Microsoft admits failure in Nokia acquisition

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in microsoft on (#EXQ5)
story imageWhen Microsoft announced its deal to acquire Nokia's mobile phone business, Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive at the time, boasted that the deal was a "bold step into the future." But on Wednesday, Microsoft's current chief executive, Satya Nadella, sought to leave that deal in the past. He announced a broad rethinking of the company's phone strategy, a change that includes cutting up to 7,800 jobs, mostly from the phone business, and writing off nearly all of the value of its Nokia acquisition. The move is a clear acknowledgment that the deal was a multibillion-dollar strategic blunder by Mr. Ballmer, who had envisioned it as a way to make Microsoft more competitive in the mobile market.

While Microsoft will not stop making smartphones, Mr. Nadella said on Wednesday that it would no longer focus on the growth of that business. Microsoft has continued to lose market share in smartphones since acquiring Nokia's handset business. The company has failed to turn the Windows Phone operating system, which runs on its handsets, into a vibrant alternative to the two leading mobile platforms, iOS from Apple and Android from Google.

This has been "a big blow" for Finland's economy. The "death curve" of their electronics industry as Nokia faltered and fell to just 2-3 per cent of the global smartphone market, along with falling global demand for paper products and EU sanctions on neighboring Russia, have entrenched the Scandinavian country in a three-year recession. Meanwhile, Nokia has confirmed rumors that it intends to reenter the smartphone market. Nokia certainly won't be recouping the massive investment required to start manufacturing smartphones again, instead they would design the products and earn the royalties, but everything else would be up to whomever they partner with.

Who owns the rights to the Nokia N9 UI (Meego) (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-07-21 08:33 (#EZ0S)

I am just sad that the Nokia N9, and specifically the user interface of that phone, doesn't seem to come back. The Joola people have stated that they don't own the rights to the UI, and considering the UI of their phone it doesn't look like they were the ones inventing it either.

Nokia N9 still has the best interface of any touch device I have ever tested: 3 screens.
#1 is apps in a scrollable, configurable list
#2 is all your active apps, running in parallel. Open one, close on, close all
#3 is all your messages, combined in one long chronological scroll list: Facebook, rss, twitter etc. No need to open any web page!
You navigate between the screens by swiping left or right. All apps are closed by swiping from top to bottom, and you leave to the home screen with the app running in the background by swiping from right to left. So elegant and simple
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