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

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-...