So this didn't concern anyone. No thread about this? Or did I just miss it? Anyway, this month Nokia has sold more phones than ever. In fact, they sold 100% of them to Microsoft.

Steven Elop got some 18 M ($ or €, who cares) out of the deal, which has annoyed a lot of Finns. People (me included) have had a hard time figuring out what Elop's task was in Nokia. No matter what the reason for hiring him was, what he did was he packed up a nice package of Nokia Company, which Microsoft is about to buy. And got the 18 M reward. The funny thing is that if the deal has to be cancelled due to any legal reasons, Elop can return to his job as CEO of Nokia. To do what?

Another funny (well, sad, really) thing is that Elop is in the middle of a divorce struggle. And therefore he can't refuse to accept the 18 M award, even if he wanted.

Looks like Elop was basically put there to weaken Nokia stock so that Microsoft could buy it and gain full control. Business can be an ugly thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Elop#Career

Microsoft is really in desperation mode now. And nobody wants their tablets either...

I want their tablet, it's the first tablet I actually find useful, I mean the one with windows 8, not RT, of course. Being able to use all my desktop apps, and most importantly, games, means a lot to me. However, there is no way I'm going to throw so much money for it. I'd rather buy a new computer.

Nokia made some debatable choices.

I've always been a fan of Nokia phones and hardware in general (I worked for them as a contractor when in IBM) and I really really liked their people.

Having something like Symbian (which smashed to bit some Linux competition back in the motorola days) decay and not getting on the right bandwagon (ugly as it could have been) led to this end, Elop had most prolly set up shop for the Microsoft acquisition long ago.

Holy. Crap. What a douchebag.

Saying I feel guilty about not raising the topic here would be rather true.

I followed the story for over a year. I did assume MSFT was a candidate for NOK purchase about a year ago. I bought some NOK shares for 2.7$, it was somewhere in Oct 2012. My reasoning was that they finally made a product that will be bought(The Nokia Lumia). Due to its sales rise, the shares were going up. I dumped 3/4 of what I had for 5.3(I regret that post factum, l.o.l..), and the rest for about 6.2. So gain of about 100% over less than a year.

Now about Elop being bad.. No, I disagree. It's not that he is ruining companies, it is more like he is a specialist of crisis management. He is hired when things go bad, to try to make'em less so.

I do not know if it would be better for NOK to make Android phones rather than Windows. I actually liked the partnership. Should NOK be able to keep it's devices, it'd dominate the third ecosystem of the mobile world. Well, it does do that. And that ecosystem did grow FAST, + NOK had the MSFT insurance should it fail. NOK also had MSFT support of 1bil/year for (3?) years, in exchange for revocation of right to make smartphones on platforms other than MSFTs.

Due to it's name NOK would get established in Android too, easily(Android under NOK brand was planned for release somewhere late 2012 I think). I kind of regret the sale, although the shares jumped 40% in a day, giving me over 1k $ in minutes. Yet the board of directors says trying to keep it would be too risky due to deteriorating cash position. Well, they know better.

I will saw that his comment about going Windows Phone because Nokia wouldn't stand out since they were too late to the Android game... that's a somewhat reasonable thought process. But I don't think Windows Phone ever panned out and they should have jumped ship. But what would I know, I've never run a multibillion dollar company.

I think they would have done all right if they didn't just throw out all of their work up till elop showed up.

He basically showed up and said to everyone "Everything you've been doing up till now is useless and has been a waste of time". I can imagine it hurt employee satisfaction and productivity quite a bit.

The whole idea was that Microsoft needed a way to push Windows Phone. I don't see how that statements makes any sense if not viewed in that light. Who wouldn't want to buy a Lumia with Nokia's version of Android on it? At the very least they could have made Android phones mainly, and then one or two Windows phones to see what would happen. And when nobody wants to buy them, they are still in the game because the also bet on the safe horse, Android.

I imagine that's why Shawn Hargreaves blog has been so sparse lately, since they killed XNA.

How long has he been with Microsoft? Hope he's doing well.

After some stalkery, it seems he is working on the Windows Phone. Poor guy. Brainwashed. :/

https://twitter.com/shawnhargreaves

In above posts I see you people a totally confused in the benefits for Nokia in using windows.

So, two paths.

I. Nokia immediately makes Lumia on Android.

1. It is a more developed ecosystem, and due to Nokia's bardname, and actual quality of their Lumia phones, Lumias would be bought by people. Arguably more so than if they were based on Windows.

2. Nokia would be all alone, GOOG would not provide any special treatment for Nokia, as there would be no benefit for GOOG in doing so.

3. Market share within the Android ecosystem would be rather small, although it would probably be growing, but it'd be pure hardware and marketing race with Samsung.

4. Should NOK fail, and go bankrupt there wouldn't be a company as interested as MSFT to buy it's phone division, and the shareholders would be doomed.

II. Nokia starts with Windows, and joins Android later.

1. Windows is an undeveloped but rapidly growing ecosystem, which Nokia easily dominates. This way Nokia benefits hugely from growth of the ecosystem. Within years, when Windows phone becomes one of THE ecosystems(with at least 33% share), Nokia still holds at least half of that.

2. Nokia is assisted by MSFT, both directly (Microsoft was directly paying 250 000 000$ per quarter to Nokia), and indirectly by marketing efforts. They did pay for advertisements. It is overall important, and especially important if you're short of $.

3. Well I touched this in #1. Nokia dominates Windows Phone, which is a rapidly growing ecosystem.

4. As an almost exclusive Windows Phone maker, Nokia is of interest for MSFT to acquire. It is an insurance from bankruptcy.

P.S:
The sales of Nokia Asha & other phone lines deteriorated extremely quickly, way faster than one(me for example, and well.. All analyst I've read) would be expecting. So I do believe it is likely that Nokia did find itself with a lot less cash than it would like.

P.P.S:
The deal is not yet finalized. And taking in to consideration it is a HUGE, & FREE advertisement for brand-names of both companies, I would not be surprised if the deal gets canceled(after a good hike in the phones sales in Q3 2013).

Rapidly growing? Microsoft just wrote down their earnings this year/quarter due to how they couldn't sell what stock they did make. It was somewhere in the billion dollar range. That was just to cover the stock they couldn't sell too, not any incidental costs related to development or advertising or other costs.

Seems more likely that Nokia's executives were offered a whole lot of money by Microsoft and suddenly decided that Nokia's future was less important than those money. If everyone else (that didn't already suck) can make a lot of money by selling Android phones, surely Nokia could do so too. I don't think their earlier success was just random luck.

Definitely, and it would have been a good thing for Android if they had. I know a lot of people that only buy Nokia, but who also complain that the app they want isn't available for it.

Turns out though that there's really only two handset makers that actually make a significant amount of money off android phones. That being Samsung and Microsoft (go figure).

Nokia Lumia holds ~80% of Windows Phone market share, and its sales grew 20-30% a QUARTER. Yes, rapidly growing. MSFT income is deteriorating because the mobile segment of Windows is still tiny, and the PC world is shrinking.

Nobody can. The only android phone makers than earns is Samsung. Perhaps now somebody else has gotten form underwater, I'm a bit outdated.

But being able to sell Anrdoid phones, and covering the R&D & marketing costs is not easy.

Happen:

How come the second does?

Which is an incredibly small portion of the over all phone market. 20% of 0.1% is not a lot

Mostly licensing dodgy software patents.

1. Name an app that isn't available for Windows phone
2. Develop it
3. Profit

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it so that
Android is only for phones and tablets. No desktops.
And if some laptop would run Android, it wouldn't be considered
a computer, but a device for surfing and chatting. iPhone and iPad
run IOS, which is not OSX. IOS is like Android, while OSX is for real
computers. Windows 8 is for everything. Sure there are different
versions of win8, but still, if there's some truth in my comparison,
Microsoft should have all the keys to success in developing
a system which will seamlessly work on any device.

That's not likely. The user base is really small still.

If that were a viable business model, people would have already done so.

Yes, I forgot the mandatory 3rd step:

3.
4. Profit

It's well over 1%. And it has about doubled over the latest 12 months, with growth rate accelerating. In a still rapidly growing market.

Essentially over the past 12 months Lumia gained market share in an ecosystem that is gaining market share in a growing mobile phone market.

On this chart you can see the actual growth rate. The Q3 2012 is when they actually started to make phones which are worthy to buy, on an appropriate OS(the Windows Phone 7.X is shit).

I see no reason for the latest trend to slowdown or whatsoever. The phones are good, and the only reason I didn't buy a Lumia at my latest upgrade was lack of apps, still. But the disadvantage is getting smaller & smaller. All big apps are generally available, however I needed Oanda's trading platform hence I went for an android.

Never trust a chart that doesn't tell you where the data was obtained from.

You're right, but the data is correct. I held NOK shares for almost a year, and yes official NOK reports were these. I assure you the next one is not going to disappoint. I'd be say.. 3:1, Q3 growth is over 25%. There are speculations if it is to reach 10m. If so current deal is likely to be reassessed.

Ooh, and.. There is another thing. Perhaps NOK doesn't plan to sell anything at all. Just free marketing never harms..

Microsoft sucks, Microsoft Windows sucks, and Microsoft Windows Phone sucks. With Valve bringing gaming to Linux you can expect the Windows desktop to die off quickly. Not the desktop, mind you, but the Windows one. They still have a decent grip of office software, but office software sucks anyway. Death to that evil beast!

How many businesses do you think are going to switch from Windows to ValveOS?

How many do you think are going to switch to linux? How many already have (IBM is a big one that has switched)?

One of the big reasons keeping people from (personally) switching was games. Many productivity applications already have a usable alternative on linux.

Super large corporations like IBM are fairly anomalous. While they are big, there are only a few such entities compared to the hundreds of thousands of mid sized businesses.

Those are the ones who make up the majority of the PC users, and for the most part, all the tools they need have already been written for Windows so it doesn't make sense to jump ship to a minor platform.

There's a difference between usable and actively supported by a professional support team that are available 24/7.

How about the multitude of governments and school districts across the globe?

Steady stream of people switching. It's only a matter of time.

Such things exist for opensource software.

It will happen slowly.

Then again whe you have examples like the ones I have in my RL job, damn...you gott ask WTF?

(Long story short: we developed a HW product suite in which the server software runs on CentOS but for ONE SINGLE HW there is one and only a control tool dev'd for Windows...)

It's so cute to see people discussing this death without actual arguments, just cos'.. Windows mustdie

In Russian IT world you can sometimes hear windows referred as a "mustdie"(мастдай).

Nevertheless.. Windows phone market share growth rapidly. I see no reason for that to change anytime soon. And the worst thing to happen to Windows desktop, is it to become a niche OS. Which is inevitable also, but I can not imagine Windows to disappear from the market any sooner than 20yr+. Most likely not even in a century.

I think WP8 will do as well as WP7 did. Maybe a bit better. Maybe.

I do not think it will EVER disappear , but there IS a change and it's going to happen slowly.

It is already doing MUCH better. It is a fact.

ValveOS SteamOS is basically just a Linux distribution that Valve will maintain. More than that, they are also supporting Steam on Ubuntu Linux (and in the future, probably other popular distros). Other unsupported distros still work, but aren't officially supported. IOW, as far as games support is concerned Linux is Linux is Linux in the long term.

Businesses don't care about games, but I didn't say that they did. I pointed out that office software will keep businesses tied in, albeit it sucks and users would be better off abandoning it, but they don't know any better so such is life. For the most part, businesses don't really have "desktops" anyway. They have "workstations". It's merely semantics, but the main difference is that the workstation probably only runs a few applications. Applications that could be replaced with free and open source ones. That is easy. The hard part was replacing games.

Append:

Once Linux is running in the homes users will get used to it. Suddenly the switch at work won't be so daunting or scary. Progressively it will become ideal to switch the work machines over too.

Append:

With regards to support, that is mostly a virtual promise in the Windows world anyway. Unless you're a big player spending 5 or 7 figures on licensing you aren't likely to get much in the way of support. Resources are limited. The downside is that a proprietary vendor actually prevents you from hiring anybody else to fix a problem or add a feature, or doing it yourself, for that matter. An open source one encourages you to fix it yourself if you want to, or find a better price for the support. It also encourages problems to be found and fixed sooner. It's basically all win for business to change to open source. Change is never free, but in the long term it will be better for the whole planet.

Nvidia killed support for 4 monitors in Linux because Windows couldn't do it.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-linux-basemosaic-ubuntu-parity,24519.html

The only reason they got somewhat decent multi monitor support on nvidia cards to begin with was because of windows 7 requiring some extra features. They claimed they couldn't implement XRandR 1.2+ properly due to a lacking kernel feature. Turns out, no, they were just being stupid, and didn't want to do the work required unless windows wanted the same feature set.

If you want better multi (3+) display support you go intel or amd, period. NVidia's has always been a rather large joke. Sadly at the moment, nvidia has smoother 2-3 display gaming support. But AMD is working on its (driver) issues with frame timing.

I thought hardware drivers ran in ring 0? In other words, they could do whatever they wanted, no need to rely on the kernel.

Exactly. Their excuse was that they needed some kind of open kernel api to get things to behave properly. I can't remember the exact thing they were looking for.. But it sounded like an excuse to me.

Disgusting. type568 feels good for never buying a windows licence.

Except by using Windows, even without buying it, you're still showing application developers that writing only for Windows is a viable option. Third-party developers don't care if you buy Windows, they care that they can spend less time worrying about portability.

So in effect, you're still helping Microsoft.

I know I do
But due to above stated state of things I can't just transition to Linux.