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Microsoft Purchases Nokia's Device and Services Division to Unite Windows Phone Hardware and Software

So?

Elop delivered Nokia to Microsoft on a silver plate. Too bad it's spoiled. Textbook Trojan Horse implant. Elop will also replace Ballmer. Sad, I really wanted to see Microsoft get back in the game to offset Google. Not a chance now, IMO. :apple:
 
cgsnipinva said:
I will say the Galaxy is a well designed phone but without the software - not that unique.
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Who said something about uniqueness? I see nothing special about the Samsung Galaxy. Except that they can make and sell a lot of them, at a healthy margin, while others can't. Samsungs competitive advantage lies solely in manufacturing. They out-manufacture the competition, no matter how good or bad their software is. Vertical integration doesn't mean you always want to win on quality. Just that you are in control of the whole value chain. Google and Samsung work in the same business, making Android phones. But Samsung makes all the profit and Google is bleeding money into Motorola. Yes, Google should stop giving away Android for free. But they have already lost control over the development of the platform. Look what Amazon has made with Android. They stripped out all the Google services and integrated their own to make the Kindle Fire. Its like when IBM created the PC standard. Google lost Android.
 
This is a complete 180 for Microsoft pre-iPhone, when they would repeatedly state that their strategy of having Windows Mobile on n-hundred devices made by x-number of manufacturers was the "better" strategy.

I've said this before, but watching "Pirates of Silicon Valley" now is really, really strange...
 
What a STUPID move by Microsoft!

Talk about throwing money away. This will never pan out well for the poor MSFT stockholders. :confused:

What this WILL DO is make the iPhone even more sought after especially after the Sept. 10th event. :D

Go APPLE!
 
Goodbye european conception of personal computing. Now it's all about advertising, spying and making you spend on useless stuff.
 
WilliamLondon said:
What I see is a software company in search of a future that does hardware failures very well just bought a dying hardware company. What I see is Microsoft trying to figure out a way to shoehorn in their "enterprise skills" into a future mobile device oriented world.

What I don't see is vision.

I don't see a software company, through a simple reorganisation and corporate acquisition, becoming tomorrow's mobile devices company for the enterprise.
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MS has been doing two things to offload shrinking PC marketshare. One is porting their PC base to the tablet market by disrupting it with x86 architecture and a converged OS. The second is porting their brand to the cloud. Both of those require vision. Execution and marketing are another story, but it's pretty clear where MS thinks the future is.

What I see is that WP just lost every single hardware partner going forward, and Nokia will be the only phone with Windows phone on it going forward - how's that for penetration and how's that for getting their enterprise software on mobile devices?

What I see is other hardware manufacturers watching this and realising MS's desire to be a hardware company and that leaves no room for OEMs in the future with Microhard?. What I see is a company with more money than sense.
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Google already went through this during their Motorola acquisition. The reality is unless these OEM's are gonna spend billions to create their own OS, they have nowhere to go. At the very least, all the Nokia exclusives that helped Nokia dominate the platform should get a platform-wide release and companies like HTC, who has basically just rode the 8X for a year, and Samsung, who retooled an S3 to run WP8 hardware and called it a day, should benefit.
 
Carlanga said:
Again blame the carriers, here is what the box looks when you pay full price:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne93k1fApqA
So you are saying it's unacceptable that a box has AT&T branding, wow, you must really love boxes. :rolleyes: In my time cellphones had AT&T/etc branding in the box, in the phone and inside the fw.
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So explain to me why carrier-subsidized iPhones don't come in carrier-branded crap?
 
Liquorpuki said:
MS has been doing two things to offload shrinking PC marketshare. One is porting their PC base to the tablet market by disrupting it with x86 architecture and a converged OS. The second is porting their brand to the cloud. Both of those require vision. Execution and marketing are another story, but it's pretty clear where MS thinks the future is.
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Following trends isn't a vision in my opinion (but it is very Microsoft), setting trends is. I understand the need to diversify, but merely doing so isn't necessarily visionary either. Microsoft believes they have the Midas touch; they have enough hubris and money to try lots of different paths but I'm not convinced without a strong visionary leader (btw their current "devices and services" path isn't visionary either) their future is nothing very exciting.
 
WilliamLondon said:
Following trends isn't a vision in my opinion (but it is very Microsoft), setting trends is. I understand the need to diversify, but merely doing so isn't necessarily visionary either. Microsoft believes they have the Midas touch; they have enough hubris and money to try lots of different paths but I'm not convinced without a strong visionary leader (btw their current "devices and services" path isn't visionary either) their future is nothing very exciting.
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Except they're not following trends. No other company is sticking x86 on a tablet or converging OS's. They're all stuck in the tablet = ARM, PC = x86, keep it separate mindset. Same with XB1, Kinect, cloud offloading and their attempt to disrupt the console market with digital distribution. Same with investing in cloud infrastructure and using it to lay the foundation for porting their software assets.

They have more vision than they're given credit for. Their weakness is that they're an eroded brand plagued by poor marketing.

And devices and services just means hardware/software and cloud. Hardware/software, because the old expensive software/cheap OEM hardware model they relied on for the past 3 decades no longer works. Cloud because that's where software is heading.
 
Liquorpuki said:
Except they're not following trends. No other company is sticking x86 on a tablet or converging OS's. They're all stuck in the tablet = ARM, PC = x86, keep it separate mindset. Same with XB1, Kinect, cloud offloading and their attempt to disrupt the console market with digital distribution. Same with investing in cloud infrastructure and using it to lay the foundation for porting their software assets.

They have more vision than they're given credit for. Their weakness is that they're an eroded brand plagued by poor marketing.

And devices and services just means hardware/software and cloud. Hardware/software, because the old expensive software/cheap OEM hardware model they relied on for the past 3 decades no longer works. Cloud because that's where software is heading.
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It's always marketing's fault, isn't it? :rolleyes:

If you think converging OSes is setting the trend, then we see the world very differently (but Intel would like to see your CV<wry grin>). And as for cloud, that also was not MS setting the trend, they merely followed what everyone else was already doing. Their business model is do what everyone else does, lock them in and license the hell out of them till kingdom come. I think they've realised this isn't the future and that's why Ballmer is out and they're looking for some fresh ideas and leadership. Ballmer was the former marketing head, and people think MS's problem is a lack of good marketing? He was brilliant in that role, that's not what the company needs, they aren't going to dig their way out of this trench with a good marketing campaign, but marketing is easy to blame, no one really knows what marketing does, everyone thinks they can "do marketing" and it's an easy scapegoat when things go wrong.
 
musika said:
So explain to me why carrier-subsidized iPhones don't come in carrier-branded crap?
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Actually iPhones (at least here in the UK) that you buy locked into certain carriers don't always come in Apple packaging, in fact the last one I got came in a very plain, very white box with no branding on the box at all, and completely sealed.
 
WilliamLondon said:
It's always marketing's fault, isn't it? :rolleyes:
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You're the first I ever heard defending MS's marketing. That's interesting

If you think converging OSes is setting the trend, then we see the world very differently (but Intel would like to see your CV<wry grin>). And as for cloud, that also was not MS setting the trend, they merely followed what everyone else was already doing. Their business model is do what everyone else does, lock them in and license the hell out of them till kingdom come. I think they've realised this isn't the future and that's why Ballmer is out and they're looking for some fresh ideas and leadership. Ballmer was the former marketing head, and people think MS's problem is a lack of good marketing? He was brilliant in that role, that's not what the company needs, they aren't going to dig their way out of this trench with a good marketing campaign, but marketing is easy to blame, no one really knows what marketing does, everyone thinks they can "do marketing" and it's an easy scapegoat when things go wrong.
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MS's business model up until a couple years ago was to monetize off software while commoditizing hardware. Nobody else does that. Apple does the exact opposite. So who is this trendsetting company they've been copying all these years? Who are they copying porting x86 to tablets because last I checked nobody else is doing it.

And MS marketing does stuff like put out Surface commercials with choreographed dancing. And pick product names like Surface RT and Surface Pro, where 6 months later people still don't know the difference between them.

Also Ballmer never headed marketing, he headed sales, so I don't know how you'd say he was brilliant at it. Laughing at the iPhone on camera right before it stole all your marketshare isn't brilliant.
 
Liquorpuki said:
You're the first I ever heard defending MS's marketing. That's interesting
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Are you kidding? Are you new to IT? Microsoft Marketing used to be known in the industry as being at the top of their game (not so much anymore). If you had Microsoft Marketing on your CV, you could pick your places to work.

Liquorpuki said:
MS's business model up until a couple years ago was to monetize off software while commoditizing hardware. Nobody else does that. Apple does the exact opposite. So who is this trendsetting company they've been copying all these years? Who are they copying porting x86 to tablets because last I checked nobody else is doing it.
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Is that what you consider trendsetting? When I talk about trendsetting I'm talking about product development not business strategy (which I think they used to do very well). When I talk about trendsetting I mean leading the way in tablet computers in 2001 by taking the keyboard off a laptop and calling it a tablet (but it ran Windows - no need for convergence with that tablet!). Or copying an iPod years later with the Zune, or let's go more recent and call the Surface a trendsetting modern-day tablet device? Should we go back in time, there are loads of examples where they do nothing except follow trends others have set, where they merely used their unique position in the market to capitalise on those trends?

Liquorpuki said:
And MS marketing does stuff like put out Surface commercials with choreographed dancing. And pick product names like Surface RT and Surface Pro, where 6 months later people still don't know the difference between them.
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Crap advertising, which is only one part of marketing. Equating advertising with marketing is like equating version control with software programming.

As for Ballmer, I thought it was he who came up with their original channel strategy (though I could be wrong), the strategy that meant they were 100% channel and never sold direct. "In the day" it was brilliant and one of the reasons they are who they are today - they understood they couldn't take on the world by themselves, and they were right.

Today, channel partners aren't even managed by marketing managers as they were in the past, today's marketing in Microsoft isn't what it used to be (and it's well known the calibre of marketing in Microsoft has declined since those glory days), even so I wouldn't point the blame finger at that discipline, the problem is much, much, much deeper. It isn't the marketing head who was just fired, it was the CEO and now it's me laughing at my screen (probably because Malcolm in the Middle is on in the living room<grin>).
 
rjohnstone said:
He's not talking about that kind of contract. ;)
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Oh, whoops. You're right.

Anyway, even contractually between the two companies, I wish these manufacturers would have the balls to do what Apple does and not let the carriers control the experience for the end user.
 
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