Why Do I (still) Think Nokia Will Be Sold (soon)? - This article explains it

Some of my long-term readers and Twitter followers know and understand the reason, but most probably don't know why I am 'so convinced' that Nokia will be sold (soon). I could write a typical Tomi-blog of 20,000 words to elaborate, but I don't need to. This article by Seeking Alpha explains it PERFECTLY. 

For those who might post comments - please remember (or new visitors, be aware) - I won't let this blog become a Wall Street stock market 'analysis' and arguments blog. So you may definitely discuss the 'valuation' of Nokia's parts, and for this blog entry, I'll allow Nokia historical views of its share price, but no speculation or debate about might Nokia share price go up or down in the near future. But yes, please go read the Seeking Alpha article, its short and sweet, explains EXACTLY why I still am convinced, Nokia will be sold (and soon). 

Comments

[Winter]

@RottenApple
What is most fascinating about the various exploits of MS is they way they show that "The best X money can buy" is always of such low quality.

Whenever MS throw money into a pet project, Bing and WP are good examples, they come up with violently mediocre products.

[foo]

Nokia just announced a new line of Lumia smartphones with great cameras.

It seems another great piece of hardware, as Nokia always did. It would be perfect, except for the software.

Now... just imagine what would have happened if Elop adopted Android instead of Windows Phone: they would have great software AND hardware.

I guess they would have more than 3% of market share by now.

[previously Nokia devoted & loyal user]

Hello Tomi & all! I think you ought to see this article about Microsoft strategy, especially if you are involved in or around Nokia business. The implications are more then important, even globally.
"(...) Microsoft’s Pivot — A Plan to Dominate “Devices and Services”

We are cur­rently wit­ness­ing a major pivot in Microsoft’s core busi­ness model. It is start­ing to become clear that — as Steve Ballmer recently announced — Microsoft is deadly seri­ous about becom­ing a global leader in con­sumer “Devices and Ser­vices.” Suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of this strat­egy will require the com­pany to con­trol every­thing from man­u­fac­tur­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion logis­tics through to retail.

The com­pany appears to be focused on exe­cut­ing a ‘Leader’ strat­egy in the devices busi­ness which would give them even greater con­trol than Apple famously does over the end user expe­ri­ence. In addi­tion the com­pany is likely to repur­pose its online ser­vice invest­ments to add value to this new device-led strat­egy. A-la Apple, con­sumers will have no choice but to use Microsoft own ser­vices when using a Microsoft mobile device and com­pe­ti­tion author­i­ties will be pow­er­less to pre­vent it.

If cor­rect, this pivot will has pro­found impli­ca­tions for the struc­ture of the com­pany, share­holder value and for the entire mobile tech­nol­ogy industry.
In the beginning…

I was reminded recently by a cou­ple of for­mer Microsoft col­leagues about a pre­sen­ta­tion Steve Ballmer gave to the sales force sev­eral years ago. It was Steve’s keynote at the annual sales meet­ing and it was one of the more emo­tional pre­sen­ta­tions by Steve that I or any of the other atten­dees had wit­nessed. The theme of Steve’s pre­sen­ta­tion was Muham­mad Ali’s leg­endary ‘Rum­ble in the Jun­gle’ with George Fore­man. In his pre­sen­ta­tion Steve — a huge sports fan — analo­gized Microsoft to Ali — an under­dog in the fight of its life against younger, fit­ter and more agile com­pe­ti­tion. Ali of course won the fight sup­ported by 60,000 fans chant­ing “Ali, bomaye! Ali, bomaye!”, “Ali Kill Him.” You can pic­ture Steve ener­get­i­cally bound­ing around the stage scream­ing “Microsoft Bomaye!” get­ting 15,00 Microsoft sales staff wound up into an enthu­si­as­tic frenzy.

On face value this revving up of the sales team was vin­tage Ballmer, ever the mas­ter sales­man him­self, get­ting the troops pumped up to go do bat­tle with the enemy. But recent con­ver­sa­tion have caused me to sus­pect that there was a much more impor­tant hid­den mes­sage. Ali did not enter the ring in Zaire to fight Fore­man with­out a plan. Far from it. In fact Ali was very clear before the fight that his strat­egy would be to absorb all of Foreman’s pun­ish­ment in the early rounds, tire him out and then land a killer knock­out blow. That’s exactly what he did.

I now sus­pect that Steve came to that annual sales meet­ing with a long-term strate­gic plan already devel­oped. Steve was pumped up because he real­ized that Microsoft would need to live through a pun­ish­ing period where every­one would write-off the com­pany, com­peti­tors would land pun­ish­ing blows and even­tu­ally — when the time was right — Microsoft would — like Ali — deliver a knock­out blow.

After years of pun­ish­ment by the likes of Google and Apple we may now be approach­ing the point where — at least in Steve’s view — Microsoft is about to land a killer punch.
Out of Advertising

At another annual sales meet­ing a few years after “Microsoft Boomaye!” my team met with Steve to dis­cuss a num­ber of tech­nol­ogy pol­icy chal­lenges we were fac­ing. We felt there was an oppor­tu­nity for Microsoft to take the high-ground on per­sonal data pri­vacy issues as a com­pet­i­tive posi­tion against Google. Steve agreed that this was clearly an oppor­tu­nity but while sym­pa­thetic to tak­ing that posi­tion he was not yet ready to sup­port it. He felt that putting a stake in the ground at this stage would be pre­ma­ture. Once the com­pany com­mit­ted to a pol­icy posi­tion it needed to stick with that position. Steve felt that putting a stake in the ground on con­sumer pri­vacy before the online adver­tis­ing mar­ket had matured might unnec­es­sar­ily limit the company’s future options.

Three recent announce­ments clearly indi­cate that Microsoft is now ready to put that stake in the ground and that the company’s exper­i­ment with an inde­pen­dently tar­geted adver­tis­ing based rev­enue model is over.

The company’s write-off of the $6,2 Bil­lion invest­ment in aQuan­tive was the first indi­ca­tor. Microsoft made than invest­ment as a com­pet­i­tive bul­wark against Google and now its being writ­ten off. In effect the online adver­tis­ing busi­ness — at least in its cur­rent form — has been judged to not be core to Microsoft long-term strate­gic suc­cess. This not to say that the com­pany will with­draw from the adver­tis­ing busi­ness alto­gether but I believe Steve and Co. have a dif­fer­ent and more focused model in mind.

Microsoft’s May 2012 announce­ment that the next ver­sion of Inter­net Explorer would enable “Do Not Track” by default has caused out­rage across the adver­tiser com­mu­nity. That is cer­tainly one very large and very clearly marked stake in the ground. In the most direct way it can Microsoft is say­ing to adver­tis­ers that they are no-longer per­ceived as impor­tant to the company’s long-term success.

Finally, The company’s announce­ment this Mon­day (Octo­ber 22nd 2012) — clar­i­fy­ing that it will not use con­sumers per­sonal data for tar­geted adver­tis­ing- is a final nail in the cof­fin for the once imag­ined head-to-head bat­tle with Google for advertiser’s dol­lars. That game is over and Microsoft is mov­ing on with what it believes is a far more com­pelling adver­tis­ing aug­mented rev­enue strategy.
Into Devices

Steve Ballmer’s recent announce­ment that Microsoft should now be con­sid­ered a “Devices and Soft­ware” com­pany was met with deri­sion by the digerati and com­men­tariat. The company’s track record in devices — beyond key­boards, mice and the XBox — is lam­en­ta­ble. Zune play­ers any­one? Even XBox — a huge suc­cess by any cri­te­ria — had its share of man­u­fac­tur­ing prob­lems which have not exactly bur­nished Microsoft’s hard­ware cre­den­tials. But what if every­thing to date was — as they say — a learn­ing opportunity?

It famously takes three ver­sion for any Microsoft prod­uct to reach its full poten­tial. Its quite pos­si­ble that ver­sion three of “Microsoft as a device man­u­fac­turer” is about to be unleashed on the world. The evi­dence for this can be pieced together from a num­ber of moves over recent years. Apple’s acqui­si­tion of Intrin­sity — an ARM proces­sor design com­pany — in 2010 gen­er­ated a huge amount of com­men­tary but — strate­gi­cally — not such a sur­pris­ing move by a hard­ware com­pany. What might be more sur­pris­ing is know­ing that Microsoft estab­lished a Sil­i­con Archi­tec­tures “SiArch” team long before Apple got into that busi­ness and has been hir­ing some top chip design tal­ent.

In July 2010 Microsoft signed a new “Archi­tec­ture” license with ARM. This license gives Microsoft the rights to design its own proces­sors based on the ARM archi­tec­ture. Just the sort of thing you would need if — like apple — you want to be in the busi­ness of cre­at­ing dif­fer­en­ti­ated proces­sor capa­bil­ity for your own range of devices.

This week saw the pub­li­ca­tion of a story claim­ing that Microsoft was man­u­fac­tur­ing the new sur­face tablets in its own man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­ity in China. The ten­u­ous nature of the sourc­ing for this story lead many to ques­tion its valid­ity. I’m sur­prised by that reac­tion because Microsoft con­firmed that they has ded­i­cated man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties back in 2007.

From what I can piece together I sus­pect the company’s man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­ity has advanced sig­nif­i­cantly over the last five years. It would not sur­prise me to learn that Microsoft has invested in the level of mas­sive ded­i­cated man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­ity that would enable it to com­pete as a global device man­u­fac­turer. Any­thing less than that would be a ‘fol­lower’ strat­egy and I don’t think the Microsoft lead­er­ship team see them­selves as followers.

I believe that the pivot towards a “Devices and Ser­vices” busi­ness strat­egy is premised on the com­pany becom­ing a cat­e­gory leader, not a fol­lower. If that is the case then they would want to have much more con­trol over sup­ply chain and dis­tri­b­u­tion logis­tics than even Apple achieves. Instead of merely assem­bling com­po­nents a truly agres­sive ‘Leader’ strat­egy would have the com­pany mov­ing upstream into com­po­nent pro­duc­tion. We already know that the com­pany has the abil­ity to cre­ate cus­tom proces­sor designs. Are those really nice sur­face tablet dis­plays also designed and per­haps even man­u­fac­tured in house?
Becom­ing A Con­sumer Business

I have been a long and con­stant critic of the Microsoft man­age­ment team for their lack of focus and obses­sion with becom­ing a con­sumer com­pany. I would not be the first to sug­gest that — over the last 10 years — Microsoft has become the ‘Rod­ney Dan­ger­field’ of the tech­nol­ogy indus­try: Unable to get respect from anyone.

The real­ity is that by rev­enue and prof­itabil­ity mea­sures alone Microsoft is quite clearly an enter­prise soft­ware com­pany — not a con­sumer prod­ucts com­pany. The evi­dence pre­sented indi­cates that the com­pany maybe get­ting ready to finally bring clar­ity to its schizoid busi­ness model with a mas­sive pivot towards a “Devices and Ser­vice” con­sumer fac­ing busi­ness model. That pivot would require very sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments in an end-to-end value chain.

We know that Microsoft has device design and man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­ity. We also know that the com­pany has invested in its own retail pres­ence over the last few years. That was viewed as an attempt to mimic Apple. But what if this retail strat­egy had always been about cre­at­ing a store­front for the company’s own man­u­fac­tured devices. Such a strat­egy would allow Microsoft to by-pass tra­di­tional low-rent — but mar­gin eat­ing — out­lets such as Best Buy.

If the com­pany is focused on becom­ing an end-to-end device man­u­fac­turer then the retail strat­egy takes on a much larger sig­nif­i­cance. With in-house man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­ity at one and and retail dis­tri­b­u­tion at the other Microsoft would need to join the two. A ‘Leader’ strat­egy would require the com­pany to take far greater con­trol of dis­tri­b­u­tion logis­tics. A ‘Leader’ would not sub-contract logis­tics to a 3rd party but rather would build an end-to-end man­aged dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work from man­u­fac­ture to con­sumer hands.

If Microsoft is com­mit­ted to tak­ing con­trol of its own dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work then hir­ing of Kevin Turner — a for­mer senior Wal­Mart exec­u­tive — makes a lot more sense. Turner was viewed as a ‘square peg in a round hole’ over­see­ing Microsoft’s — core — enter­prise sales busi­ness. Dur­ing my time with the com­pany Turner was widely dis­liked by Microsoft’s enter­prise sales staff and was viewed as ‘Not get­ting it’ or under­stand­ing what was required to meet enter­prise customer’s expectations.

What Turner does under­stand — from his years at Wal­Mart — is con­sumer retail and sup­ply chain man­age­ment. These are just the skills to have on hand if Microsoft’s is about to pivot it’s busi­ness model towards a con­sumer “Devices and Ser­vices” company.
Serv­ing The Device

Microsoft’s moves to put a stake in the ground regard­ing online con­sumer data pro­tec­tion change the company’s cal­cu­lus about adver­tis­ing as an intrin­sic rev­enue stream.

The com­pany clearly sees an oppor­tu­nity to put Google on the back-foot. Microsoft can posi­tion itself a cham­pion of con­sumer data pro­tec­tion and rights while plac­ing Google in the uncom­fort­able posi­tion of either defend­ing its agres­sive mon­e­ti­za­tion of con­sumer data or back­ing away from its cur­rent busi­ness strat­egy. Nei­ther of those are palat­able out­comes for Google and the lat­ter is cer­tainly unten­able given how depen­dent Google is on it’s adver­tis­ing rev­enue stream.

To say that Microsoft has not per­formed in online con­sumer ser­vices would be a gross under­state­ment. Bil­ions and bil­lions and bil­lions of dol­lars have been invested over many years with the com­pany gain­ing almost zero trac­tion in any mean­ing­ful ser­vice cat­e­gory. The invest­ment in Bing search and the part­ner­ship with Yahoo have hardly yielded the type of mar­ket redefin­ing results both company’s had hoped for. If the com­pany is in the midst of piv­ot­ing its busi­ness model towards a con­sumer devices-led strat­egy then expect the company’s online ser­vices to be re-focused and re-purposed to that end.

Under this new device-led strat­egy online ser­vices would become value enhancers for devices rather than stand-alone busi­nesses in their own right. Today ser­vices like Bing have to com­pete in an open mar­ket where con­sumers have choice. When a con­sumer is using a Sur­face device then the only search, maps or music ser­vice they will have access to will be those pro­vided by Microsoft.

Microsoft has had its fair share of anti-trust prob­lems with both the United States Depart­ment of Jus­tice and with The Euro­pean Com­mis­sions Com­pe­ti­tion author­i­ties. In each case Microsoft was judged to have mis-used its monop­oly posi­tion in the mar­ket for PC oper­at­ing sys­tems. No such claims will be pos­si­ble against the com­pany when it enters the device busi­ness for two rea­sons. Firstly, Apple and Google already dom­i­nate the mar­ket for mobile devices. Microsoft quite clearly would not have a monop­oly to abuse. In addi­tion Microsoft has rather clev­erly cleaved its oper­at­ing sys­tem strategy.

Win8-RT is an entirely dif­fer­ent oper­at­ing sys­tem from clas­sic Win­dows. If Microsoft ties its own ser­vices to Win8-RT then com­peti­ton author­i­ties are going to have a hard time make any abuse of monop­oly case stick.
Wither the OEMs

In a recent arti­cle I con­cluded that Microsoft’s ambi­tions to be an true con­sumer prod­ucts com­pany would remain an expen­sive fan­tasy until Steve and the man­age­ment team were will­ing to “Throw the OEM part­ner com­mu­nity under the bus.” It now appears that the com­pany is ready to do just that.

Microsoft’s pub­lic pro­nounce­ments about the impor­tance of the OEM in the wake of the release of Sur­face are more than a lit­tle disin­gen­u­ous. Microsoft finally does appear to have crossed the rubi­con in regards to the long-term value of their OEM part­ners. The com­pany appears to embark­ing on a strat­egy that — while accom­mo­dat­ing the OEM chan­nel — is not going to throw them a life raft. OEMs who do not already have an alter­na­tive busi­ness strat­egy when Microsoft becomes their largest and most agres­sive com­peti­tor are in deep trouble.

Iron­i­cally the OEM chan­nel is about to com­mit col­lec­tive sui­cide by enabling Microsoft to become their executioner.

Microsoft des­per­ately needs the OEMs right now. They are needed because that’s the only way to get Win­dows 8 into the hands of hun­dreds of mil­lions of con­sumers. But — wit­tingly or unwit­tingly — the OEMs are act­ing as the vec­tor for the “Virus” that will ulti­mately kill them off. Once a crit­i­cal mass of con­sumers have become hooked on Win­dows 8 Microsoft will have estab­lished the reach and cred­i­bil­ity of the oper­at­ing sys­tem that is required to exe­cute the company’s devices strategy.

Once Microsoft has its own vol­ume device capa­bil­ity it will have no strate­gic need for the OEM chan­nel. Microsoft’s mes­sage to the OEMs can be summed up as “Enjoy the ride while it lasts.”
Nok Nok…

Per­haps the com­pany most likely to be impacted by Microsoft con­sumer devices strat­egy is Nokia. I have absolutely no doubt that Microsoft is going to become a man­u­fac­turer of a full range of Win­dows 8 based smart­phones. That is going to hap­pen sooner rather than later. When Microsoft launches a ‘Sur­face Phone’ it is quite sim­ply game over for Nokia.

Con­sumers already have a hard time choos­ing betweens phones run­ning Win­dows Phone 7 and com­pet­ing offers from Apple and the Android OEMs. If Microsoft comes to mar­ket with a range of world-class devices run­ning Win­dows 8 and sells them through its own retail chan­nel then I don’t see much oppor­tu­nity for Nokia - or any other Win8 phone OEM for that matter.

Nokia’s strate­gic options are shrink­ing rapidly. It’s my view that when Microsoft enters the phone busi­ness with its own devices Nokia will have run out of time as an inde­pen­dent com­pany. The most likely final chap­ter in its sto­ried his­tory sees Microsoft buy­ing up Nokia’s siz­able patent port­fo­lio, its in-house design and engi­neer­ing exper­tise and — per­haps — the brand rights. Per­haps Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop will even rejoin the Microsoft lead­er­ship team to run the phone business. Alternatives to this out­come seem to be very few and far between.

Truly a sad end to a once dom­i­nant company.
Two OS to Rule Them All?

Can Microsoft main­tain its cur­rent cor­po­rate struc­ture if it suc­cess­fully piv­ots its busi­ness model to become the lead­ing devices and ser­vices com­pany? I sus­pect not.

Suc­cess­fully exe­cut­ing on the strat­egy out­lined in this arti­cle would clearly give Microsoft a new lease on life. On growth prospects alone you would want to own the stock. How­ever, effect­ing this level of rad­i­cal change in strat­egy would amplify — rather than mit­i­gate - the schizoid nature of the company’s oper­at­ing model. Microsoft would become a com­pany of two polar oppo­sites: A defined, successful and mod­er­ate growth enter­prise soft­ware com­pany at one extreme and a very high growth devices-led con­sumer busi­ness at the other. A sin­gle stock ticker rep­re­sent­ing two such rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­els makes lit­tle sense.

One of the many strate­gic issues posed when con­sid­er­ing split­ting up Microsoft has always been ‘What to do with the Win­dows business.’ It’s a rel­a­tively triv­ial exer­cise to bucket Microsoft’s busi­ness divi­sions into either the enter­prise or con­sumer cat­e­gory. But the Win­dows divi­sion quite clearly serves both.If you were to split the com­pany up then where would the Win­dows divi­sion end up?

The prob­lem of where to put the Win­dows divi­sion would be made a lot eas­ier if Microsoft had two oper­at­ing sys­tems, one con­sumer focused and the other designed for the enter­prise. This real­iza­tion puts a whole new spin on the Win­dows 8 strategy.

There are two ver­sions of Win­dows 8 — one a direct descen­dant of Win­dows 7 designed for the Intel archi­tec­ture and a sec­ond brand new ‘RT’ — ver­sion designed for ARM based devices. Ini­tially this looked to be a ret­ro­grade step. The com­pany spent years and bil­lions of dol­lars try­ing to col­lapse it’s com­plex oper­at­ing sys­tem port­fo­lio down to sin­gle re-usable Win­dows code base. Now the com­pany has gone in the oppo­site direc­tion. Microsoft now has two ver­sions of Win­dows; one enter­prise focused and one pur­pose­fully designed for con­sumer devices.

Break­ing the com­pany up into inde­pen­dent con­sumer and enter­prise focused enti­ties would drive huge clar­ity and focus and unlock a lot of share­holder value. Hav­ing two dis­tinct ver­sions of Win­dows 8 aligned to each seg­ment just made that a lot more straightforward.
Evi­dence and Supposition

Whether Steve and the lead­er­ship team ever decide that Microsoft and its share­hold­ers would be bet­ter served by a man­aged breakup of the com­pany remains to be seen. What is clear from recent evi­dence is that the com­pany is embark­ing on the biggest change in busi­ness strat­egy in Microsoft’s history. Their ambi­tion is no less than to become a global leader in con­sumer devices and services.

Microsoft’s lead­er­ship team under­stands that the only way to be suc­cess­ful with this strat­egy is to take con­trol of the entire end-to-end value chain and to do so in a deeper way than even Apple has achieved. Such a rad­i­cal strat­egy would give Microsoft sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin advan­tages over its com­peti­tors and would enable it to take com­plete con­trol over the end con­sumer expe­ri­ence — some­thing it has des­per­ately lacked in its bat­tle with Apple.

The re-alignment of Microsoft’s online ser­vices as value enhancers for a device-led strat­egy will also bring much needed focus to those invest­ments and in doing so would enable Microsoft to take the high-ground on con­sumer pri­vacy in their bat­tle with Google.

If Microsoft pull this off then the con­sumer tech­nol­ogy busi­ness — and the company’s stock — is in for a wild ride.
(...)"

Above article is from: Adamalthus, Technology, society and economics link: http://www.adamalthus.com/blog/2012/10/25/microsofts-pivot/

[Hansu]

@previously Nokia devoted & loyal user
good point and great text but as I said before the window of buying Nokia is closing fast the Lumia range is starting to sell better each quarter and also the revamped Asha platform that takes classic Nokia cues from Meego and the norwegian company Smarterphone will boost their sales against cheap android makers in developing markets and is starting to show in the stock market every time the share rises the more expensive the takeover will be. The summer of 2012 was the best time to buy Nokia but window is gone now unless something special come up

[previously Nokia devoted & loyal user]

@ Hansu: This is MS who gives cards to players on the table. First of all and in fact the only one factor that counts in this play is MS need, more precisely if Nokia have or is anything that MS think is needed. MS have bought already what they wanted to buy and when they wanted to buy - many many times, with many many companies smaller or greater. That is proven fact IMHO. I asked to myself why Nokia has sold to MS a bucket of patents. And after a time I think to myself that perhaps after having this patents MS has gained what they wanted the most. MS is patent troll company, and a company living from patents. Perhaps now Nokia without patents but with many employees which can't be fired just like that, then it can be a bucket of troubles, to manage to control to fulfil law requirements etc.etc.. Besides when they pay fees MS earns money and leave troubles behind the doors. And while this controlled by MS through person of Elop - then puzzles are on places and music plays nicely. Perhaps a kind of equilibrium has been obtained. When it will disappear we will see brutality and destruction. After buying Nokia MS will treat it as common commodity: logo and brand will go to US or China, some useful and humble staff also, realities are already sold. A new location for MS offices can be there etc.etc. But this will be after Nokia Maps will turn into MS Maps and so on. Time will tell. MS does not consider any window of opportunity, they only count what gives more benefits, just cold calculation, nothing more. Nokia is only one of many companies to overtake or to overuse. Nothing more nothing less, just cold ice from Queen of Snow, I think.

[Hansu]

@ Nokia devoted & loyal user Yes but if that is the case then yes but you have to remeber that MS has given Nokia billions what did get in return a couple of patents sure must be pretty good patents when you payed that much money for them. Micrsoft is a company with deep pockets and they could buy Nokia several times but the thing that bothers me is that MS and others had a golden opportunity to snatch up Nokia dirt cheap but they didn't and I dont understand why you would give Billions to a company then run stock down wait for it come up and then buy it for alot more money later altough you could have saved many billions just by picking the right time and as long as NSN and rest of Nokia is making cash..ish and every forecast is saying that Lumia sales will rise why wait nand pay a hell of alot money later it dosen't make any sense buy high sell low. MS could and almost should have bought Nokia last summer they would have got a great deal all the patents etc and the best assets dirt cheap and Nokia engineering now how to make the Surface phone.

[previously Nokia devoted & loyal user]

@Hansu I disagree. Nokia has different organisational culture then MS. To buy it mean to absorb it and put into MS structures which are differently managed, ruled, evaluated, leaded etc.etc. Nokia is not a startup of 5-20 persons with needed idea or piece of soft, which is easy to splash if needed. Nokia has its own identity/personality as the organisation. That could lead either to deviations in MS structures running or to kill Nokia creativity which is added value, and given to MS for nothing. MS knows perfectly what they are doing, in short, medium and long terms.
Besides overtaken Nokia would be a reason of many accusations for MS ad predator. Better is to lead Nokia to the stadium when they ask for this. Also Nokia this is people, I am not sure if would want to work for MS, and doubt if they would have any problems with new job offers. Also buying Nokia is paying for them as own staff. Now, if MS would want then they can break contract, leave Nokia with pants down and go away, but without paying damages to workers. And required by law of Finland retirments etc.
BTW.: Nokia has sold to MS a bucket of about 500 patents (5 hundreds). Not a few.

[sidiji]

any of you analysts actually used a lumia yet, I got one and I think it's an excellent phone, works smoother and more beautifully than iphone or android just my 2c

[krishna]

I am not satisfied by the idea that Nokia will be sold of, as Nokia just needs to realize few things after which it will again get back to the track, there is a time they will realize for sure.

[krishna]

Yeah with the pace Nokia is going in the market, I am completely satisfied with the idea that Nokia will soon be not available.

[Techzune]

Its still debate according to me, we can't say anything about it!

[Lelala]

Lately a friend showed me one of the mid-class Luminas.
In fact, it wasn't that bad. Quality of production seemed quite good, the Win 8 Phone is running smooth.
*** BUT ***
For me it seems they are *years* TOO LATE. It would have been interesting if they would have produced the phone 5 years ago, or even 3 years may have been enough to get some ground.
I do doubt, really, if they can build enough traction to sustain any marketshare above 2% - even Blackberry seems to get a better start with their new BB10?
Regards

[CN]

Since you have blocked me in Twitter, I simply have no chance to ask you questions there. But I'm so glad you have this channel as well.

Just few days back, must have been on June 14, you said in Twitter: "I am quite preoccupied with a little project you all will love. I hope to Tweet about it 'soonish' say in a few weeks".

Just to get this right, is this "few weeks" now the traditional "few weeks as Tomi Ahonen understands it"? To clarify, "Nokia will be sold within weeks" statement was made on July 17, 2012 - or in weeks, it was made about 50 weeks ago.

So, should I expect details on this project within weeks or sometime maybe in 2014?

[oli]

Huawei will free NOK from MSFT

[Evasion Jailbreak]

Well, Nokia was king in mobile industry before the announcement of iPhone. Now the future is of iPhone and Android

[Emil]

Sold :(

[Sanjeev]

There is any reasons behind the sale of Nokia. But we will miss the original Nokia Corp.

[Android Apps For Computer]

Nokia maps was renamed to "here" and they made the interface look like Windows 8. This really suggests that they wanted to remove the Nokia badge so that it appears to come from Microsoft instead so the dismantling of Nokia had already begun.

[fort lauderdale tax accountant]

The otyher day, while I was at work, my cousin stole mmy iPadd and testd to see if it can survive a 40 foot drop, just so she can be a youtube sensation. My iPad is now destroyed and she has 83 views. I know this iis entirely off topic but I had to share it with someone!

[cpa in fort lauderdale]

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