Microsoft buys Nokia's mobile business Microsoft has announced it is buying Nokia's mobile devices and services business. Revealed in a flurry of press releases in the small hours of Tuesday, the deal will see Microsoft “pay EUR 3.79 billion to purchase substantially all of Nokia’s Devices & Services business, and EUR 1.65 billion to license Nokia’s patents, for a …
Anyone who, unlike Elop, has actually clue about enterprise technologies, MSFT's core business.
Elop is largely a consumer-oriented beancounter, with little to show on his resume (sans sinking Nokia's value by half in less than a couple of day period by opening his dumb mouth a year early, wasting at least 2 years of revenues.)
Actually, Elop has quite an impressive resume - Pre Nokia jobs:
Elop was a director of consulting for Lotus Development Corporation - Went from #1 to aquistion by IBM.
CIO for Boston Chicken in 1992, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1998.
In the same year, he joined Macromedia where he held several senior positions, including CEO from January 2005 for three months before their acquisition by Adobe Systems.
Then president of worldwide field operations at Adobe, tendering his resignation in June 2006 and leaving in December.
After that he was the COO of Juniper Networks for exactly one year from January 2007-2008.
From January 2008 to September 2010, Elop worked for Microsoft as the head of the Business Division, responsible for the Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics line of products, and as a member of the company's senior leadership team. It was during this time that Microsoft's Business Division released Office 2010, with ribbons being implemented throughout Microsoft Office.
So, every company where he's worked longer than a year has either ended up bankrupt or swallowed by another company, with the exception of Microsoft, where he oversaw the end to end implementation of the Ribbon into Office.
Now that he's back at Microsoft, the question is, will he be there longer than a year this time, and if so, just how badly Microsoft will fare this time.
...as more and more companies (Lenovo, LG, Sony etc) will see it as the first shot of the Big Mobile Market Consolidation War of 2013-2014...
...I can totally see a Lenovo-led takeover attempt of RIM, backed up by plenty of Thinkpad-like security insurances & safety switched (FWIW I would love to see a Sony one but I see little chance for that.)
No hardware manufacturer will buy RIM for the hardware when they're already making their own (and in most cases better). What everyone wants from RIM is the patent portfolio and to some extent software.
On this basis, while the odds have gone down, Microsoft are still probably in the running. I'd agree Lenovo are favourites though - it sounds like they lost Nokia, but are probably still in the market.
But it doesn't make up for MS just sitting on win phone 8. So how is hardware being in-house going to change that? It is the OS team that need 5b worth of electric cattle prodding sticks poked at them.
I just wonder where Nokia would be if they had released that latest phone with an Android model alongside the wp8 one.
Probably still a long way down from where they'd be had they continued to polish Symbian and develop Meego to migrate to (smoothly).
I'm not going to say I already own my last Nokia phone, because I might buy a spare N8 (or E7) or even get an N808. (This should help the affordability).
"Given that most stock exchanges have rules against insider dealling, and given that Elop still owned a massive slug of M$, what are the chances this deal will get investigated? maybe blocked?"
Well that kind of depends on whether Elop used his inside knowledge of the impending deal to trade in shares of either company to his advantage - you know - the actual definition of insider trading?
I mean, seriously, if you are going to accuse somebody of something at least take to trouble to go and find out what it is you are accusing them of!
Insider trading is NOT when one company buys another and some of the people involved in making the deal happen own shares in both entities, insider trading is buying or selling shares based on inside knowledge not available in the public domain.
"So, it must've come as a complete shock - SHOCK, I TELL YOU! that Flop didn't know what the chair-tossing gorilla was up to?"
OH MY GOD!
Of COURSE Elop knew what was going on you bloody idiot he's the fucking CEO of Nokia - however it's only insider trading if he's bought or sold shares based on that knowledge. US and Finnish authorities will check for suspicious trading activity as a matter of course with a deal this size; but the OP claiming that it's insider trading because Elop owns shares in MS is showing about as much understanding of insider trading as you're showing ability in reading comprehension.
"So it would only be insider trading if he HAD bought shares in the company he was sent to destroy"
It would only be insider trading if he'd made trades (buy or sell) in either company's (MS or Nokia) shares based on his insider (not available in the public domain) knowledge.
It's obviously not insider trading.
However it does come over as sending in your own person to destroy the value of a company so you can buy it cheap.
Presumably in Finland, either this is a legitimate business practice, or the authorities will be taking a good look at the situation.
This does not show commitment. It shows desperation.
If I jump out of a burning plane with a parachute, it is through desperation to stay alive, not through a new-found commitment to parachutes.
People forget that is not Microsoft's first ownership of a phone biz. In Feb 2008 they bought Danger for $500M. That gave MS the Kin phone which they strangled a few minutes after birth. Kin does however live on in the new MS fascination with tile UIs.
Buying up Nokia is no more a commitment tpo making phones than buying Danger was. If Nokia phones go tits-up that still leaves MS with a healthy bunch of patents to roll into their real only real and profitable mobile cash cow: extortion of licensing fees from Android
"There, fixed it for you. They're just waiting for the price to come down a bit more"
Stupid comment and an attempt to shift ground. MS haven't bought the patents - a very important difference that you cannot recover from by attempting to convince that they're just waiting for the price to come down. Why would Nokia sell them for less or only to MS. If you think MS are holding out for a reduced price then they've a funny way of doing that by giving Nokia a billion or so for use of them right now and several billion overall.
Here's a car analogy - you have a car that I want. I'd like to induce you to sell it. I attempt to convince you to offload it by (a) giving you lots of money so you have less need to sell it and (b) paying you lots and lots of money to be allowed to use it even though you still own it.
Stupid argument made because the initial post was an error and you're trying to disguise that.
I'm sure that in there is that in the event that the counterparty (Nokia) fails, Microsoft gets the IP outright. Just in case. Industry standard terms and all that. They did that with Sendo. Shocker: Sendo failed, and they got the IP. So how is Microsoft going to kill Nokia and get the patents by default?
This part is easy: Microsoft secretly owns Nokia. Nokia's chairman would have never hired Elop at all - he wanted an internal Finn, but he was told by the US shareholders he would be fired and his pick replaced if he did not comply. These controlling investors padded his pocket for a little while longer. In this game even the once-mighty $100B Nokia is a little fish.
After the deal is closed the remaining NSN Nokia will just find that their opportunities are closed. Forever. For no reason whatsoever. And they will fail and the patents will revert to Microsoft in the bankruptcy. And that unforseeable outcome will just be a complete coincidence. The owners who signed the devil's deal will of course long since divested, and maybe recoup with some short options.
Let us see if Microsoft can make anything in the mobile space. So far it has unimpressed. I was a loyal follower of Nokia phones (They just worked, really really well) until 2 years ago. But I jumped and will probably not go back. I'm expecting tight integration now between a Microsoft phone and a Microsoft desktop, which, given Microsoft Windows 8, would seem to spell doom. Sad really. I was always impressed by Nokia hardware, software, not so much, less now too :-)
El Reg, as generous as they are, don't give enough space in these comments to convey the fullness of the beauty of this evolution. To appreciate it requires a tranquil heart, full awareness of what has gone before, the ability to translate that past and these actions as inevitably into a conclusion as the night follows the day.
I'll not post more spoilers here. If you know me I've ruined the show already.
from the joint company statement .. “This element provides Microsoft with the opportunity to extend its service offerings to a far wider group around the world while allowing Nokia's mobile phones to serve as an on-ramp to Windows Phone,”
More likely Windows Phone will be Nokia's off-ramp from the mobile phone business
I mean, back then every sane person said that Elop would be the end of Nokia.
It won't do much for Microsoft's success, in fact having their own phones means that other manufacturers are less likely to also choose Windows Phone. Plus since Microsoft will be looking of a way to get rid of feature phones eating into the Windows Phone market, they will try to get rid of that, too.
The only thing which might be useful for Microsoft in the short run are Nokia's patents.
I would not call it stupid. In the crisis, Nokia had two options:
(1) Try building better (-selling) phones. That is risky, who knows if the company still has what it takes to beat the market.
(2) Sell the valuable brand name and IP.
Option (2) is much less risky, especially if a large corporate sponsor already shows that he is willing to pay good money for the brand and IP. The deciding shareholders clearly chose the less risky path and decided that the value is in the brand and IP, not in some innate ability of the company to create and sell great products. I expect that MS will squeeze the last drop of value out of the brand name and IP portfolio, it won't look nice but it's SOP.
well, option (1) building a better phone had been in development for more than 5 years. Nokia engineering had developed shedloads of drivers and IP against texus instruments OMAP chipsets, they owned QT, they had a theme that scaled desktop apps down to a small screen size very well. It was linux kernel based and it did already exist. All they had to do was stop elop from only allowing them to sell it to the wrong markets, then calling it a failure and tossing all that R&D in the bin. The N900 before it was well received http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900 though possibly a little late but they were on the right track could have sold android along side it as another option, and had a certain amount of compatibility and shared development investment between both OS as they used a linux kernel.
So much quality work wasted to either devalue the company for microsoft and to sell win phone OS when nobody else would. This whole thing would have been like watching a train crash for the nokia engineers who understood what it could have been.
By the time it came outthe N900 was steamrollered by the iHype inspired "Touch only" units and a technology not really useabel on a tablet pc (resistive has wear and tear problems, does not allow stuff like "Gorilla" glas).
Only the last 2-3 years have seen a limited revival (Note-series) of pen based phones. And those use the far superior inductive technology that allows a sturdy glass cover with little to no wear.
Add limited software and a choice of language that was a lot less common the the pseudo-Java in the Androids as well as a more limited tool chain compared to the Eclipse plugins for Android.
Surprising that MS paid so much. If they had waited it would have been cheaper.
Not the end of Nokia, but only of the phones. MS will mess this up as well as the last phone maker they bought.
Or ...
Maybe not if Elop is the next MS CEO now that Balmar has resigned.
Or maybe that would kill MS.
I suspect there was a hidden Dutch auction going on. (Or at least in effect).
They didn't want to let someone else get the benefits of their failure make Windows on Nokia a success. (And scrap NoWin while they are at it.)
For Microsoft the whole deal wasn't NoWin, it was Win-WIn.
Possible outcomes:
1. Nokia make a success of the Window Mobile - obviously they'd be happy with that one.
2. Nokia lose most of their Symbian Market to Android, but pick up a little at the expense of the other WinPho manufacturers. A huge win for Microsoft, they get android royalties, where previously they would have none, and their friends at the NSA would be happy that a couple of operating systems not made by a company bound by the patriot act are no more.
3. They get Nokia's phone business cheap.
I can't see any bad outcome for Microsoft, unless they made a mistake with the legality of the situation.
So they moved from one (two) Burning Platforms to another (WinPho8) which has torched the company value and led them to this.
The investors that have stuck by Nokia will no doubt be big funds that will be waiting to cash in their chips for a profit. Now they'll be looking to cut their losses and take whatever Redmond offers - OR they'll reject it, kick Elop out and turn the ship in a different direction.
Maybe Carl Icahn could step in and help rescue Nokia??????
I give them two years tops, and they'll all need a "Jolla".
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