Nokia acquired by Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#501

Post by rayiner » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 7:11 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #444

rayiner wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenovo doesn't make any money. $500m on $30bn revenue. No point in being in that game. For the downvoters: Nokia is losing money right now, but managed to post a profit for Q4 2012, which at $585m was more than Lenovo made in all of 2012, and about 5-6 times more than ZTE made in 2012. Beyond a certain point, market share is much less important than profits, much more so in the phone space because it's not like the d…

Amazon doesn't make any money. on $15Bn revenue. No point in being in that game. Earnings aren't the sole determinant of whether a company is a worthwhile ongoing venture...

The difference is that Amazon is in a market with enormous barriers to entry, and as an Android vendor Nokia would be in a market that a dozen Chinese and Korean companies are already competing in. Amazon will make tons of money, even if at relatively low margins, when it grows to Wal-Mart size. Nokia can't even hope to become the Wal-Mart of cell phones.

Being an Android vendor is like being a PC vendor. Acer, Lenovo, etc, not only do they not make any money, but they have no hope of dominating the market and winning on volume the way Wal-Mart does and Amazon hopes to do. It puts food on the table, I guess, but if I were a Nokia shareholder I'd rather they just liquidate and return their capital than take that course of action.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#502

Post by chollida1 » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 7:12 PM UTC

X4 wrote: post #425

sker wrote: post #21

That kills my hopes for a Nokia Android phone. Also, Elop seems like the least interesting character to succeed Ballmer. What does he bring to the table? What has he done? Guy looks like a careerist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#Career

Oouh.. that reads like he managed to get every company he worked for to fade away, go bancrupt or loose competitive strength in a very short time. This. Or he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, very often. * DEAD: Lotus Development Corporation * DEAD: Boston Chicken * SOLD: Macromedia's * ALIVE: Juniper Networks * DECLINING: Microsoft Dynamics I don't know this guy, but if that's the best they can get..

> DECLINING: Microsoft Dynamics

Ummm, Microsoft dynamics has grown revenue every year for the past 4 years. But hey don't let the facts get int eh way of your rage:)

http://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earn...

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#503

Post by MichaelGG » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 7:14 PM UTC

frank_boyd wrote: post #252

Ecio78 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what are you using as your main phone? The not-yet-existing Ubuntu one, one of the two just-released-still-very-beta-and-low-spec FFOS devices, a closed source Blackberry/feature/dumb phone, or one of the three big names (MS/Apple/Google) you're criticizing?

Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Everything you need already works just fine (and perfection will be there very soon). If you need to know precisely about the current status: - The most official phones: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArLs7UPtu-hJdDZ... - The entire list (including the "unofficial" ones): https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices

And pray tell, which carrier are you using that refuses lawful intercept warrants?

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#504

Post by MichaelGG » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 7:20 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #309

mbreese wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Elop was brought in, the board was clearly signaling that a turnaround from within was not going to happen. The Microsoft smartphone strategy was already in place and was going to happen. I have a lot of respect for Nokia, but they had the technology for the iPhone and iPad long before Apple (roughly), and they were never able to capitalize on it. Hell, I had an N770 in 2006 and it was great. But it wasn't even…

Wouldn't it be absolutely embarrassing if Firefox OS ends up capturing 5-10% of the market? And personally I think it will, just like I knew Nokia is dead after announcing their new Windows Phone strategy. Nokia is a textbook example of things not to do. All the talk about them not being able to deliver the iOS polish / experience is simply not true. That's not what killed them. What killed them is that they focused…

>embarrassing if Firefox OS ends up capturing 5-10% of the market

Considering they only have 20% of the browser share, it'd be an amazing success story if they managed to get 10% of the mobile OS market.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#505

Post by vmarsy » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 7:23 PM UTC

All the other comments are too focused on the front-end Nokia Lumia vs iPhone vs Android.

Microsoft buying Nokia is kind of the same as Google buying Motorola for 12 billion $ :

Nokia has 10k patents in the mobile phone world.

So a 10-year license to its patents has its importance

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#506

Post by MichaelGG » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 7:24 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #169

sremani wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What ever I have seen in the media was bring in bunch of known names of execs in tech space and start speculation. They do not have any official hints or reliable sources guiding them. How about Mr.X. The whole argument can be discredited from the fact Ms.Sandberg is being discussed along with Mark Zukerberg, can we be reasonable people here. You might as well pick your local butcher to spice up the discussions.

I am being reasonable. I'm saying Elop will be the next CEO.

Are you a Bayesian? If so, what's your actual probability estimate? I think people are objecting to "will be" which indicates 100% certainty, and 100% certainty is not a rational position for anything, much less predicting a company's future CEO.

To put it in context, even if this is exactly MS's plan, you're stating that within the next 12 months, there's a 0% probability he'll have any sort of accident. Wikipedia says he's an avid recreational pilot. No one in their right mind would provide a 100% estimate on anything, much less Elop being MS CEO.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#507

Post by MichaelGG » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 7:29 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #73

feniv wrote: 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.

10 years? I wish. Microsoft has relied on idiotic low-margin "partners" like Dell and HP to execute its ideas. Like tablets. I had a Toshiba tablet 10 years ago. Browsing was great, the rest of Windows, not so much. And the hardware wasn't neat. If MS had shipped a tablet 10+ years ago and actually cared about the end-to-end experience instead of just selling Windows licenses, we'd be in a different world.

Or like music players (instead they let Creative license the OS/audio+video software). Or like Media Center: great software, but PITA to setup, no simple OOBE like Apple TV, now it's been EOL'd.

Microsoft had over 80% of the smartphone market before. They are well aware of the Android OEM strategy. But I don't think anyone really LOVED their Windows CE mobile devices, so they know they needed to do better this time around. Just like most of the Android phones are crap and Google is now trying to clean that up.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#508

Post by slurry » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 7:32 PM UTC

Moto7451 wrote: post #156

blinkingled wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With every passing day Windows is becoming more and more irrelevant - iPads, Chromebooks, non-Windows SmartPhones/Tablets etc. are really the future of consumer computing. So it isn't as far fetched as it was few years ago that OEMs will successfully back Ubuntu/Fedora/Android/ChromeOS and give consumers a laptop that can do everything Windows does for them today. The only holdouts would be power users that rely on W…

This is true but it's not going to happen that quickly. Traditional computers are still where "serious" work like homework is done. In my experience anyone who does more than spend time looking up recipes and checking out Facebook considers their phone to be too limited for "real" work. Some people might be happy with a bluetooth keyboard and a tablet but clearly the billions of dollars in sales of traditional PC har…

I'm old enough to remember a time when minicomputers and mainframes were where 'serious' computing was done. Microcomputer platforms like Windows and Linux gradually cannibalized their way up until practically nothing was left. It seemed impossible and stupid at the time but it happened.

I'm not predicting that mobile platforms will make the same inadvisable climb, but I'd be a little surprised if they didn't.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#509

Post by MichaelGG » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 7:35 PM UTC

the_economist wrote: post #99

netforay wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is $7.17 http://allthingsd.com/20130902/microsoft-to-buy-nokias-devic... But still less than $8.5 paid for Skype. (Which I think is total waste of money)

Skype accounted for an ungodly 167 billion international call minutes in 2012. It is perhaps not fair to belittle them.

No, but it still makes me sick, because Microsoft had Skype capabilities a decade before Skype. NetMeeting, then MSN Messenger supported audio/video. Messenger even had telephone integration to call out, but poorly done (some shitty partnership that made you buy an account with MCI). They had SMS integration to a better extend that Skype does today.

But MS's MSN/Live division was so terribly run, they missed out on turning MSN into a social network (FFS, they had everyone with their friend relationships already via Messenger!), and the Messenger software didn't promote audio/voice very well, nor did the session establishment stuff work well. They sat around for over a decade and let other people overtake them for no reason other than having terrible management. (Wave 11(?) had an installer that literally took over 30 minutes, as management wanted to search your entire disk for stuff.)

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#510

Post by araes » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 7:41 PM UTC

yulaow wrote: post #498

gtirloni wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Phone is in second place in Latin America now. I wouldn't say "no customers" so quick.

Again, it is not important if is 30-40-50-whatever% in a single country, worldwide it is still about 3%

That seems rather shortsighted. Its not immediately important, but if Microsoft can establish and dominate in the Latin American market, then when that market begins to bring all of their citizens into the smartphone era (they're moving rapidly this way), Microsoft will be well positioned.

In fact, were they clever, MS would position themselves well in all of the non-1st-world markets (Indian sub-continent, Central America, South America, Africa, Asia). Its like playing Risk, they've got America, Europe, and Australia, but you can still hold on with the others.