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Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

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Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#31
post #29
post #13

Hard to understand. They buy the one company division in the world who was pushing the Windows Phone brand, a company who was innovating in terms of design and cameras and who had finally cracked their own decent brand and product line etc, and they immediately start winding them down. And they're going to work on their own hardware now anyway. At the same time they throw their own stable OS in the bin and release a…

What was the point of this whole exercise? Patents. Microsoft make more money from the Android than Google ...

But Nokia kept the patents, Microsoft only licensed them for a period of time...

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#32
I guess it is about time I stop making my hobby coding portable between WP and Android, focusing just on Android.

Sad, because WP is actually much better from tooling and architecture point of view, but the way the whole WP 7, WP 8, WP 8.1 and the yet to become stable WP 10, just drove everyone off.

Personally I was kind of pissed off, when the 512 MB devices were left out of the last preview update.

Also it was the only viable alternative to Android, on the countries where iOS devices are seen as too expensive, specially the ones where devices aren't subsidized.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#33
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. Nokia got $7.2 billion from Microsoft for a loss-making device business. Nokia still exists today and swallowed Alcatel-Lucent last year. It's hard to imagine a better outcome for Nokia than Microsoft buying the phone albatross in 2013. I honestly believe that it was part of a contingency plan that had made Nokia's board approve the Windows Phone plan -- that Ballmer basically promised a buyout in c…

Either way, how was the unit worth $7.2 billion in 2013 to anyone? Why did Microsoft pay such ridiculous money for a loss-making business, only to essentially burn it down over the next two years? From April 2014, when the deal was finalized, to May 2016, when the last employees are being laid off, the damage Microsoft incurred from this deal amount to about $1.8 million per HOUR of business. Did they really think th…

Maybe, as Pavlov suggested, this was part of the deal - that MS would have to pay at least $7.2bn for the phone business if Windows on Nokia didn't work out.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#34
post #26
post #13

Hard to understand. They buy the one company division in the world who was pushing the Windows Phone brand, a company who was innovating in terms of design and cameras and who had finally cracked their own decent brand and product line etc, and they immediately start winding them down. And they're going to work on their own hardware now anyway. At the same time they throw their own stable OS in the bin and release a…

> What was the point of this whole exercise? A convoluted way of getting Nokia's masses of IP rights for mobile? Why not just leave Nokia to keep pushing WP? Nokia only sold their mobile phone arm and licensed the IP. This doesn't seem like the cheapest way to get those licenses.

As far as I'm aware they were giving exclusive licensing rights to their IP to Microsoft in perpetuity. But yeah, it doesn't seem cheap...

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#35
post #32

I guess it is about time I stop making my hobby coding portable between WP and Android, focusing just on Android. Sad, because WP is actually much better from tooling and architecture point of view, but the way the whole WP 7, WP 8, WP 8.1 and the yet to become stable WP 10, just drove everyone off. Personally I was kind of pissed off, when the 512 MB devices were left out of the last preview update. Also it was the…

It wasn't just 512 MB RAM devices. That was just a poor excuse they used for a pragmatic push on "Nokia veterans" to buy the 950(XL), or at least 640.

And Myerson has the audacity to say "We always take care of our customers, Windows phones are no exception. [...] regardless of a person's phone choice, we want everyone to be able to experience what Microsoft has to offer them."

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#38
post #37

A lesson from Palm, Nokia, Motorola, and every other small-to-midsize company in the Telco arena: Never let yourselves be acquired. It won't end well.

I don't think this is telco-specific...

Firebase, WhatsApp and Instagram have been good.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#39
post #13

Hard to understand. They buy the one company division in the world who was pushing the Windows Phone brand, a company who was innovating in terms of design and cameras and who had finally cracked their own decent brand and product line etc, and they immediately start winding them down. And they're going to work on their own hardware now anyway. At the same time they throw their own stable OS in the bin and release a…

It's pretty easy to understand. Nokia was bought by the previous CEO.
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