Hot on the heels of its largest ever acquisition, an $8.5 billion purchase of Skype, Microsoft is reportedly not purchasing Nokia’s market-leading cell phone business for $19 billion, at least according to a quick denial from the Finnish wireless giant. Nokia dismissed the rumor as “baseless.”
Earlier today the tech industry was all atwitter over a single tweet from Mobile-Review.com editor Eldar Murtazin: “One small software company decided last week that they could spent 19 bln USD to buy a part of small phone vendor. Thats it.”
Huh. On the one hand, an acquisition of Nokia would be a surefire way for Microsoft to quickly capture a dominant share of the mobile market, at least temporarily. On the other hand, such a deal as rumored just strikes me as kinda stupid for both companies.
Goldy, can you explain to us why your speculation about the merits of such an acquisition has any value to us as readers of this blog? Like, have you ever worked in technology or in any capacity that would give you some sense of authority or credibility in this?
Microsoft already effectively owns Nokia. The Windows Phone deal with them kind of sealed that relationship. Microsoft can’t really buy Nokia outright until they have quite a few Nokia phones running the OS out there. If Microsoft were to buy them outright, every other Windows Phone vendor would stop making phones. It’s possible that at some point Nokia dominates all the other Windows Phone vendors. At that point Microsoft could purchase them without shooting themselves in the foot.
@1, Actually, I have worked in technology. I was doing “dot.com” stuff since before there was a “dot.com,” doing meetings and joint ventures with giants like AT&T, British Telecom, Sprint, and 3M. I’m also a self-taught programmer who co-founded my own software publishing company, and freelanced for years doing product management, consulting, web development and technical writing.
But you know, none of that matters. Ultimately, all that matters is the quality of my writing and analysis, just like ultimately, that’s all that mattered with my political blogging.
Carbon, sulfur…diamonds…there’s something about this planet…something I remember back in Earth’s history that would allow me to make….
@3 but that’s just it. there wasn’t any analysis. just a claim that this would be stupid. you didn’t say why…
so i asked why i should take your claim as valid. your response sounds kinda defensive and isn’t really convincing. “doing meetings and joint ventures” sounds vague to me. What was your role in these meetings and ventures? and not to insult you, honestly, but doing some freelance work on websites and some tech writing doesn’t qualify you to understand whether such an acquisition is a good or stupid idea.
it makes your post come off kinda like link bait b/c there’s just the spectre of Microsoft and 19 billion. it’s a lohan/cocaine kinda post