I suspect the last, and i do not trust those numbers. It's MS after all. If you don't know what i mean with that last sentence then learn the "classics" first. Btw, nu.nl is not a source, really not a source. Tweakers.net is also not a source, too biased (i know you didn't mention tweakers, just sayin'). Sent from my iPad

Are those WP's in the hands of customers or still in the sales chanel?

The report [1] speaks of sales and actually claims that 42% of the sales are actually coming from feature phone owners (who probably like the price point of the Lumia 520 and all). Retail channels are not feature phone owners ;).

Btw, nu.nl is not a source, really not a source.

Of course it's a source, but you can dispute its reliability. For a substantial part of the Dutch population it is reliable enough to read daily. And it's not as if they have an agenda here.

Tweakers.net is also not a source, too biased (i know you didn't mention tweakers, just sayin').

So, what's the point of dragging Tweakers.net into the discussion?

[1] http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/Global/News/Record-share-for...

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#83

Post by Ives »

orf wrote: post #73
joe_the_user wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 badl…

I take it you have never used a Windows Phone. The Lumia's Nokia make are well designed and high quality, WP8 isn't that bad at all and will undoubtedly get better in the future. Everyone I've met with a WP device (Which is a lot, a fair percentage of my coursemates own one) is happy with it. And so to escape MS will have to back out of their deal entirely, go back to designing phones and PC OSes separately, and give…

I bought a Lumia 800 as my first smartphone and I'm not quite happy with it.

- It lost at least 60% of its value in less than a year (price for a new one dropped by that much)

- MS wants me to pay them if I want to build an app to use on my own phone

- And after I've paid them I can only put three apps that aren't published on there. If I publish them in the app store and would like to use them myself I have to buy my own apps. So basically just give them money.

- No significant software updates

All in all, it's a good dumb phone, but it's not a great smartphone.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#84

Post by harrytuttle »

Ives wrote: post #83
orf wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you have never used a Windows Phone. The Lumia's Nokia make are well designed and high quality, WP8 isn't that bad at all and will undoubtedly get better in the future. Everyone I've met with a WP device (Which is a lot, a fair percentage of my coursemates own one) is happy with it. And so to escape MS will have to back out of their deal entirely, go back to designing phones and PC OSes separately, and give…

I bought a Lumia 800 as my first smartphone and I'm not quite happy with it. - It lost at least 60% of its value in less than a year (price for a new one dropped by that much) - MS wants me to pay them if I want to build an app to use on my own phone - And after I've paid them I can only put three apps that aren't published on there. If I publish them in the app store and would like to use them myself I have to buy m…

Well you got screwed then. I just bought an 820 SIM free for £179 (Can buy three for the price of an iPhone 4S here). Buy a new car, lose WAAAY more than that in 6 months. Only Apple devices hold their value and I don't understand that as the market is saturated with them.

You don't have to pay them to build for your own device. Just register it as a development device and you can push your own stuff to it. I just did this with WP8 and it's fine.

Not published an app yet so can't comment.

No significant software updates (compared to Android that is). That's a good thing. The platform is pretty stable and consistent across all vendors. It's a shit trying to push an app to 5 different versions of Android.

The only PITA is to do WP8 apps, you have to use Windows 8 which I really don't like. It's bearable with Start8 though.

To be honest I've owned iPhones, Android handsets (Samsung, HTC) and the only thing I don't want to throw across the room due to stupid problems has been WP8.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#85

Post by harrytuttle »

joe_the_user wrote: post #64
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 badl…

And here we go with the shill comments...

If someone doesn't agree with you it doesn't mean they are a shill.

This isn't Slashdot!

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#86

Post by trailfox »

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…

> Seems like Elop stayed true to his nickname - of a trojan horse.

Wonder if it was intentional to run Nokia into the ground or just sheer incompetence?

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#88

Post by orf »

Ives wrote: post #83
orf wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you have never used a Windows Phone. The Lumia's Nokia make are well designed and high quality, WP8 isn't that bad at all and will undoubtedly get better in the future. Everyone I've met with a WP device (Which is a lot, a fair percentage of my coursemates own one) is happy with it. And so to escape MS will have to back out of their deal entirely, go back to designing phones and PC OSes separately, and give…

I bought a Lumia 800 as my first smartphone and I'm not quite happy with it. - It lost at least 60% of its value in less than a year (price for a new one dropped by that much) - MS wants me to pay them if I want to build an app to use on my own phone - And after I've paid them I can only put three apps that aren't published on there. If I publish them in the app store and would like to use them myself I have to buy m…

It costs like $19 to register an account on the WP dev centre (or free if you are a student), that's less than Apple and Google charge. For that you get Visual Studio and Blend all set up to develop with and can publish apps to the store.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#89

Post by rbanffy »

harrytuttle wrote: post #85
joe_the_user wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 badl…

And here we go with the shill comments... If someone doesn't agree with you it doesn't mean they are a shill. This isn't Slashdot!

> If someone doesn't agree with you it doesn't mean they are a shill.

Maybe, but sometimes this is the simplest explanation to a well-timed explosion of PR-like, blatantly untrue, astroturfish and "loltastic" statements.

Nokia is a failure in the smartphone business, only out-failed by Blackberry at the moment. Microsoft has been a has been in that sector since the arrival of the first iPhone. If anyone seriously believes two bricks float better than one, it's time to change the meds.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#90

Post by rbanffy »

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.

Man.. What have you been smoking?

> They're getting industry veterans with great design talent

Who consistently failed to exceed 3% of market share.

> They're acquiring proven channels to access global markets.

Very low-margin markets.

> Both Nokia and Microsoft have been floundering in the mobile space recently; neither have had any real explosive successes. Together they might make some really compelling offerings.

According to your logic, two bricks tied together float better than one.

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