“Two years after hitching its fate to Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, Nokia collapsed into the arms of the U.S. software giant on Tuesday, agreeing to sell its main handset business for 5.44 billion euros ($7.2 billion),” Ritsuko Ando and Bill Rigby report for Reuters.
“Nokia, which will continue to make networking equipment and hold patents, was once the world’s dominant handset maker but was long since overtaken by Apple and Samsung in the highly competitive market for more powerful smartphones,” Ando and Rigby report. “Nokia’s Canadian boss Stephen Elop, who ran Microsoft’s business software division before jumping to Nokia in 2010, will return to the U.S. firm as head of its mobile devices business – a Trojan horse, according to disgruntled Finnish media.”
Ando and Rigby report, “He is being discussed as a possible replacement for Microsoft’s retiring CEO Steve Ballmer, who is trying to remake the U.S. firm into a gadget and services company like Apple before he departs, though it has fallen short so far in its attempts to compete in mobile devices. ‘It’s very clear to me that rationally this is the right step going forward,’ Elop told reporters, though he added he also felt ‘a great deal of sadness’ over the outcome. In three years under Elop, Nokia saw its market share collapse and its share price shrivel.”
“‘As a Finnish person, I cannot like this deal. It ends one chapter in this Nokia story,’ said Juha Varis, Danske Capital’s senior portfolio manager, whose fund owns Nokia shares. ‘On the other hand, it was maybe the last opportunity to sell it.’ Varis was one of many investors critical of Elop’s decision to bet Nokia’s future in smartphones on Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, which was praised by tech reviewers but hasn’t found the momentum to challenge the market leaders,” Ando and Rigby report. “‘So this is the outcome: the whole business for 5 billion euros. That’s peanuts compared to its history,’ he said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs killed Nokia long before Elop got there to pull the plug.
Stephen Flop, er… Elop would be the perfect replacement for Ballmer!
Related articles:
Beleaguered Nokia reports lower-than-expected revenue, Needham downgrades – July 18, 2013
Microsoft and Nokia can’t hide from the very, very ugly truth: Windows Phone is failing miserably – July 18, 2013
Nokia’s Stephen Elop: The worst CEO of all time – June 28, 2013
This was just a way for Nokia to dump Microsoft and make some money. Give them a few years. Nokia will be back in the phone business with new devices running their own OS.
Said it once, I will say it again…
DevELOPers DevELOPers DevELOPers !!!
As long as it takes.
By the way, MSFT would love to be like Apple, but as Steve put it, the just do not have any class!
What everyone is forgetting is how great this move is for Nokia.
Not only do they sell an arm of their business that is collapsing for $7.2 billion but also get rid of E-Flop, and get back to the money making business of infrastructure.
HURRAY!
Spend Microsoft! Spend, SPEND, SPEND!!!
I like it.