Comments on: 3 early takeaways from the Microsoft-Nokia deal

By: John Thompson

Tue, 10 Sep 2013 15:59:16 +0000

I heard all those complaints about Microsoft before I thought too they were dead after the big anti trust loss against Netscape in the mid nineties but what I realised is that free-ness ( for want of a better word) ( free software) trumps prejudice and bias. Everybody continued with microsoft, Lotus too took a beating from that freeness of Microsoft’s.

What you overlook is that over the years microsoft has developed so much economies of scope and scale in the software development business that they can acquire ideas and use their vast machinery to convert that into very cheaply produced software and this is what makes them dangerous. They were deliberately kept out of mobile, understand that and why first. For everyone it was a fresh start a green field without microsoft around (a level playing for the others) etc. It was a tact or inside collusion that held them at bay, its only now the rest of businesses feel prepared to take them on. Lets see what happens. I’d buy some of the stock just in case. You can write me and thank me later on. Microsoft and Nokia seems set go with AT&T so its all come-backers joined together – these guys know how to win they done it before. Besides, it’s just another cycle starting up, a change of baton. It happens all the time, no one really dies just like that maybe only if the founders or stalwarts themselves retire from the business, otherwise they come again in another form. We learnt this since from the days of Texaco, BP and Shell.

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By: Sachin Ganpat

Tue, 10 Sep 2013 11:21:46 +0000

In reply to John Thompson.

I beg to differ. Microsoft is still trying to figure out mobile, because it doesn’t want to lose the desktop. Windows 8 was a huge flop. People have been forced to use it because it now comes pre-installed on new PCs. But people do not like the new interface, and that ruined the OS.

Nokia didn’t run out of ideas. Meego was going to be the next step, but the decision to go with Microsoft ruined that, much to the chagrin of Intel (who is also struggling with mobile).

I had thought that Windows 8 was going to be it for Microsoft, but I was wrong. I honestly don’t know if people want Microsoft anymore, but there are few alternatives.

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By: Sachin Ganpat

Tue, 10 Sep 2013 11:15:34 +0000

When Stephen Elop was announced to be the CEO of Nokia, at the time, many said that he was a Microsoft operative sent to assimilate them into the collective. Well so said, so done!

The major decision that Elop made in using the Microsoft operating system exclusively was definitely good for Microsoft, but others wondered what is the advantage to Nokia? There was none. And with that one decision, Nokia’s market share dropped and their stock prices plummeted, allowing Microsoft to take over their phone division.

This is the death of Nokia as we know it.

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By: John Thompson

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 18:35:31 +0000

In the beginning of the mobile evolution it was always taboo to let Microsoft into the business simply because nobody wanted them to stomp in and takeover as they did with PCs. Could you imagine Microsoft having a strangle hold on mobile and PC at the same time? The mobile industry was very conscious of limiting microsoft’s involvement in the early days. Now the story is different, somebody is finally letting them in. microsoft is going to create a big stir with the expertise they have in applications and the skill nokia has ( Nokia’s crime is lack of ideas really, they are still very much in the mobile device capability race) I expect them together to turn the smart phone market on its head. Remember, they beat Apple soundly in the PC market and they can do it in the smart phone, i imagine. But they never had the door open to them. Now it is look out!!!. Not even Google will stand up to them, I think, when they reconcile their apps capacities with veracity of the smart phone technology. And also important too, it all depends on the network infrastructure players they choose to partner with to gain the reach to end users in substantial in numbers.

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