This rumour is not new, nor is it particularly earth-shattering. However, with Windows Phone 7 failing to make a dent in the market place, and Nokia’s Lumia 800 not making huge waves either, the rumour’s been taken out of the shed again: Microsoft is supposedly acquiring Nokia’s smartphone division later this year. Stephen Elop will resign from Nokia shortly afterwards.
This time around, the rumour’s being rekindled by Eldar Murtazin, the Russian editor-in-chief of Mobile-Review.com. He has a pretty good track record regarding Nokia, and has often had very, very early access to device prototypes and other information. However, as always, a firm pile of salt should be readily available at all times when reading this.
“Steve Balmer, Andy Lees and Stephen Elop, Kai Ostamo will meet in Las Vegas to finalize agreement about Nokia smartphone unit,” he tweeted. The deal is apparently so that Microsoft also gets a few manufacturing plants, and, of course, an extensive patent portfolio. The Nokia name is set to disappear from the Microsoft smartphones that would follow from this acquisition.
It would leave Nokia with its feature phone business, networking equipment, and an assortment of other activities. While many think this would mean the end of Nokia, I highly doubt it will be – the company is 140 years old, has survived multiple crises and product transitions (they started out as a paper company, after all). Nokia will survive, even without smartphones, but that doesn’t make it any less tragic.
This deal certainly wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. It’s becoming ever more clear that all those naysayers were right, back when the Microsoft-Nokia deal was announced. Stephen Elop is a mole, with only one goal: to drive Nokia into the ground, so that Microsoft can swoop in and acquire the interesting parts for a relatively low price. The N9 demonstrated that Nokia did have an option besides the failing Windows Phone 7, and that the deal with Microsoft wasn’t a necessity at all.
We’ll have to see how it all pans out over the course of 2012, but this doesn’t seem like a crazy prediction. Sad.
As a former Nokia employee is with some sadness I see this happening in case the rumor is true.
Tomi has mentioned in his blog that he had heard of such rumors from Danske Bank. He even went as far to state that the sale might be completed by spring this year. Even now, Nokia is hunting buyers for Vertu.
I like Nokia for the simple reason that their call quality and reception is the best in the market. I hate to think that I will have to resort to a Sony or a Motorola to get anything similar.
Wondering if that will finally wake up Bruessel and Finnish government to finally take the long overdue legal actions against Microsoft and Nokia’s board.
What for?
personal enrichment, stock-manipulation, anti-competitive behavior, patent stealing, … and what not.
Probably nothing will happen. MS simply has an endless amount of cash and can buy itself into every market in which they don’t even have to succeed because Windows and Office are such cash cows.
Of course Nokia failed to innovate for years and did not have a response to the iPhone. They could have fought and followed trough on their Qt everywhere strategy but instead they appointed a Trojan horse who destroyed the company from inside out by releasing a memo saying the company was standing on a burning platform. Elop made it sound like Nokia was on the verge of bankruptcy while they were still by a very wide margin the largest mobile phone maker in the world! The memo destroyed their software ecosystem, the spirit of their employees and killed the only true open mobile platform. All of this caused the stock price to plummet making them easy acquisition partners.
I do hope that there will be an investigation into all this and hopefully Microsoft will not acquire the Nokia patents. Because if Microsoft acquires most of the important patents, be prepared to pay even more Microsoft tax on your Android phones.
Probably nothing will happen. MS simply has an endless amount of cash and can buy itself into every market in which they don’t even have to succeed because Windows and Office are such cash cows.
Of course Nokia failed to innovate for years and did not have a response to the iPhone. They could have fought and followed trough on their Qt everywhere strategy but instead they appointed a Trojan horse who destroyed the company from inside out by releasing a memo saying the company was standing on a burning platform. Elop made it sound like Nokia was on the verge of bankruptcy while they were still by a very wide margin the largest mobile phone maker in the world! The memo destroyed their software ecosystem, the spirit of their employees and killed the only true open mobile platform. All of this caused the stock price to plummet making them easy acquisition partners.
I do hope that there will be an investigation into all this and hopefully Microsoft will not acquire the Nokia patents. Because if Microsoft acquires most of the important patents, be prepared to pay even more Microsoft tax on your Android phones. [/q]
And that is exactly the kind of manipulation that was being referred to, especially since such an acquisition will personally enrich the Nokia CEO, not simply from bonuses for doing it from Nokia but also from being one of the largest Microsoft Stockholders as well (which will probably be an even bigger personal enrichment) due to his actions at Nokia which have a very high amount of conflict-of-interest in this whole situation – especially if Microsoft bought it.
Now, if his actions led to another unrelated company buying it (e.g. Google/Motorola Mobility) then would be a little less problem, but still Elop as CEO has been a problem from day one(1).
We’ll just chalk this up to nonsense since you can’t possibly expect anyone to take that serious. So yeah, like everyone else says — not happening.
It’s quite sad. I owned and loved an N770 and N800, and still love my N900 despite its relatively low-end processor and resistive screen. And I still get comments in meetings when I flip out the kickstand. It runs many of my desktop apps, for crying out loud – and well, too! And even though T-Mobile never sold them, their tech support actually helped me solve the one problem I had (I somehow managed to turn off 3G).
I really wanted an N9, especially given the rave reviews, but of course Nokia won’t sell me one.
I’ll miss Nokia as a smartphone vendor. Maybe the upcoming Canonical announcement at CES will give me reason to hope for another worthy mobile device.
Why can’t you get an N9?
It is only sold in a few selected countries. Plus it is bloody expensive.
It’s available here in the Philippines (possibly exclusively from Smart, though; I’m on Globe’s network), but yeah, it’s pricey. Why exactly did Nokia limit availability?
It makes WinP7 look bad.
Nokia limited the availability to prevent it from competing with the Lumia.
It’s not exclusive to Smart. The Nokia stores sell those at $500-$600 (Php 22.5K-27.5K) depending on the storage (16-64GB I think).
That’s good to hear. I guess it’s “exclusive” in the sense that there’s no subsidized/locked version from another carrier here. At least, I don’t recall Globe or Sun promoting the N9.
A couple of Norwegian chains sell it at NOK 2699 including VAT, which is a tiny bit cheaper than the iPhone 3GS.
How’s that possible? Its cost is ~500Eur across Europe.
I suspect they bought a ton of them and then noticed that it wasn’t the Lumia 800.
Lumia 800 is still ~500EUR
I’m in the U.S. and got an N9 yesterday off of Amazon. There are plenty of places to get it, you just won’t be able to subsidize it through your carrier.
In other words there is no option to shoot yourself in the foot and get ripped off by your carrier.
I live in the USA, and Nokia only sells the N9 in select overseas markets to avoid cannibalizing sales of their WinP7 phones, which are also not available in the USA yet.
Such is what passes for logic at Elop’s Nokia… *sigh*
eBay
Amazon will happily sell you one.
They decided that they will not ship them to countries that are not on the approved list. But there are a lot of liberal resellers that will ship it out of a country that have them in stock.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. I mean, it brings us back into “what is a smartphone, anyway?” question – and remember how a) Nokia reshuffled its divisions quite a few (too many…) times in the past few years b) Symbian was “outsourced” c) people behind N9 Meego were presumably moved to work on “Meltemi” (a post-S40 OS for “feature phones” or so the rumour goes), since it supposedly is an evolution of N9 Meego of sorts d) even present S40 “feature phones” are more of a “smartphone” than, say, iPhone in its first year, if you try to apply any resemblance of rigorous definition.
So perhaps MS would basically “just” get what is designated as the smartphone division now …and hopefully without grabbing the rights to that nice industrial design of N9.
At worst – yeah, Nokia should survive after another reinventing of itself, and I’m sure there were people lamenting the demise of their PC displays, or computers of the 80s (thankfully, the tires and rubber footwear are still around, even if under slightly different name
)
That would be delightful. Don’t let the door hit Elop’s rump on his way out. 😀
You can always buy N9 through 3rd party retailers:
http://www.expansys-usa.com/s.aspx?search=n9
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Or…
Nokia has chosen to go the exact opposite route that it should have gone to.
Instead of continuing with their investment in a Linux mobile O/S, they are going the Microsoft way.
The Nokia directors will get huge bonuses for this though.
I love my N900 phone. I have overclocked it to 1 GHz and it works like a charm. I am not using it as a phone though, but as a small tablet for movies, music and internet. The open nature of it, the Linux internals make it the sweetest piece of hardware I’ve recently owned.
Edited 2012-01-05 12:33 UTC
Oh because the linux route has been SOOO good to them…
*sigh* we are never going to see another phone like our beloved N900’s are we?
I’m keeping mine as long as poss, had it 2 years so far and still going strong.
Does he really have that fantastic a track record? The last claim I noticed from him was that the N9 was made in ninety-something thousand units in total, including prototypes, which is evident bullshit as it’s both fairly popular and still on sale (maybe not popular enough, though, as it’s seen a recent drop in price).
Personally, I think he’s full of shit.
Maybe… just maybe… this is the best thing that could happen. Imagine that the windows team and some excess manufacturing capabilities along with Elop and his marionettes are transferred to microsoft, and nokia is left alone to return to it’s previous great linux + qt strategy. We don’t have to call them “smartphones”, I would be quite satisfied with a linux based “dumbphone” phone running qt anyway. If Nokia threatens to back out of the previous deal and fire Elop then Ballmer would have to take this lousy deal even if the “windows smartphone division” would turn out to be totally worthless. Worst case of course is that enough patents are transferred that nokia would have to pay royalties to microsoft for every qt “dumbphone” produced.
Microsoft is supposedly acquiring Nokia’s smartphone division later this year. Stephen Elop will resign from Nokia shortly afterwards.
Achievement unlocked: Mission accomplished
I hope this is a smart move by Nokia to get rid off their failing *Windows Phone smartphone division* so they can focus on Symbian OS (the Nokia 500 and Nokia 700 are the only Nokua smartphones that are selling well) and MeeGo.
I know, I am a pathologically optimistic person…
Edited 2012-01-05 12:55 UTC
Pathologically. 😉
MeeGo is no more, Intel having transitioned it on to something called Tizen (I trust they’re using random name generators here). But Tizen is descended from the Moblin-side branch of MeeGo, not the Maemo-side branch, so Nokia wouldn’t touch Tizen. Though Nokia could probably just roll Maemo-side MeeGo into a new mobile OS called Miezo. Or whatever. [Edit: zima points out above they actually called it “Meltemi”. You can’t make these things up.]
I get dizzy just thinking about it.
Edited 2012-01-05 13:18 UTC
Failing how? All indications are that they’ve sold through their stock quite quickly, and the reception of the Lumia lineup has been overwhelmingly positive.
The Lumia is in very limited markets at the moment, because the roll out is a staged one due to the logistics of the thing. However, expect sales to ramp up significantly in the coming months.
At least in the US, the success of a smartphone platform is multifaceted and a large part comes from carrier willingness and proper incentive. Nokia’s assault on the US market will yield significant volume for Microsoft in my opinion, due to the fact that they have such an impressive marketing foot print and the fact that it will be ATTs Hero device.
It really is inevitable that Windows Phone will sell, and sell well. Carriers are absolutely terrified of placing all their eggs in the Android basket, and Windows Phone is the perfect opportunity to hedge their bets.
Once LTE lands, and especially once higher resolution screens are included in a Chassis, the carriers will be much more receptive.
On the other side of the spectrum, the price points possible by an economy of scale with the help of Nokia, should help Microsoft make significant inroads into the lower end market.
Windows Phone 7 is about a foot in the door. That foot in the door is around 5 million strong, with 50,000 apps. It by all means, did what it was intended to do.
It’s funny, You have the most sane response to all of this, based on actual facts. That the lumia 800 has been selling like hotcakes in countries where it’s been released so far.
But you have a score of 1, since hey… it’s OS News afterall. You get a good score by bashing something you’ve never even used.
I too think its to too early to write off Lumia before US debut, but seeing how Elop haven’t managed to push that phone running most US audience centred OS for Christmas season there only shows how lousy exec he really is.
The guy is clearly not doing any service to his proper employer and has been treating it as a dead man walking from the start.
Edited 2012-01-06 14:34 UTC
This news is quite interesting.
If Microsoft is going to buy Nokia and produce his own smartphone, that marks the end of Microsoft as a software producer for OEM hardware manufacturers.
Microsoft was once the PC Hardware company savior against IBM with his “x86 – run on any hardware” Operating System, and now it will produce his own hardware.
MS makeing their own phones will lock the WP7 potential to the niche that it is right now.
This differs from Google when bought Motorola electronics. Android already had a good market position when Google make that move. It was very hard for other Phone vendors to get down of Android. But which phone maker is going to want WP7 on their phones competing with the same company that makes it?
The phone makers will notice Android advantage as saying “At least we have the Android source code”
Or maybe there is a plan behind all the patent agreement that MS has: http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6113/6328613380_42966b69bf_o.jpg
If this is true, it will be interesting to find out the details in the future.
Assuming the deal goes through, I would be quite surprised to see Motorola Mobility continue as a Google-branded phone manufacturer.
Either Google will keep the patents and spin them off as an independent phone maker with a mutual patent defense agreement, or else sell their design and manufacturing capability to the highest bidder.
Google sells advertising, not phones.
They should give phones a try. Nothing too hands-on that might spook other manufacturers; just set a mandate for, say, vanilla Android with prompt updates, and let Moto figure out the details.
This is their big chance to do something meaningful about the whole “fragmentation” thing, and force at least one manufacturer to get with the program re: Android updates and show the others how it’s done.
IMO they’d be crazy to just let that go, after spending so much money on Moto and (hopefully) getting through the approvals process.
Edited 2012-01-06 04:00 UTC
Google “Nexus”. I think that series of phones is accomplishing the goal you propose already (with more than one manufacturer) without putting Google into direct competition with their OEMs.
The residual value of Motorola Mobility (after patents) is trivial compared to the future value of Android dominating the mobile space, so IMO they’d be crazy to keep Mobility as a direct manufacturing division and risk that long-term revenue stream.
I’m confident one of us is absolutely right. 😀
The Nexus phones only account for around 1 or 2 % of the total Android phones sold, AFAIK. And their availability is limited.
It would be a good idea to direct Motorola to develop a line of stock Android phones: basic, mid-range and high-end devices that would be supported for at least 2 years.
I for one would buy such a phone. The nexus phones on other other hand are barely available here, and all cost much more than competing Android phones.
That would be an interesting strategy, and if I switch to Android, I too would prefer stock to skinned. The risk would be alienating their manufacturing partners, but as long as they manage that aspect well, I’m with you.
Yes, Nexuses are in an awkward price slot, to the point it’s generally better to just get a phone which is 2-3x less expensive and will be supported not that much shorter than Nexus, from a manufacturer which doesn’t customise too much – or, even better, one officially supported by Cyanogenmod.
What makes you so optimistic, that Nokia as a primarily hardware vendor has the power to establish a new Smartphone OS in the marketplace alone, when even mighty MS in combination with Nokia cannot do that?
I know quite a few guys owning an N900, and they say it’s quite a nice gadget for a geek, but the are totally pissed that nokia dropped Software support almost immediately after they bought it (and that was well before the WP7-deal). No one of them (and also me) would ever trust Nokia again in developing an own platform and providing support on a long run.
Yep, that’s me. I love my N900, and I’m going to miss it when it dies, but as glowing as the reviews have been for the N9 I can’t justify buying one. It was bad enough when they muddied the waters with the shift in focus from Maemo to Meego, but then to place a death sentence on its successor in favor of Windows Phone? Why would I drop more than $600 on a device that might not maintain developer interest for more than 6 months?
Part of what made me love the N900 so much is that it was mine. No carrier to lock me down, force garbage upon me, or make me wait for progress (I can’t even buy an unlocked version of the Galaxy Nexus in Canada, unless I want to pay $700+ to some sketchy retailer or get it imported with what will likely be ridiculous shipping/duty). It also had operating system that was provided with a do-what-you-like attitude (and some pretty cool things were done in the developer community, which is sadly fracturing in the Maemo/Meego/Tizen/Mer/WP7 shakeup).
Developers’ interest will remain for N9 and other Mer compatible devices for way more than 6 months. I trust community efforts more than any companies who betrayed Maemo, Meego and etc.
Edited 2012-01-06 15:48 UTC
Simply look at Samsung. They started their OS story much later than Nokia, being 2 times smaller in smartphone, having worse dev support (compared to QT) and still Bada is already much larger than whole WP7 ecosystem and contrary to it growing steady. And Samsung doesn’t have hero devices like N9.
Maemo6 has greatly incorporated good ideas from WP7 on OS level (utilization of swipe gesture) with more traditional approach to apps to ease transition from other environments. Porting to WP7 having much different ui philosophy and restricted dev options is much harder.
Besides Nokia still has a strong brand in many countries that has only been tainted by windows on a phone nonsense.
Depressing indeed. I’ll be keeping my N9 as long as it’s viable. The Meego Harmattan guys are still releasing updates, but once that (eventually) dies I’m hoping that projects like Mer and Tizen pick up where they left off.
Goodbye Nokia. I’ll always remember you for my first ever mobile phone I bought with my own money (my first phone was actually a gigantic OKI, but that was handed down from my dad), your swanky banana-phone (we had it here in Asia before Hollywood gave Keanu one for The Matrix) and your awesome internet tablets.
It is funny you call this news not particularly earth-shattering when almost a year ago you were in complete denial when Elop single-handedly destroyed any hope for Nokia’s future.
From http://www.osnews.com/thread?462047 .
I am still in a 90s mindset mind you. The patents Microsoft will acquire with this deal will only further damage the market and let consumers pay the Microsoft tax on all smartphones. It is truly sickening. I am not optimistic about the future for Nokia either. They will dwindle into irrelevance without their smartphone business.
Yes, something I was clearly wrong about. I already said I was wrong about that months ago.
http://www.osnews.com/story/25250/Nokia_s_N9_Swan_Song_Be_Still_My_…
Thom is still young so cut him some slack. We “all” knew Nokia was doomed and RMS is right, but maybe you have a little bit of experience to see these things.
I don’t think Nokia is doomed. If they get a ridiculous price of the smartphone part (between what MS paid for Skype and what they were willing to pay for Yahoo) then Nokia could pimp their “feature” phone with Qt to be really cool cheap smartphone. Sure they’d have to compete with Android, but a lean mean Linux kernel with Qt ontop is so much more efficient than the Android stack that the user experience might be quite good.
Add a great webkit browser (Nokia ships Webkit longer than Apple on phones), navigation and Nokias unmatched reach to that mix and might have a phoenix here.
I would love to see a billion smart “feature” phone devices with Linux and Qt.
Oh god do I hope you are right! I absolutely love Qt and you are right, it is so much more efficient than the complete Android stack and QML (or is it QtQuick now?) is just so nice.
Could we also get a Nokia Qt-based “feature” tablet to complement the Qt-based “feature” phones? P-p-p-please?
Not everyone of age is that delusional.
They will not get any sensible price for the smartphone part. Elop have made just about anything to make sure of that.
“Microsoft is supposedly acquiring Nokia’s smartphone division later this year. Stephen Elop will resign from Nokia shortly afterwards.”
Would seem like an long an elaborate plan to buy Nokia
I’m sure most thought this would happen, might have thought it a was bit paranoid but the decisions coming out of Nokia were baffling and worrying.
Really disappointed in how this has panned out, I wanted to see a mass market Debian based phone show the world what open source really can do.
What phone can you buy today without the feeling that it’s secretly logging your activity?
It wil be a very bad decision for Microsoft to buy Nokia just for its plants and patents and not to retain the Nokia brand.
You can let Foxconn and co produce it for you.
Android and Apple has to many IP to really warrant additional IP to Microsoft for offensive use. The others has critical patents that can cripple you even you have 1000’s of your own.
Finland should nationalise Nokia. Maybe bureacrats will do a better job with it.
Really you believe that? Beauracrats fail at managing coal mines and banks nevertheless a company in hyper competitive industry.
Not generally no. But in this case maybe.Many of Chinese most successful electronics companies has the government as a veto strength shareholder and take part in business decisions.
/rant
There is a difference between shareholder centric and employee/supplier centric management.
Value is wrongly measure to what a company means to shareholders and not really what a company means to the economy and supply chains as a whole and tax benefits from it’s employees.
Nokia need restructuring and visionary management and state support. If government around the world can waste so much money on weapons it can support its business for employees.
The press and strategist and Nokia management has almost created an self-fulfilled prophecy where Nokia is doomed because they believe it cant compete with other offerings. One of the problem at Nokia has more to do with the board which employ the managers than the manager itself.
Basically it’s shareholders board is poisening the company with bad faith.
How many times have these rumors been denied? Eldar hasn’t really been accurate for a very long time though.
Don’t let it stop you from feeding red meat to the trolls still burnt because MeeGo was going nowhere.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/05/nokia-will-sell-crown-jewel…
(Also stop dreaming of Meego being able to take on both Android and iOS, because it never was able to and never will be able to.)
If Nokia smartphones will have only Windows mobile, that is for me the end of a 12 years long “love affair”.
Goodbye Nokia, it was fun while it lasted.
Nokia phones will never ever run windows mobile. Windows Phone on the otherhand, yes they do use that. If you don’t know the difference then you’re rather uninformed.
Nokia UK has given us the following comment:
“We’ve put these rumours to rest a long time ago. The focus for Nokia is on executing on our partnership around Windows Phone and growing the ecosystem, and each company has the tools they need to do soâ€
http://www.slashgear.com/microsofts-nokia-smartphone-division-acqui…
Doesn’t this guy have a hard-on for bashing Nokia? He’s clearly angry at them, and in my opinion he has a pretty biased opinion about Nokia.
On the other hand, it’s not hard to believe that Nokia could be bought out.
Without a smartphone division, Nokia literally has no reason to exist. And, given the level of cooperation between the two companies, there is very little to be gained by moving the division into Microsoft. I just don’t see this happening.
SD (Smart Devices) is the part of Nokia that does Symbian (dead end), MeeGo (dead end), WP7.
One way you look at it: since WP is being done at Microsoft, most of Nokia R&D (including Qt) is happening outside SD division.
Meego is not a dead end. Nokia positioned it as such, something that Microsoft obviously liked. There were no technical reasons. Id say, technically – WP is a dead end.
Edited 2012-01-05 23:49 UTC
Most of you seem to be unaware that it is a legal requirement of company directors to maximise shareholder returns and preserve capital. This requirement may include selling all or part of the business. Refusing or obstructing a takeover offer that benefits shareholders is illegal.
The Nokia Board of Directors obviously appointed Elop with the full knowledge that he would sell part of the operations to MS. That is why he was specifically hired.
Is it? I mean, obviously you want a manager to take care of a company and make it prosper, but is there really a legal requirement to a) maximise shareholder value and b) that would make not selling whole or part of the company given a) illegal? This would not mesh well with civil liberties, don’t you think?
Shareholder value is a rather recent idea (1980s, I think, by a guy named Rappaport) and companies were successful before. I’d really be surprised if somebody poured this idea into law. So, where would I find the law text that says maximising shareholder value is a company’s duty?
Yes. Directors are legally required to protect shareholder value. They can be sued for failure to do so.
Thanks for your answer. I’ve read of shareholders suing companies and/or managers. But those cases, like the current Lloyds of England case, are resting on misleading or false reports. The lawsuits are not about making losses or not maximising shareholder value. I’m not sure how that would work anyway.
So I’m not sure if your interpretation of the lawsuits isn’t a bit extreme. I really would like to see some printed material about this, not to play the stupid “facts & authority” card on you, but because I’d like to learn more about this issue and my Scroogle-Fu seems to be weak
There’s a world of difference between his original claim and the one italicized above. That leads me to believe that this person either hasn’t read the law, is confused by a poor interpretation, or just simply doesn’t understand it.
Whatever the case may be you’re absolutely on point to ask for tangible evidence in support of the claim. However, you won’t receive any because never in the history of business has any director(s) been in legal hot water for the claims made in the original post. His/her second claim is a little more in line with the truth but still poorly & too loosely worded. Being a crappy executive isn’t a crime, unless there’s malice involved.
Good point. This was Nokia which chose Elop. Now everyone disappointed with Elop should ask people who chose Elop why they did it.
In the long term or the short term? This is all rather vague, ya know.
I don’t see how badmouthing its own product portfolio, deprecating it while having incompatible replacement almost a year off, refusing to sell universally praised flagship device in most lucrative markets and causing step marketshare and market value depreciation (twofold in matter of few months) can even remotely be qualified as acting in shareholders interest.
If Nokia was to be sold it sold have to in February last year.
The Nokia-MS negotiations probably began informally at least 3-4 years ago. The Elop appointment was merely the final stage to prepare the inevitable takeover.
No. It’s complete nonsense that directors have a legal obligation to engage in any action that results in a benefit to the shareholders. There is no such language in the law which states what you’ve implied. My assumption is that you’ve either misinterpreted the law or haven’t actually read the wording yourself. Whatever the case, what you’ve written above is not true.
Can you please provide the source of this information.
(bad pun intended)
Yes it’s sad to see the company that stifled any ounce of innovation in the phone business after the year 2000. They capitalised on all their previous success and if they had it their way, they’d still have us using feature phones with a crippled OS, bundled with a bunch of overpriced, useless hardware features that no one ever uses.
Good riddance.
Nonsense. Nokia practically invented the smartphone, and developed Symbian which was a pretty good phone OS for its time. It’s still way ahead in terms of power consumption, and had multitasking, 3G, MMS, etc. etc. etc. before Android and iPhone development even had started. And of course, they had internet tablets that later would converge into phones with their Maemo handhelds before that as well.
Microsoft also had a perfectly decent smartphone OS, but got lazy.
Nokia dropped the ball in consumer smartphone and without iPhone smartphone would still equal to some N97 like design.
But everybody else (incl. Microsoft, Sun, Samsung, Sonyericsson) haven’t been any better either.
N97? That wouldn’t be so bad… and in fact, that design – especially in the form of few very similar (just omitting the sliding-out keyboard) handsets of the same generation & OS version – can be sort of seen as what is the smartphone now: just the 5230 apparently sold ~150 million units (most of them certainly still in use), making it by a wide margin the most widespread single smartphone model around.
Too bad only a few will ever get to experience the N9. I would trade an iPhone or even Android for this any day.
Think the ease of use of the iPhone with the flexibility of Android. The swipe UI is the most natural I’ve used. Things I love about the N9:
http://blog.gsmarena.com/7-things-i-love-about-the-n9-that-i-want-t…
Screw jailbreaks and VMs. This is the real deal. Too bad it will be buried as a relic in history.
Rubbish. If anything, your carries stifled it, castrating phones (rumour goes, that is a large part of why they mostly dropped Nokia phones in the US – Nokia was unwilling to castrate their phones too much)
That “crippled OS” is more of a “smartphone” than iPhone in its first year (web browser – Webkit for 3 or 4 years on S40 “feature phones”, mail, music player, photos …all check …but hey, also video recording and applications!*)
Let me get one inexpensive (then) decade-old S30 Nokia phone from the drawer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3510i ) and put working SIM in it – hm, proper GPRS works, & web browser; not the WAP default one, but Opera Mini (oh, right, one can install apps on it, hence also mail, IM, and so on), the most popular mobile browser in the world ( http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-200812-201201 & see for yourself what handsets dominate among its users: http://www.opera.com/smw/2011/11/ …then there’s separate category on Statcounter for “Nokia” browsers).
And there was (even older) 5510 of my buddy, first music phone (also introducing AAC to the masses, long before iPods were updated to support it). Or one ~contemporary to 3510i, not much more expensive, cameraphone.
Few short years later, and in the middle of the naughties all the capabilities I listed ^* are offered by fairly inexpensive (lagging a year or two behind more premium models, and with cheap camera) 5200.
“Stifled any ounce of innovation in the phone business after the year 2000”, what are you smoking?
Or are just confused by how Apple released their (second) mobile phone attempt probably very nearly the time when its hardware only became affordable (after all, LG introduced very similar Prada only half a year earlier), and the software stack (by the virtue of just being introduced) didn’t have any baggage & legacy (from the times when limited HW made very different things sensible) to support?