“Microsoft’s new ‘strategic partnership’ with Nokia is not its first. For a decade the software company has courted and consummated relationships with a variety of companies in mobile and telecom,” Horace Dediu writes for asymco.
Here are the ones I can remember:
• LG
• Motorola
• Palm
• Nortel
• Verizon
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: While we’re on the subject, in a related area, let’s also pause for a moment of silence for all of the “PlaysForSure” portable devices and content services “strategic partners” that Microsoft dicked over, too:
• AOL MusicNow
• Archos
• BearShare
• Cingular
• Cowon
• Creative Labs
• Denon
• Digitrex
• D-Link
• Ericsson
• iMesh
• Insignia
• iriver
• Kyocera
• MSN Music
• MTV URGE
• Motorola
• Musicmatch Jukebox
• Nokia
• Palm
• PassAlong Networks
• Pioneer
• Philips
• Rhapsody
• Roku
• RCA
• Ruckus Network
• Samsung
• SanDisk
• Sonos
• Sony
• Spiralfrog
• Toshiba
• Wal-Mart Music Downloads
• Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Good luck, Nokia. You’re going to need it.
Related article:
Nokia cuts jobs, slashes R&D; adopts Microsoft’s Windows Phone ’07 in iPhone killer quest – February 11, 2011
Hilarious!
Hey MDN, you forgot to add Apple to the top of the list…
“In Memorium” haha, I love this site!
let’s not forget the original microsoft strategic partner, Apple Computer, Inc
I think that you will find IBM is the original Microsoft strategic partner. And yes, the screwed IBM over too.
I’ve always wondered what if Micro$oft bought $100M worth of Apple stock instead of handing over a ‘check’..
I think apple stock was $13 share.. It split twice..
$10.8 Billion!!
Dumb F**k*!!!
What are you talking about? That’s EXACTLY what they did! And they resold the stock (way too early), and got almost $1B for it.
With Nokia’s ability to innovate and Microsoft’s openness, this is clearly a NoWin situation!
Apple was never a PlaysForSure partner. They got dicked around by Microsoft probably more then anyone but not with that particular technology.
How did widows come about?
OMG, Microsoft killed their husbands too!
“Dicked over”?
You can do that AND be ball-ess?
The horror!
I love how Nokia’s name is on that second list 😉
@MDN
Which only goes to say that Microsoft really has golden hands.
Everything that passes through these hands is turned into… gold.
Then again, those hands may not be golden but they do convey the touch of death.
Well in the pre-second coming Jobs Mac clone era Power Computing, Motorola, Umax and whoever else got “dicked over” by Apple when they closed down the clone market. Microsoft just seems to excel at it resulting in future recalcitrance and reticence on any smart partner to be in bed with them. They lay the foundation for uncertain bad faith which shall be it’s own reward.
The clone companies almost killed Apple, so it is understandable why Apple stopped. MS tends to backstab others first and quite casually.
” We are gathered here today in memory of the dearly departed, they are dearly and are now departed”.
Richard Pryor
Ballmer is gone in less than 12 months.
Relevant to the story???
Dictators always try last gasp solutions after they have become fossilized in the past.
How about partners in general?
The biggest two being IBM and Apple. Yikes did they get screwed!!!
IBM, DOS and OS/2
Apple, Macintosh Toolbox (GUI) and TrueType/TrueImage
Nokia has officially been Ballmered. A fate marginally worse than being partnered with Enron.
Hey MDN: I am so glad YOU iCal’d all that blood on iTunes.
I would never have had the time!
Never realized the list was so long!
The Nokia Monkey phone is toast.
Kind of funny how Nokia was the MSFT of cell phones and how they didn’t innovate and were caught “with their pants down” by Apple. I think they have hit the proverbial “ice berg”.