Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nokia acquired by Microsoft

blogs.technet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 573 posts

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#561

Post by makomk »

WildUtah wrote: post #476
shubb wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money from work and sales outside the US should be repatriated and invested domestically, just because the company is notionally based in the US? Sounds a tad imperialistic? I think getting companies pay tax in the US for sales in the US would be less internationally antisocial...

Remember that no other developed country besides the USA requires that local companies pay local tax again on foreign profits already taxed where they are earned. Most nations recognize that that would make investing locally costly and undesirable. It would also put local companies at a competitive disadvantage worldwide. The politics of government greed in the USA has created a tax system where the USA government ch…

From what I recall, they wouldn't have to pay tax twice, they'd have to pay the difference between the US and Irish taxation rates. Other countries don't do this, but other countries also have huge tax evasion problems as a result.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#562

Post by ZeroGravitas »

tellarin wrote: post #559
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely every report I see of this (also in e.g. Vietnam) stresses that it's due to the strength of the Nokia brand in these regions. A brand that Microsoft apparently didn't buy the rights to for use on smartphones.

MS did "buy" the brand for this use; for two years.

Are you sure? I've read that old-Nokia is banned for two years from releasing phones with that brand but Microsoft-Nokia will not release any more smartphones with the Nokia name.

e.g. http://allthingsd.com/20130903/microsoft-deal-could-mean-end...

"But when it comes to smartphones, Microsoft only has the right to use the Nokia name on Windows Phones that are in the market when the deal closes"

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#563

Post by simba-hiiipower »

pasiaj wrote: post #511
simba-hiiipower wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, in one of their releases they specifically mention the transaction will be completed using offshore funds. and while i'd generally like to see some movement on policy to encourage large us-based multinationals to bring-home more of their offshore earnings (for reinvestment domestically), the current environment does play-out nicely for foreign m&a - which is at-least (in my opinion) a better use of funds than d…

M&As are generally value destroying activities. Why do you think dividends and buybacks are inferior?

note that this is just my personal opinion (and is in contrast to what seems to be the consensus), but i tend to believe that firms are more efficient in investing excess capital, to drive long-term growth, than shareholders, who have largely become about maximizing short-term profitability (and often at the expense of long-term growth).

and while i'd agree that firms often overpay in the hope of realizing ‘synergies’ that rarely exist, an acquisition is at least an investment in something tangible (ip, product lines, people, ...), which at least has the potential to generate value.. and while it may fail to do so (or do so sufficiently as to offset the costs involved), i view it as a better use of funds than direct returns to shareholders in the hopes (from a macro view) that they are able to efficiently reinvest in value-generating activities.

edit: just want to add that i realize that if one views a firm’s primary function as to maximize returns to shareholders (as many do, a fair view), then m&a, with its high probability of not paying-off, would be considered less favourable than a direct transfer like a dividend. i however tend to view a firm’s function more along the lines of ensuring its long-term survival and growth (which, in-turn, and ideally, should generate significant returns to shareholders, and drive innovation).

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#564

Post by mkr-hn »

mortehu wrote: post #553
mkr-hn wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's position depends on no one undercutting them with a phone that has equal or greater polish and a lower price point.

It still baffles me that it's so hard for anyone other than Apple to make a single well-polished device, all the way through. If someone gets the casing right, they'll still mess up UI transitions that are meant to be seamless, create laggy or inaccurate touch input, fail to run at 60 or 30 fps, or make hilariously ill-informed UI decisions in the most frequently used apps (clock, settings, camera, ...). What's the e…

I think this is what Microsoft is trying to do by buying Nokia. It does fit with the Surface, which seems to have spurred OEMs to do a little better. It's hard for Microsoft to go to an OEM and critique the way they implement Windows without a functional example.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#566

Post by regularfry »

mirsadm wrote: post #537
wvenable wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia didn't have the software, that was the problem. Symbian was as dead-end of a technology as classic Mac OS was. After the iPhone was released, Nokia scrambled around with a number of different alternative operating systems because they knew they didn't have the software. Unfortunately, they didn't commit to the future. By the time Elop came in and committed to Windows Phone, it was already far too late.

They didn't have the software or the hardware figured out. Before the iPhone came out, Nokia has 40+ phone models that were barely different. It was like they took every permutation of hardware options and created a new device. It was so refreshing when Apple came out with 1 device and it was better than all of Nokia's combined.

That's exactly it. They clearly had the capability (well... the software side's arguable, but at least they shipped), just no coherent direction. They were floundering about, wasting the clear lead they had, for a good 8 or 9 years.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#567

Post by sharpneli »

vmarsy wrote: post #505

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

That pretty much means that the biggest owner of patents for mobiles does not manufacture them anymore. Thus the mutually assured destruction does not hinder them anymore.

I'm not surprised if we'll see a bunch of patent lawsuits against everyone else except Microsoft within an year.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#568

Post by JVIDEL »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #529
JVIDEL wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, smartphones were relatively rare before 2005 or so, but even before the iphone there were a lot of people with symbian, BBs and treos, and now dumbphones are mostly of the disposable kind.

>>>> Exactly, smartphones were relatively rare before 2005 Actually DoComo pretty much made the smartphone what it is today. Japan was selling "smartphones" way back in 2001. It was the incredible revenues they generated that got the attention of US carriers. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1835821.stm

That's one country, out of the entire world.

Smartphones were less rare in Europe before 2005, but still there.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#569

Post by wslh »

makomk wrote: post #560
wslh wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new Nokia mobile can be great but business is business and if they can't build an ecosystem it does not matter if your mobile has billion of megapixels. I love that Blackberries are using QNX but this is not enough. My other concern is if Microsoft is being negligent instead of if they are right or wrong. For example, I think Skype acquisition was negligent in a moment where this kind of technology was moving to…

Not really. WebRTC makes the technical part of voice and video messaging easier, but it doesn't solve the problem of getting enough people on your service to make it worth joining. WebRTC makes sense if you have a web service that the majority of people already have accounts on, have open in their browser whenever they're online, and already know their friends' usernames on - something like for example GMail. Which i…

That's why I said technical part and not the business part.

But I can also argue about the business side. If you think how fast companies such as Facebook, Tumblr, etc achieved traction you can think that Skype risks are big.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#570

Post by akg »

mortehu wrote: post #553
mkr-hn wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's position depends on no one undercutting them with a phone that has equal or greater polish and a lower price point.

It still baffles me that it's so hard for anyone other than Apple to make a single well-polished device, all the way through. If someone gets the casing right, they'll still mess up UI transitions that are meant to be seamless, create laggy or inaccurate touch input, fail to run at 60 or 30 fps, or make hilariously ill-informed UI decisions in the most frequently used apps (clock, settings, camera, ...). What's the e…

I think culture is a big part of it and promoting the right people. Most companies when it becomes the size of apple are riddled with politics and the people on the top get there not because they create/design great products but know how to play the "game".

One thing that strikes me about apple is their culture of secrecy. There are departments within the same company that are not allowed to talk to one another. When you have no idea what other people are doing, it's very hard to play politics and the only thing you can do is just do great work.

Post reply on HN