4 ms·

According to rumors Nokia had lots of discussion with MS and Google about which platform they should take. Got the impression that the proposition from MS was s

by trm42 11y ago

According to rumors Nokia had lots of discussion with MS and Google about which platform they should take. Got the impression that the proposition from MS was somehow better and at least initially gave more room to move for Nokia. Later on got the impression that lots of things didn't went as was promised. But, Nokia is still alive and the situation seems to be a lot rosier for them after selling the mobile phone business. They got good price and got really cheap loan from Microsoft as part of the deal. Of course in PR side Nokia didn't have to kick out the phone engineers. Microsoft is handling that still and getting the negative PR from that. One has to remember that earlier Ericsson quit the phone business as well by selling that to Sony. Actually those phones got better after that :)

aleem 11y ago
Yes, that's exactly right. Ballmer wanted to react to Google's Motorola acquisition and Nokia got a good deal out of it. Ballmer was heavily criticized (by the board no less) and the acquisition was mostly a write-off [1]. Compare this to Google's Motorola acquisition, it's clear that Nokia was a bad buy and Elop netted the company the most amount of money possible so all in all a good outcome for Nokia. As per Don Harrison, head of M&A at Google: [2] > I think the Motorola transaction has been a success for us. Financially, we bought the asset for $12.5 billion. It had $3 billion in cash; we were able to sell the Home division for $2.5 billion; we ended selling the handset division for $3 billion. There were some other tax assets as well. When you work through the math, you realize we spent between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion for the patent assets. At the time, the nearest comparable transaction was the Nortel patent auction where Microsoft and Apple teamed up to buy that asset for $4.5 billion. And there’s a good argument that the Motorola patent portfolio is a better portfolio. Which is why the INSEAD article seems so off base. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/satya-nadella-just-undid-steve-ballmers-last-big-mistake-2015-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/satya-nadella-just-undid-stev... [2]: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/02/12/a-peek-at-googles-ma-ambitions/ http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/02/12/a-peek-at-googles-ma-...

by trm42 11y ago

aleem 11y ago

Yes, that's exactly right. Ballmer wanted to react to Google's Motorola acquisition and Nokia got a good deal out of it. Ballmer was heavily criticized (by the board no less) and the acquisition was mostly a write-off [1]. Compare this to Google's Motorola acquisition, it's clear that Nokia was a bad buy and Elop netted the company the most amount of money possible so all in all a good outcome for Nokia. As per Don Harrison, head of M&A at Google: [2] > I think the Motorola transaction has been a success for us. Financially, we bought the asset for $12.5 billion. It had $3 billion in cash; we were able to sell the Home division for $2.5 billion; we ended selling the handset division for $3 billion. There were some other tax assets as well. When you work through the math, you realize we spent between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion for the patent assets. At the time, the nearest comparable transaction was the Nortel patent auction where Microsoft and Apple teamed up to buy that asset for $4.5 billion. And there’s a good argument that the Motorola patent portfolio is a better portfolio. Which is why the INSEAD article seems so off base. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/satya-nadella-just-undid-steve-ballmers-last-big-mistake-2015-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/satya-nadella-just-undid-stev... [2]: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/02/12/a-peek-at-googles-ma-ambitions/ http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/02/12/a-peek-at-googles-ma-...