The Facts:
Nokia was acquired for staggering €5.44bn (£4.6bn)
By 2012, it was the world’s second-largest mobile phone maker in terms of unit sales.
Nokia has been struggling to regain its lead in both the smartphone and feature phone markets.
Microsoft has been attempting an entry to the hardware scene with the Surface tabs being a decent but not noteworthy attempt.
Microsoft is behind the rest of the market in a number of ways, both in the mobile software (Windows Phone 8) & the hardware sectors.
The Pros
For Microsoft: Success in phones is important to success in tablets. Success in tablets will help PCs.
They can now control their own ecosystem just as Apple has been doing time immemorial, Google is handling with Motorola and Samsung is attempting with Tizen.
For Nokia: this is an important moment of reinvention and from a position of financial strength, we can build our next chapter,” said Risto Siilasmaa, chairman of the Nokia Board of Directors.
This puts money in “Nokia’s” pockets and moves them away from that debt they’ve been struggling with. This gets them to a level of low debt and allowing them to innovate more.
The Cons:
For Nokia: it means that a decades-long heritage as one of the world’s leading mobile phone makers – which had been a source of huge pride in Finland – is over.
Microsoft: hasn’t shown it can succeed with an Apple-style approach; in fact, quite the opposite. Their attempt at the Surface tabs was mediocre as they ended up with alot of unsold stock.
Microsoft enters a completely new field of work even though they haven’t mastered their mobile software end (Windows Phone 8). Their levels of innovation within WP8 has been slow and lack lustre at best.
Conclusion:
All we can do here is hope for the best. Same as we did for the Google, Motorola buy out. The next generation of Microsoft phones, (feels weird typing that), will be AWESOME as they’ve done with the Lumia range, but the question remains, will they offset Android? Can this assimilation hurt Apple? The sad answer to this (my unsolicited opinion), maybe not but we hope for the best. Just as Motorola’s acquisition hasn’t done much good to the Android brand, I have a feeling that history shall repeat itself. But if Microsoft duplicate their success in Xbox (Hardware) to their new found Phone business then they have a promising future.
