Microsoft Lays Off Nokia Employees, Exits Consumer Phone Business

[b0fh666]

One of Ballmer's first acts as CEO was to kill the Stinger smart phone project. Back then MSFT was using HP to do the hardware but the software was total crap. IIRC they shut everything down and bulldozed tens of millions of dollars of brand new phones in a landfill. Maybe the memory and expense of that total, abject failure was what soured Ballmer's attitude toward smart phones.

well from what I see they were headed in the wrong direction, trying to make a 'smart' phone that was the form/size of a phone at that time (nokia 6200 for example). no wonder it sucked.

if they just tried to downsize the ipaq a bit and stuffed a gsm radio in there, it would be the first smarphone, 5 years before the iphone itself

perhaps that would be too 'ahead of times' and expensive, and fail as well but would be interesting nonetheless.

 

[MacBH928]

Nokia sold its mobile and devices dept. to Microsoft and licenced Lumia brand and some patentes too. Nokia itself was never sold to MS. It's up and running, being still in Finland and employing more that 114,000 people worldwide.

So Microsoft just bought the mobile phone department from Nokia?

You mention that Nokia employs 114k people, what do they do? All I know about Nokia is that they are a cellphone manufacturer nothing else.

 

[vooke]

Microsoft blew $10B and 27K jobs

This is the curse of Mergers and Acquisitions;
Rarely does anything good come of these mega M&A deals. They don’t move the economy or even the company forward. They don’t boost innovation or productivity. Instead, they distract the company, destroy jobs, blow up capital, entail shut-downs, stifle innovation, and trigger economic decline.
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/05/26/mi...s-27650-jobs-shuts-down-consumer-smartphones/

 

[Zarniwoop]

So Microsoft just bought the mobile phone department from Nokia?

You mention that Nokia employs 114k people, what do they do? All I know about Nokia is that they are a cellphone manufacturer nothing else.

Mobile networking technologies (researching 5G atm), cell towers (They're no1 in that business today), network appliances, Digital Media (they just released a VR camera, OZO, for movie & tv industry), Digital Health... and they are designing new mobile devices too, that will be built in Foxconn's' factories.

Patents are also a main source of their profits, not being a patent troll, but, as it reads in their website, "about 30,000 granted patents and applications. Having invested more than €50 billion in R&D over the past two decades, Nokia has agreed terms with more than 80 companies for Standards Essential Patents (SEPs)."

One of these companies is Apple who has licensed Nokias' GSM/EDGE/3G/4G/LTE tech.

 

[djgamble]

It's not, though. There are two platforms, but a ton of companies.

See what you're saying (although you're really just being a smart@rse), but it's an Apple/Google duopoly.

Back in the day there were what... 10 OS' that you could choose from or something crazy like that? Technology has improved dramatically, but as a consumer I preferred the days when there were more choices of OS.

 

[decafjava]

well from what I see they were headed in the wrong direction, trying to make a 'smart' phone that was the form/size of a phone at that time (nokia 6200 for example). no wonder it sucked.

if they just tried to downsize the ipad a bit and stuffed a gsm radio in there, it would be the first smarphone, 5 years before the iphone itself

perhaps that would be too 'ahead of times' and expensive, and fail as well but would be interesting nonetheless.

Ummm the iPhone (2007) came out before the iPad (2010).

 

[kdarling]

well from what I see they were headed in the wrong direction, trying to make a 'smart' phone that was the form/size of a phone at that time (nokia 6200 for example). no wonder it sucked.

Microsoft was supporting multiple form factors, all of which made sense at the time.

• The traditional clamshell / candybar version that used phone keypad and cursor keys.
• The alphanumeric keyboard version, often with a trackball, like a Blackberry
• The touchscreen version, with possible slide out physical keyboard as well.

As with some other insiders here, our company was privy to secret Microsoft demos where we got to see what they were working on for the future, a lot of which involved both touch and voice control... a bit similar to Android these days.

MS's problem was, they thought they had all the time in the world to work on it. And also, they wanted everything to fit into the Windows world, codewise and app wise.

if they just tried to downsize the ipaq a bit and stuffed a gsm radio in there, it would be the first smartphone, 5 years before the iphone itself

There were plenty of touch smartphones before the iPhone . Heck, the very first smartphone ever (the 1993 IBM Simon) was all touch.

Not sure why everyone only remembers the ones with keys. Unless it's because Jobs carefully avoided showing the touchscreen ones when he debuted the iPhone that day.

 

[b0fh666]

Ummm the iPhone (2007) came out before the iPad (2010).

sorry, iPAQ, not iPad. fixed my post, thanks!

 

[MacBH928]

Mobile networking technologies (researching 5G atm), cell towers (They're no1 in that business today), network appliances, Digital Media (they just released a VR camera, OZO, for movie & tv industry), Digital Health... and they are designing new mobile devices too, that will be built in Foxconn's' factories.

Patents are also a main source of their profits, not being a patent troll, but, as it reads in their website, "about 30,000 granted patents and applications. Having invested more than €50 billion in R&D over the past two decades, Nokia has agreed terms with more than 80 companies for Standards Essential Patents (SEPs)."

One of these companies is Apple who has licensed Nokias' GSM/EDGE/3G/4G/LTE tech.

Thanks for the info, I thought they were just a consumer product manufacturer. No wonder their phones were so stable and reliable since they build the whole system of telecommunication.

 

[Iconoclysm]

See what you're saying (although you're really just being a smart@rse), but it's an Apple/Google duopoly.

Back in the day there were what... 10 OS' that you could choose from or something crazy like that? Technology has improved dramatically, but as a consumer I preferred the days when there were more choices of OS.

Not only was I not intending to be a smartass but to call this a duopoly when what Google offers for free is not the same. Back in what day are you referring to? Those different OS's were mostly server OS's with the exception of Commodore/Atari/TRS 80 etc. And even then, they were practically consoles as far as compatibility went.
[doublepost=1464730129][/doublepost]

Ummm the iPhone (2007) came out before the iPad (2010).

He said the "Ipaq" not the iPad. And essentially, that's exactly how the first Windows Mobile devices came along - the PocketPC OS eventually became Windows Mobile.

 

[djgamble]

Not only was I not intending to be a smartass but to call this a duopoly when what Google offers for free is not the same. Back in what day are you referring to? Those different OS's were mostly server OS's with the exception of Commodore/Atari/TRS 80 etc. And even then, they were practically consoles as far as compatibility went.
[doublepost=1464730129][/doublepost]
He said the "Ipaq" not the iPad. And essentially, that's exactly how the first Windows Mobile devices came along - the PocketPC OS eventually became Windows Mobile.

Back in the days before you were born there were things like Symbian, Palm OS, Blackberry, Windows and hundreds of embedded OS' (many of which could run cross-compatible Java apps.)

PS- not chiming in on your other comment, but you are wrong there too. No offence but if you're too young to remember then don't bother trying o 'correct' people. You get found out easily