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Microsoft to acquire Nokia

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Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#91

Post by rbanffy »

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…

> This must have been in the works for months

This thing started before Elop left Microsoft. They have perfected executive outplacement as an offensive weapon.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#92

Post by Ives »

orf wrote: post #88
Ives wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, it used to be much more than that. It is $19 a year though.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#93

Post by harrytuttle »

rbanffy wrote: post #89
harrytuttle wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bel…

Perhaps people are motivated by the news and wish to defend their knowledge investments?

It's not a failure, nor is it a success. Yet.

People were saying this a decade ago about the Xbox remember.

Microsoft only decided to compete just over two years ago and they're entering a very competitive market. It takes time to get traction on these things and they're doing it, just slowly. The potential to grow exponentially is still there.

As for the declaration of failure, are you really qualified to judge what a failure is or are you spouting the echoes of all the tech news journalists who like getting hits from slating Microsoft (which will never become unfashionable)?

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#94

Post by cbr »

orf wrote: post #88
Ives wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

    less than Apple and Google charge
What your parent wants to do, "build an app to use on my own phone", is free on Android.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#95

Post by Jare »

rbanffy wrote: post #90
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…

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

A sail doesn't float and a hull doesn't move, but together they can make great boats

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#96

Post by abrowne »

apike wrote: post #48
test001only wrote: post #43

What would this mean for all the Nokia feature phones ? The latest Asha series was very good and selling pretty well at least in India. How would this figure in MS strategy? Are they going to ditch it? That would be sad, because Nokia still makes phones that can withstand rough use. On the other side would Nokia start manufacturing Laptop in future. I would really like Nokia design team to come up with a good Windows…

One of Microsoft's documents about the acquisition calls out that it is getting the Asha brand and a 10-year license to the Nokia brand for feature phones, so I expect that line will stay for now.

I wonder if the Asha design will go from Meego-like with Nokia squircles to a Metro-like square theme? I personally love my Asha 501, but wouldn't want a WP8-light version.

Also, will they "upgrade" Nokia Xpress's (proxy browser) backend to use the IE engine in place of Gecko?

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#97

Post by brokenparser »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #55
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?

13 years ago was the dot-com bubble. What about Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Intel, Oracle?

IBM doesn't count because that company is almost as old as the invention of the computer itself.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#98

Post by tomflack »

orf wrote: post #78
camus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not that bad" doesnt mean it's good when compared with the competition , "not that bad" is not enough today. A mobile OS must be excellent , not good , to compete. That's the problem of WP Os, it is just "not that bad"

I think WP8 is excellent, I meant that it is not as bad as he seems to think it is. Its also not all doom and gloom for WP, my employee (a large multinational company, thousands of employees) is switching all its employee phones from Blackberry to WP8. Even if its consumer market isn't that big you have to remember that a lot of the business world runs on Microsoft's software and it all ties together very nicely with…

The only way that Windows Phone ties to Microsoft's enterprise offerings better than iPhone is the name. Literally everything else can be done on iOS, often better.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#99

Post by pasiaj »

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…

There is a running joke about the irony of the board chairman Siilasmaa of F-Secure letting in a Trojan Horse.

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risto_Siilasmaa

Re: Microsoft to acquire Nokia

#100

Post by brokenparser »

spullara wrote: post #13
IanChiles wrote: post #5

And now Microsoft has a hardware division. I can easily see most hardware vendors being ousted by the trio of Google/MS/Apple - all of whom now either make or have been making their own hardware to go along with their software. And so the walled garden grows...

They already have several hardware products including Xbox, Kinnect, keyboards, mice, and the Surface.

Right, don't mention ze Zune.
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