“Microsoft Corp. completed the takeover of Nokia Oyj’s phone business, ending a seven-month wait to renew its assault on the mobile market and leaving the Finnish company seeking growth in wireless networks,” Adam Ewing reports for Bloomberg. “The final price may be ‘slightly higher’ than the 5.44 billion euros ($7.5 billion) announced in September, Nokia said today. About 30,000 employees are transferring to Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft as part of the transaction, which was delayed amid regulatory scrutiny.”
“Microsoft is gaining a device business that it’ll rely on to catch up with Apple Inc. and Google Inc. in the tablet and mobile-phone markets,” Ewing reports. “Nokia is left seeking a turnaround for its network-equipment business and is said to consider the division’s head, Rajeev Suri, as chief executive officer to challenge rivals such as Ericsson AB.”
“The purchase of the unprofitable division makes Microsoft the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones with about 14 percent of the market,” Ewing reports. “In smartphones, the most profitable part of the industry, Microsoft will continue to lag far behind rivals. Apple and devices running Google’s Android operating system accounted for about 96 percent of the 290 million smartphones shipped in the fourth quarter, according to IDC. Devices using Microsoft’s Windows Phone software had 3 percent of the market.”
MacDailyNews Take:
Apple’s iPhone is a “niche product.” – Nokia’s then-CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, April 17, 2008
Ewing reports, “Nokia, once the smartphone market leader, is evaluating its strategy for its future without the phone business.”
MacDailyNews Take:
Maybe Nokia should concentrate on their specialty — crap margin, low-end, mechanical-buttoned candy bar cellphones — hope they can coast along on emerging markets while they try to figure out what businesses to try next (kitchen appliances? floor wax? breakfast sausages?) before the money runs out? – MacDailyNews Take, September 10, 2010
Ewing reports, “Microsoft unveiled this month an updated version of its Windows Phone software with voice-search features, and said it’s offering the platform for free for small phones and tablets as part of CEO Satya Nadella’s turnaround [attempt]. Nadella, who was named CEO on Feb. 4, is working to remake Microsoft for an era where smartphones and tablets have become central.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As most of us learned by kindergarten, if not earlier: Two wrongs do not make a right.