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Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

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Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#61

Post by josh2600 »

pavlov wrote: post #27
dagw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on. Nokia was doing a fine job of lowering the value of their handset business on their own.

Yeah. It wasn't Elop who created one of the most dysfunctional software development units ever. He was brought in when the damage of previous bad management was just becoming fully apparent. Nokia in 2007-2010 was spending many times more than Apple on R&D. For that money, they got multiple infighting operating system teams each developing their own half-baked thing (Symbian, MeeGo, Qt, S40) and device teams that wer…

Two words: burning platform.

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/06/the-fin...

There was just no reason to write a memo like that. It destroyed their business, almost singlehandedly, and no, I'm not exaggerating. The consequences of that memo were insane: Nokia's handset sales died all over the world all at once.

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#62

Post by kgwgk »

tiernano wrote: post #2

That was quick... there there rumors just last week...

There were rumors already in December. And in September. And in May. Speculations about Nokia acquiring parts of Alcatel-Lucent or the whole of it have been recurrent since the sale of their cellphone business to MSFT in 2013.

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#63

Post by Aoyagi »

pavlov wrote: post #54
Aoyagi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@Sammi Did not compare in speed/pretty animations, collection of "apps", and marketing. What else? Would you like me to list how doesn't the latest iOS compare to latest Symbian?

Did not compare in speed/pretty animations, collection of "apps", and marketing. So you're saying it was slow, kind of ugly, had no apps and the brand was so tainted that nobody wanted it. Don't you think those are good reasons for abandoning Symbian?

No, I'm not saying that. It's "slow" in comparison with whatever iPhone was out back then, but hardly slow in general. The same as Android is "slow" compared to latest iOS and WP. That argument is silly, sorry. Not to mention the speed was in part due to the low-performance hardware they used. I don't care about "pretty", I care about "functional". It had majority of necessary features built in. It wasn't tainted and nobody wanted it (the 808) because there was virtually no marketing for it and because it was simply unavailable on some major markets. Almost as if they didn't want it to sell.

So no, I don't think those are good reasons for abandoning any OS. Not for power-users anyway. iPhone is better in media consumption, that's it and that's what majority is after. And bandwagons, obviously.

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#64

Post by specialp »

pavlov wrote: post #18

Essentially this means that Nokia won't get back into consumer hardware for a good while. The mapping division (Here) will probably be sold soon. The mobile networks business is now the primary driver at the company. They'll have their hands full trying to integrate the Alcatel-Lucent networks business with their existing assets. (Remember that Nokia's networks business today is already the result of a merger with Si…

They are better off not selling handsets anymore. Even Samsung and Apple will start to feel massive pressure on their margins sometime soon. Handset technology is leveling off and generic manufacturers are getting better at making them. It is much like what had happen to HDTVs recently. Sure there is "the ecosystem", but with Android the white box manufacturers get that for free too.

So yes Nokia squandered a huge lead in handset tech, but getting rid of the division has helped them a lot

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#65

Post by eitally »

This is interesting, and probably good. These are two companies that make sense to consolidate, especially as both eye developing markets in SE Asia & Africa, and especially those markets that are open to Chinese development monies+influence (mostly in Africa).

On the integration side of things, yes, it will probably be a little challenging from a business systems & personnel point of view if they really want to become a single-faced corporation, but on the manufacturing & engineering side I think it'll be pretty easy. I don't know if my company is the largest EMS partner for either one, but I do know that both Nokia (otherwise referred to as NSN, Nokia-Siemens Networks) and ALU are both top-10 customers of ours, and collectively responsible for a couple billion in revenue. I mention this not because of anything to do with my company, but because both are already setup for effective automated integration with their EMS partners, so whatever they do on their side (e.g. changes to EDI rules/structure, ECO processes, NPI processes, etc) will be pretty easy to trickle down and deal with on our side.

My hope is that Nokia become the business leader part of this acquisition, not Alcatel-Lucent. They are very challenging to work with sometimes.

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#66

Post by TorKlingberg »

pooogie wrote: post #40
pavlov wrote: post #18

Essentially this means that Nokia won't get back into consumer hardware for a good while. The mapping division (Here) will probably be sold soon. The mobile networks business is now the primary driver at the company. They'll have their hands full trying to integrate the Alcatel-Lucent networks business with their existing assets. (Remember that Nokia's networks business today is already the result of a merger with Si…

> Nokia is now a formidable competitor to Ericsson and Huawei, but it won't be on Samsung's or Apple's radar again. Ericsson maybe, but Huawei is a juggernaut that leaves them in the dust (massive growth both in terms of revenue and innovation, especially in emerging markets) .Alcatel-Lucent was really struggling throughout its existence.

Huawei is generally #2 in market share, no?

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#67

Post by TorKlingberg »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #60

Nokia recently auctioned off literal tons of engineering equipment. Looks like they closed a huge engineering facility in Oulu, Finland. A lot of it looked like obsolete stuff (like for a big product line sustaining-engineering group). I don't know enough about cellular to say whether or how much of the stuff was really useful for new product development; but some of the equipment looked very recent. The only thing t…

That looks like equipment from Nokia's handset division ramping down.

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#68

Post by digi_owl »

specialp wrote: post #64
pavlov wrote: post #18

Essentially this means that Nokia won't get back into consumer hardware for a good while. The mapping division (Here) will probably be sold soon. The mobile networks business is now the primary driver at the company. They'll have their hands full trying to integrate the Alcatel-Lucent networks business with their existing assets. (Remember that Nokia's networks business today is already the result of a merger with Si…

They are better off not selling handsets anymore. Even Samsung and Apple will start to feel massive pressure on their margins sometime soon. Handset technology is leveling off and generic manufacturers are getting better at making them. It is much like what had happen to HDTVs recently. Sure there is "the ecosystem", but with Android the white box manufacturers get that for free too. So yes Nokia squandered a huge le…

I dunno about Apple, Unless Huawei or similar manages to grab the media attention in the same way but at a quarter of the price.

Hell, Samsung basically had to go on a marketing blitz to get where they are right now.

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#69

Post by digi_owl »

mrweasel wrote: post #16
vnglst wrote: post #5

I don't really understand how this works. Microsoft bought Nokia for about $7B[1] and now Nokia pays more than twice that amount for Alcatel? Where is this money coming from and why is Alcatel worth so much more? [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-closes-nokia-acquis...

Nokias handsets was a failing business, or at least seen as such, building networks is a growing business. There are still large parts of the world that does not yet have a mobile phone network, or where networks are still being upgrade. The "new" Nokia is Nokia Networks ( http://networks.nokia.com/ ), so it's the company that supplies the ISPs with their infrastructure.

And as more people go mobile, more towers and backbone is needed to further subdivide the cells to maintain bandwidth.

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#70

Post by digi_owl »

pavlov wrote: post #27
dagw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on. Nokia was doing a fine job of lowering the value of their handset business on their own.

Yeah. It wasn't Elop who created one of the most dysfunctional software development units ever. He was brought in when the damage of previous bad management was just becoming fully apparent. Nokia in 2007-2010 was spending many times more than Apple on R&D. For that money, they got multiple infighting operating system teams each developing their own half-baked thing (Symbian, MeeGo, Qt, S40) and device teams that wer…

Qt was bought in part to attempt to bridge Maemo/Meego and Symbian. Problem, in part, was that previous Maemo versions, as well as Intels Moblin project, used GTK. With Maemo5 you had a massive culture clash, that pretty much ripped the community down the middle.

Then the CEO was ousted, Elop brought in, and shit really hit the fan.

Then again, maybe Maemo should have just died at that point, rather than be resurrected as Mer/Sailfish. The whole thing produced ripples that seems set to yank the larger Linux community apart.

While Maemo was Debian in a mobile device, Mer/Sailfish at this point is as close to that as Android is.

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