I don't agree with all the things in this article, but there certainly rings a bell of truth in there somewhere.
A 5.44 billion EURO transaction to acquire a company that is already in a strategic partnership with you and working exclusively with your platform doesn't make sense.
My vote also goes for Nokia being financially in trouble, and M$ have their hand forced by the fear of a collapse in Nokia would gut the distribution channels for all the flagship windows phone models.
Worse, what if word got out and someone else bought them?
...wait, no, that would mean Microsoft would have some special insider knowledge of Nokia's finances that no one else was party to. Surely not.
The article is full of errors and unbacked claims.
> ... adding on a mobile phone business that Microsoft probably should abandon ...
Why should it be abandoned? Just because the author isn't a fan of WP8?
> have argued that Stephen Elop made a massive strategic error by choosing Windows Phone over Android; ... It would have been to Nokia’s benefit to have everyone running Android, including themselves.
Not necessarily true. There's only one manufacturer making money on Android at the moment, Samsung. When Elop got aboard, Nokia was already waaay behind. It's not like he drove them down, he merely tried saving them. Choosing Android might have gone better, but probably not. At least it was better going for WP than sticking to their own, dying systems.
20% of the general public in Poland, Mexico and some Eastern European countries don't agree with that claim. People forget how varied is the smartphone market across regions.
I can't find anything to back that claim up. The only thing I can find that's even close suggests that Nokia had 19% marketshare in Mexico for 2012, but based on other stats that's by far accounted for by Symbian devices:
People want smartphones. WP phones are the cheapest entry level smart phones (such as Nokia 510, 520, 610, 620) they can afford in eastern europe.
You see WP devices 'a lot' (that is: you get to see them once in a while) over there, but these are mostly owned by people who wanted some sort of smartphone. Also a lot of them are quite annoyed that there are no apps.
Except the argument was that the general public aren't fans of Windows phones, to which 20% market share of a few regions was used as a counter argument.
I would tend to think that market share is one indicator of a phone platform's popularity, and while 20% is not bad, it's not an amazing figure either.
I looked around for a chart of the iPhone's market share by year, but couldn't find one. I remember the iPhone having trouble in its first year or two, and most of WP8's credibility comes from the ~2 year old Lumia line.
True. In 2010 the iPhone only had about 4% market share. My only point is that I'm talking about popularity of existing devices. It may well be that Microsoft will turn it around!
The other way to look at it is that iPhone had ~100% share of the "modern smartphone" market (choose your own name for it, but Blackberries and Symbian don't count).
> ...wait, no, that would mean Microsoft would have some special insider knowledge of Nokia's finances that no one else was party to. Surely not.
Not really an issue if the board approved going to Microsoft with the financial information first. Moreover, when negotiating the strategic partnership, Microsoft may have gotten a right of first negotiation, that would legally entitle it to first dibs on the acquisition and certain "insider knowledge" anyway. Ultimately, shareholders might still have to approve the transaction, but there's no insider trading issue with reaching out to potential acquirers on the downlow.
>My vote also goes for Nokia being financially in trouble, and M$ have their hand forced by the fear of a collapse in Nokia would gut the distribution channels for all the flagship windows phone models.
I believe M$ and Nokia made a strategic agreement around 12 months ago that guaranteed that if anyone were to purchase Nokia, it would be Microsoft. The writing has been on the wall since then. I don't know why people are surprised by this move.
A 5.44 billion EURO transaction to acquire a company that is already in a strategic partnership with you and working exclusively with your platform doesn't make sense.
My vote also goes for Nokia being financially in trouble, and M$ have their hand forced by the fear of a collapse in Nokia would gut the distribution channels for all the flagship windows phone models.
Worse, what if word got out and someone else bought them?
...wait, no, that would mean Microsoft would have some special insider knowledge of Nokia's finances that no one else was party to. Surely not.