9 ms·

Microsoft offloads Nokia feature phone business to Foxconn for $350M

70 points by yread 10y ago

windsurfer 10y ago
The bigger deal for me is that they are licensing their brand to make new phones and tablets. I'm still sad about the Maemo line of phones, but I'm hoping they bring back a brand of linux phones after this new deal.
- walterbell 10y ago
  What we need now is for HMD Global to acquire Jolla. We also need an infographic of the migration of Nokia engineers between different corporate entities and the dollar value destroyed/created during each hop. Let's hope this corporate re-engineering saga has a happy ending. I miss my Nokia N8, N900 and N9.
jrcii 10y ago
That's good, Foxconn can use some of the money to shore up their suicide nets.
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't do this here.
  - jrcii 10y ago
    I'm sorry, because their horrible working conditions faded from the headlines, when Foxconn gets mentioned we're not allowed to criticize them now? To me the most notable detail about any deal with Foxconn is the working conditions implicit in carrying it out. Please tell me more about what to think, I wouldn't want to break step with the Hacker News hive mind.
    - ars 10y ago
      The suicide rate at Foxcon is/was lower than that of the general population. You should not get all your news from headlines.
      - jrcii 10y ago
        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9006988/Mass-suicide-protest-at-Apple-manufacturer-Foxconn-factory.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9006988... "Around 150 Chinese workers at Foxconn, the world's largest electronics manufacturer, threatened to commit suicide by leaping from their factory roof in protest at their working conditions." I'll let the weakness of the argument, "That's normal" speak for itself.
        praneshp 10y ago
        >> threatened to commit suicide That's just union tactics
        ars 10y ago
        Do the math. Calculate the suicide rate for China as a whole, them for Foxconn. Do it, post the numbers here.
      - kondro 10y ago
        Worst year 2010 with 14 suicides @ Foxconn when they had almost 1 million employees, around 1.4 per 100,000. China's suicide rate is around 7.8 per 100k. The rate in Japan is 18.5 per 100k, Australia 15.3, USA 12.1 and UK is 6.2 (WHO's 2012 numbers).
        ben_jones 10y ago
        I wonder if that's employees who commit suicide while at work and if it accounts for Foxconn employees who commit suicide outside of work.
        10y ago
mikegioia 10y ago
I just want one manufacturer to care about and release a decent feature phone. The current landscape right now is the LG Cosmos III, various shitty Tracfones, and then the Nokia lines that have been ruined by Microsoft. I think there's a serious market for good feature phones that can make calls, send/receive SMS/MMS/group chats, take high resolution pictures, and send/receive emails all with a qwerty, tactile keyboard.
- fowl2 10y ago
  Once you get into emails/data you're blurring the line seriously... (I mean, that means you've got a HTML renderer, so you've gotta push updates every 12 weeks or so)
  - mikegioia 10y ago
    Not necessarily. You don't need an HTML renderer for emailing, and even if you did, the difference between HTML rendering for emails vs. a full 3rd party, concurrently running application system is pretty big.
    - icefox 10y ago
      Nokia ported the KHTML rendering engine back in 2004-2005 to their feature phone OS. :) A baby WebKit is in some of those feature phone if you want to call it that.
  - khedoros 10y ago
    My 2004 Nokia feature phone had a mobile web browser, with some degree of HTML rendering capability, and no way to update the phone OTA. HTML or data support seem like a weird place to draw the line.
    - astrange 10y ago
      A web browser and no software updates sounds like a great way to get your phone hacked to me.
fungi 10y ago
> subsidiary of Chinese manufacturer Foxconn Foxconn is Taiwanese
- jpatokal 10y ago
  Taiwan is Chinese -- just not necessarily People's-Republic-of-Chinese.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - kyllo 10y ago
    That really depends what you mean by Chinese. It's an issue in Taiwanese identity politics and electoral politics. Taiwan is officially the Republic of China, but that name is a legacy of World War II. Taiwan has many citizens who speak Mandarin or various dialects of Chinese; many of them consider themselves Chinese, but also many do not. There are Taiwanese whose ancestors moved there from China as early as the 1600s. Besides, they also have a sizeable population of aboriginal people with totally non-Chinese cultural practices and who speak a language that isn't even loosely related to Chinese. And meanwhile, the country has been in a sort of cold war with the PRC since the late 1940s, and was a Japanese colony for the 50 years prior to that. The last government to have military control over all of Mainland China and Taiwan (plus Mongolia) was the Qing Dynasty. Saying that "Taiwan is Chinese" is basically true in an imprecise way, but once you drill down into the details a little, it gets complicated.
    - rangibaby 10y ago
      > Taiwan is officially the Republic of China, but that name is a legacy of World War II ROC held the China UN seat until 1971, and the first multi-party elections were held in 1986. KMT still considers ROC to include all Chinese territory. > Taiwan has many citizens who speak Mandarin or various dialects of Chinese; many of them consider themselves Chinese, but also many do not. There are Taiwanese whose ancestors moved there from China as early as the 1600s. Besides, they also have a sizeable population of aboriginal people with totally non-Chinese cultural practices and who speak a language that isn't even loosely related to Chinese. You're confusing nationality with ethnicity. PRC has many non-Han minorities too, but their nationality is Chinese. > And meanwhile, the country has been in a sort of cold war with the PRC since the late 1940s, and was a Japanese colony for the 50 years prior to that. The last government to have military control over all of Mainland China and Taiwan (plus Mongolia) was the Qing Dynasty. PRC and ROC claim all of the territory as "China", whether they historically controlled it or not.
pkaye 10y ago
Strange the way that article is written, it doesn't clarify which way the money was transferred.
microcolonel 10y ago
I honestly love my Nokia 106 in general. There are a couple of menus which are inconsistent, color is unnecessary, and the background images are ???; but despite all of that, it has been excellent and gives reliable calls. Sadly GSM is going down in Canada for good next year. I'd love to have a 106-shaped LTE or HSPA phone with multilingual input and display. Essentially no other device would make me happier. I have learned to love T9, it is very comfortable once you are used to it; and it maps very well to Japanese (though not available on this device). If I ever need to get a smartphone again, I'm using a T9 keyboard on it. I wonder if they'd hire me...
- cJ0th 10y ago
  I've gotten one as well after my beloved v3i passed away. In terms of value for money it is alright. Yet I wonder why dumb phones aren't perfected by now. Apart from the menu issues and the indeed horrible backgrounds (went with the blueish one) I am annoyed that you can neither set the brightness of the display nor the volume of the alarm clock. When it wakes you up in the morning its brightness and loudness are incredibly painful. In fact, at night I cover my phone with whatever textile product lies around to make the alarm clock less harsh.
evo_9 10y ago
Microsoft originally paid $7.2 Billion for Nokia in 2013.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Actually, just the Nokia handset business and right to use the Nokia brand for three years. Microsoft did not acquire Nokia (the corporation), who had net sales of 12.5 billion € in 2015.
- 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
  What should that be number be compared to, though? What they're selling is only a piece of what they bought.
- cwyers 10y ago
  Not to defend that acquisition, but Microsoft is keeping the Lumia business, this is JUST the feature phone business. Also, $2 billion of that wasn't part of the sale price, but a 10-year patent licensing agreement.[1] Microsoft is keeping that patent license, as well as the patents that Microsoft acquired outright in the deal. It's apples and oranges to compare the total purchase price to the sales price of part of the acquisition. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-takes-control-of-nokias-phone-business-acquires-25000-new-employees/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-takes-control-of-noki...
- kyllo 10y ago
  That's true, but since then, Microsoft has already written off more than the original purchase price of Nokia: http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8910999/microsoft-job-cuts-2015-nokia-write-off http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8910999/microsoft-job-cuts-...
hackaflocka 10y ago
Foxconn has the ability to make iPhone quality hardware. Why do they need the Nokia featurephone business? They're not allowed to use the Nokia name are they?
fsloth 10y ago
The headline is imprecise. The rights to the brand 'Nokia' as relating to phones will be owned by another company 'HMD Global' who have licenced the Nokia patent portfolio as well.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Or, more precisely, HMD will lease those rights, but Nokia still owns them. The lease is agreed for a decade from now on.

70 points by yread 10y ago

The bigger deal for me is that they are licensing their brand to make new phones and tablets. I'm still sad about the Maemo line of phones, but I'm hoping they bring back a brand of linux phones after this new deal.

walterbell 10y ago
What we need now is for HMD Global to acquire Jolla. We also need an infographic of the migration of Nokia engineers between different corporate entities and the dollar value destroyed/created during each hop. Let's hope this corporate re-engineering saga has a happy ending. I miss my Nokia N8, N900 and N9.

jrcii 10y ago

That's good, Foxconn can use some of the money to shore up their suicide nets.

dang 10y ago
Please don't do this here.
- jrcii 10y ago
  I'm sorry, because their horrible working conditions faded from the headlines, when Foxconn gets mentioned we're not allowed to criticize them now? To me the most notable detail about any deal with Foxconn is the working conditions implicit in carrying it out. Please tell me more about what to think, I wouldn't want to break step with the Hacker News hive mind.
  - ars 10y ago
    The suicide rate at Foxcon is/was lower than that of the general population. You should not get all your news from headlines.
    - jrcii 10y ago
      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9006988/Mass-suicide-protest-at-Apple-manufacturer-Foxconn-factory.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9006988... "Around 150 Chinese workers at Foxconn, the world's largest electronics manufacturer, threatened to commit suicide by leaping from their factory roof in protest at their working conditions." I'll let the weakness of the argument, "That's normal" speak for itself.
      - praneshp 10y ago
        >> threatened to commit suicide That's just union tactics
      - ars 10y ago
        Do the math. Calculate the suicide rate for China as a whole, them for Foxconn. Do it, post the numbers here.
    - kondro 10y ago
      Worst year 2010 with 14 suicides @ Foxconn when they had almost 1 million employees, around 1.4 per 100,000. China's suicide rate is around 7.8 per 100k. The rate in Japan is 18.5 per 100k, Australia 15.3, USA 12.1 and UK is 6.2 (WHO's 2012 numbers).
      - ben_jones 10y ago
        I wonder if that's employees who commit suicide while at work and if it accounts for Foxconn employees who commit suicide outside of work.
        10y ago

mikegioia 10y ago

I just want one manufacturer to care about and release a decent feature phone. The current landscape right now is the LG Cosmos III, various shitty Tracfones, and then the Nokia lines that have been ruined by Microsoft. I think there's a serious market for good feature phones that can make calls, send/receive SMS/MMS/group chats, take high resolution pictures, and send/receive emails all with a qwerty, tactile keyboard.

fowl2 10y ago
Once you get into emails/data you're blurring the line seriously... (I mean, that means you've got a HTML renderer, so you've gotta push updates every 12 weeks or so)
- mikegioia 10y ago
  Not necessarily. You don't need an HTML renderer for emailing, and even if you did, the difference between HTML rendering for emails vs. a full 3rd party, concurrently running application system is pretty big.
  - icefox 10y ago
    Nokia ported the KHTML rendering engine back in 2004-2005 to their feature phone OS. :) A baby WebKit is in some of those feature phone if you want to call it that.
- khedoros 10y ago
  My 2004 Nokia feature phone had a mobile web browser, with some degree of HTML rendering capability, and no way to update the phone OTA. HTML or data support seem like a weird place to draw the line.
  - astrange 10y ago
    A web browser and no software updates sounds like a great way to get your phone hacked to me.

fungi 10y ago

> subsidiary of Chinese manufacturer Foxconn Foxconn is Taiwanese

jpatokal 10y ago
Taiwan is Chinese -- just not necessarily People's-Republic-of-Chinese.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- kyllo 10y ago
  That really depends what you mean by Chinese. It's an issue in Taiwanese identity politics and electoral politics. Taiwan is officially the Republic of China, but that name is a legacy of World War II. Taiwan has many citizens who speak Mandarin or various dialects of Chinese; many of them consider themselves Chinese, but also many do not. There are Taiwanese whose ancestors moved there from China as early as the 1600s. Besides, they also have a sizeable population of aboriginal people with totally non-Chinese cultural practices and who speak a language that isn't even loosely related to Chinese. And meanwhile, the country has been in a sort of cold war with the PRC since the late 1940s, and was a Japanese colony for the 50 years prior to that. The last government to have military control over all of Mainland China and Taiwan (plus Mongolia) was the Qing Dynasty. Saying that "Taiwan is Chinese" is basically true in an imprecise way, but once you drill down into the details a little, it gets complicated.
  - rangibaby 10y ago
    > Taiwan is officially the Republic of China, but that name is a legacy of World War II ROC held the China UN seat until 1971, and the first multi-party elections were held in 1986. KMT still considers ROC to include all Chinese territory. > Taiwan has many citizens who speak Mandarin or various dialects of Chinese; many of them consider themselves Chinese, but also many do not. There are Taiwanese whose ancestors moved there from China as early as the 1600s. Besides, they also have a sizeable population of aboriginal people with totally non-Chinese cultural practices and who speak a language that isn't even loosely related to Chinese. You're confusing nationality with ethnicity. PRC has many non-Han minorities too, but their nationality is Chinese. > And meanwhile, the country has been in a sort of cold war with the PRC since the late 1940s, and was a Japanese colony for the 50 years prior to that. The last government to have military control over all of Mainland China and Taiwan (plus Mongolia) was the Qing Dynasty. PRC and ROC claim all of the territory as "China", whether they historically controlled it or not.

pkaye 10y ago

Strange the way that article is written, it doesn't clarify which way the money was transferred.

microcolonel 10y ago

I honestly love my Nokia 106 in general. There are a couple of menus which are inconsistent, color is unnecessary, and the background images are ???; but despite all of that, it has been excellent and gives reliable calls. Sadly GSM is going down in Canada for good next year. I'd love to have a 106-shaped LTE or HSPA phone with multilingual input and display. Essentially no other device would make me happier. I have learned to love T9, it is very comfortable once you are used to it; and it maps very well to Japanese (though not available on this device). If I ever need to get a smartphone again, I'm using a T9 keyboard on it. I wonder if they'd hire me...

cJ0th 10y ago
I've gotten one as well after my beloved v3i passed away. In terms of value for money it is alright. Yet I wonder why dumb phones aren't perfected by now. Apart from the menu issues and the indeed horrible backgrounds (went with the blueish one) I am annoyed that you can neither set the brightness of the display nor the volume of the alarm clock. When it wakes you up in the morning its brightness and loudness are incredibly painful. In fact, at night I cover my phone with whatever textile product lies around to make the alarm clock less harsh.

evo_9 10y ago

Microsoft originally paid $7.2 Billion for Nokia in 2013.

ptaipale 10y ago
Actually, just the Nokia handset business and right to use the Nokia brand for three years. Microsoft did not acquire Nokia (the corporation), who had net sales of 12.5 billion € in 2015.
0xcde4c3db 10y ago
What should that be number be compared to, though? What they're selling is only a piece of what they bought.
cwyers 10y ago
Not to defend that acquisition, but Microsoft is keeping the Lumia business, this is JUST the feature phone business. Also, $2 billion of that wasn't part of the sale price, but a 10-year patent licensing agreement.[1] Microsoft is keeping that patent license, as well as the patents that Microsoft acquired outright in the deal. It's apples and oranges to compare the total purchase price to the sales price of part of the acquisition. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-takes-control-of-nokias-phone-business-acquires-25000-new-employees/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-takes-control-of-noki...
kyllo 10y ago
That's true, but since then, Microsoft has already written off more than the original purchase price of Nokia: http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8910999/microsoft-job-cuts-2015-nokia-write-off http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8910999/microsoft-job-cuts-...

hackaflocka 10y ago

Foxconn has the ability to make iPhone quality hardware. Why do they need the Nokia featurephone business? They're not allowed to use the Nokia name are they?

fsloth 10y ago

The headline is imprecise. The rights to the brand 'Nokia' as relating to phones will be owned by another company 'HMD Global' who have licenced the Nokia patent portfolio as well.

ptaipale 10y ago
Or, more precisely, HMD will lease those rights, but Nokia still owns them. The lease is agreed for a decade from now on.