Is this how things are done now? Definitely cheaper than a buyout and you don't have to worry about regulatory backlash from either country's government.
When corporations are suffering as Nokia is, regional management changes happen all the time. I don't think anyone can argue that Mark Louison was doing a swell job of promoting Nokia in the US and that Nokia's US market share will suffer because of the change.
I think the main thing that's happening is the common philosophy among investment consultants today that when a stock isn't making bank for a few quarters, it is time to sell it for spare parts.
It might that this is "responsible". But it is worth consider that Apple wouldn't exist if that logic had been followed.
Why do you imply that Microsoft is the prime mover in this whole turn of events? I think it's clear that the board, shareholders, and much of the public (witness the hemorrhaging marketshare) had lost faith in the ability of Nokia to develop a modern smartphone operating system internally. It's likely that the board brought in Elop (and , yes, some of his former colleagues) to make a deal like this happen under the most favorable terms for Nokia.
What's not so clear is that this strategy was the right one. Particularly since the big, bold move isn't doing Windows Phone 7. (They're late to that party already; LG, Samsung and HTC already have phones out now.) Instead, what distinguishes Nokia so far is what they're not doing: fielding an Android device. And if you think Nokia doesn't have enough resources to do both, why haven't they dumped Meego yet?
There may be unannounced considerations that make this deal reasonable. But if you're going to bet your company on a single third-party platform (something that you don't need to do), it seems odd for it to be one that has yet to gain any serious traction in the marketplace.
Hence (I think) the suggestions that, to put it politely, Elop's past affiliations have skewed his judgment...
The Finnish press is currently having a field day with the fact that according to filings Elop still owns a substantial amount of Microsoft shares, while holding no Nokia shares or options at all. He blames it on insider trading laws :-)
In short: Nokia would give Android so much market share that Android would be unstoppable. Which sounds nice, but it would mean that Nokia would very quickly have almost no leverage over the ecosystem.
So, his reasoning is based on the idea that Microsoft depends on Nokia as much as Nokia depends on Microsoft. When WP7 fails completely, life will go on for Redmond, but will be over for Nokia.
You have leverage when your partner needs the partnership more than you do. In this case, Microsoft has as much of it as it wants. As soon as Nokia is committed to WP7, Microsoft can do whatever it wants with them and they'll just put up with it, because they need the "partnership".
Elop is not dumb. He is screwing Nokia for Microsoft.
He gave a few answers that I think the average bystander would assume were being made by a Microsoft staff member. This is one of them. The one about the priority being to grow WP7 when asked about competition with other WP7 manufacturers was another.
Microsoft has much tighter controls on their ecosystem than Google. If Nokia choose Android as it's platform of choice they would inevitable be compared a sea of cheap Android phones. Cheap WP7 phones don't exist. Microsoft has minimum specs phones must meet to use WP7. Nokia's arrangement with Microsoft probably allows them to be the only phone manufacturer that can dip into the value segment with WP7.
There is also short-term benefits for Nokia choosing Microsoft, like dedicated engineering resources from MS and money put toward marketing the OS.
Considering the beating Nokia shares took after the announcement, I don't think that same public has any faith on Microsoft's ability to deliver a modern operating system.
This falls squarely into the "buy on the rumor sell on the news" pattern we see shortly before every Apple announcement. There was a run-up on Nokia stock in the preceding week, quite possibly out of the hope that Nokia was going to make a drastic move or sell outright to Microsoft or Google.
You can't interpret stock signals on such a short-term basis. A better snapshot of the market's confidence in Elop would be to look at NOK performance since his hiring (since many have been predicting this move for MONTHS) - NOK is up over %15 since September 2010.
If I were Elop, I'd want to hire someone I knew and felt I could trust to do the job. Elop probably knows a lot of people at Microsoft. Expecting him not to hire a Softie would be tying a hand behind his back.
And that is exactly the problem of hiring softies - they export the amazingly successful practices that resulted in blockbusters like Vista, Zune and Kin.
I'm in Seattle, and I've worked with a lot of ex-Microsoft people on various projects. I find that they are often committed to the Microsoft way of doing things, which is often appropriate for a huge software company, but wildly inappropriate for a small startup.
Unlike other big companies there is usually a Microsoft way of doing things instead of just the best way. For those coming out of Google there isn't really anything like a complete inhouse software stack that they have been exposed to like there is at Microsoft.
Yea, Techrights has several cases where ex-Microsoft people that was hired recently led the company to add a MS stack as an option. It is interesting that an issue that was discussed there years ago has become more widely discussed recently.
Your comment seems like a total non sequitur. Plus, you conveniently exclude successes like Windows XP, Windows 7, Office, SQL Server, Sharepoint, XBox, etc.
All these products, with the exception of the Xbox and SQL Server, owe their success more to marketing than to anything else.
Windows XP and Windows 7 are sold bundled with computers - you basically can't buy one without the other. The case of Vista is different - it was so awful people bought computers with Vista (counting as a Vista sale) and upgraded them to XP. Low sales indicated people put off buying new computers because it wasn't worth it - the new computer with Vista would be worse than the old one with XP. Windows 7 success was caused, in part, by those computers - they wouldn't last forever and, one day, would have to be replaced. Windows 7 was being bundled by then. And it was good enough as not to warrant upgrades to XP.
Office has no credible competition. Weren't various versions of Office using undocumented Windows APIs that their competitors couldn't and, thus, had lower performance and worst integration with the environment? I remember something in these lines. That and bundling it with Windows in corporate licenses that made others non-competitive.
And, please, Sharepoint is a joke. The only reason someone still uses it is because it's impossible to migrate its contents to any sane platform. And, of course, fear of admitting such an incompetent decision choosing it.
As for SQL Server, it's a decent platform. I have to admit it is Microsoft third best product, behind only the natural keyboard and their mice.
