“Microsoft Corp. will pay Nokia Oyj more than $1 billion to promote and develop Windows-based handsets as part of their smartphone software agreement, according to two people with knowledge of the terms,” Dina Bass reports for Bloomberg.
“Nokia will pay Microsoft a fee for each copy of Windows used in its phones, costs that will be offset as Nokia curtails its own budget for software research and development, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the final contract hasn’t yet been signed,” Bass reports. “The agreement runs for more than five years, the people said.”
Bass reports, “Nokia shares have dropped 26 percent since the accord was unveiled Feb. 11, reflecting doubts about the move to adopt Microsoft’s operating system, which is less than six months old and has just a few percentage points of market share.”
MacDailyNews Take: Windows Phone ’07 has “a few percentage points of market share?” Says who?
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: You might be a Ballmer if… you have to pay a floundering company over $1 billion to use your mobile OS.
Monopoly is an easy game to play if you can pull out some extra money whenever you need it.
Someone needs to make ms play by the rules.
Stay tuned for more weirdness when Lion roars. Microsoft charges a pretty penny for its server software, and then charges extra for the number of clients that can connect to the server at once. Lion allows any Mac to be configured as a client or a server with unlimited access. It’s going to be thousands of dollars less expensive to buy a Mac rather than a PC server. If Microsoft isn’t sweating blood, they’d better start.
Now let me see if i understand this.
Google gives away their OS.
MS pays some one to use their OS.
And Apple just goes to the bank.
Here’s another way to put it:
For Apple, economics just works.
For Google, you hedge the economics via the protocol of: ‘You’ve got to give a little (Android being very little) to get a lot (of privacy data and advertising money).’
For Microsoft, economics FAILs. Therefore, spend your way out of the hole (aka grave) you dug for yourself. Spend and spend and spend spend spend until you defy gravity. It could happen!
Nokia just jumped in the hole with Microsoft…
This is what happens when you take the village idiot and make him a CEO.
Which one?
Elap or Ballmer?
Neither of them are coming out of this looking like Rhodes scholars.
Well! Sinking boats must pay to keep some rats on the boat…
It is a worry. Never seen anything like it. I’m not sure what Microsoft are doing. The strategy is all wrong. When iPhone was released it should have been hands to the deck to create their own system and leverage the hold in the market place with their own offering. Didn’t happen. When iPad was released it happened again. This time the damage was far worse as the iPad actually threatens OS and Office sales. This where lies the problem. Windows and Office have been extremely successful for Microsoft. An incredible winning streak in terms of usage and revenues. But that is what’s killing them. They do everything they can to protect the franchise. This stops innovation. Microsoft could have easily with the money and resource they have invented the iPhone or iPad. Easily but they didn’t want to because it may have threatened Windows and Office licences. There were so many rumours about the Mac tablet that they should have had every resource working on their own version. Their presentation of the HP Slate in 2010 that was never released was embarrassing. Now their in a position where they want push up the share of their Windows Phone offerings but they can’t get the acceptance they need. iPhone and the like are too far ahead. They’re trying to buy that market share which is ok but the problem is that billion is coming form the Windows/Office group. Those two groups can’t fund themselves, the xBox group and now the phone/tablet group forever.
Interesting times are ahead. Microsoft are still making money but there are a lot of loss makers on their books. Will a threat come to Windows/Office? Probably not in the next 5 years but you can see where all of this is going. It will get easier to type on tablets. Word Processing will be built much better than Pages into the units. Docking stations will become compatible and placed in workplaces, schools, cafes, etc. You can dock your tablet anywhere and type. There will be less reliance on the office platform. Less reliance on the OS as a whole.
Sending out Powerpoint slides to business on why not to buy tablets shows the fear. Watch this space. Its going to be an interesting ride.
Please spend SPEND SPEND that cash reserve Microsoft! Whatever it takes…
For a billion dollars, I would use Windows Phone 7 too!