Microsoft To Cut 7,800 More Jobs, Take $7.6 Billion Writedown On Nokia 249
jones_supa writes: Microsoft is about to announce another round of layoffs. A company press release confirms the plan, saying that it will target up to 7,800 employees and will be aimed mostly at the hardware division. The hardware division includes the lion's share of former Nokia employees, which became part of Microsoft last year. In an e-mail to employees, chief executive officer Satya Nadella reiterated the company's commitment to its phone business, though he also said that some refocusing was necessary and that Microsoft's phone business would reflect the overall Windows strategy: "We are moving from a strategy to grow a standalone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem that includes our first-party device family," the e-mail reads. "As a result, the company will take an impairment charge of approximately $7.6 billion related to assets associated with the acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services business in addition to a restructuring charge of approximately $750 million to $850 million."
Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:5, Funny)
Look on the bright side (Score:2, Insightful)
This is sure to resolve the skilled tech labor shortage that the tech giants have been complaining about.
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
I presume that those on a H1B visa will be let go first, of course?
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I suspect that yes, they're casting off the picked bones from Nokia's corpse, but they probably stuffed a few other rotten carcasses of accounting into that can while they were at it. Some that come to mind are Sidekick, Kin/Pink, some residual accounting losses from Zune... stuff like that.
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$7.2B indeed.
http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
They've valued nokia below their total worth estimated at acquisition time. And remember they still have all the buildings and patents.
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A big company in an unaligned industry buys a formerly popular hardware maker, now falling on hard times, and eventually sells or pretty much writes all the assets of the acquisition off. I'm having a strange sense of deja vu... almost like this has happened before several times.
Oh wait, it has happened before [forbes.com] with Oracle and Sun. And again [venturebeat.com] with HP and Palm. And again [theverge.com] with Google and Motorola.
You would think people would notice a pattern here...
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Google and Motorola is a different story. They sold off parts of Motorola at various times making back most of their money. Plus they kept the patents, which definitely have value to one of their core businesses (Android).
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And it looks like MS shareholders had already devalued MS for it.
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Buh-bye, Nokia.
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I and many others will be installing Windows 10 on our Nokia phones in less than a month. I don't forsee the phone hardware that I bought ceasing to continue to be produced in the near future.
Yes, they sloughed off some of the croft. The old Nokia died completely independent of Microsoft, which is the only reason Microsoft could afford to buy it.
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I thought that Microsoft put one of their (ex-)executives in as CEO, he made decisions that killed Nokia and then sold it to MS and went back to work at MS, probably with a huge bonus.
Personally I've been very happy with my Nokia phone, owned it for ten years now, battery is still good for 5 days (probably more if it didn't spend over half its time out of range of a signal), does what a phone is supposed to do, namely make phone calls.
Re: Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
lets also mention the test equipment vendors that have almost all been bought by the evil danaher: tektronix, fluke and keithley being the big 3 that come to mind. why can't companies stay around, these days? oh, right, if they are honest and provide a product that lasts, that's 'no good' for the current disposable economy. sigh.
audio companies, include, too; harmon kardon and nakamichi come to mind as they are now shells. shit, even b&w (used to be high end speakers) now make fashion headphones for the apple crowd. SQ does not matter, only looks, for that audience.
everyone is engaged in a race to the bottom. pretty depressing, actually.
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Oddly enough, I know 2 out of those companies. I almost went to work for Fluke at one time. Decided the commute (Seattle area) wasn't worth it. Haven't really followed them in years. I did work for Harman for a couple of years, walking distance from my home at the time (Northridge) and the owner at the time Sydney Harman was stupid in many, many ways. As in bragging at an all hands meeting about one of his young kids arranging a limo in the Carribean, and oh yes, btw, I'm laying off 1/3 of the company.
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:4, Interesting)
They did but keep in mind that it may have cost them far more than 14 billion to start from scratch. The value of Nokia was probably far more than 7B so they got it at a bargain. Spending $7B now could mean billions in savings yearly.
My father before retiring purchased a competitor for $360 000. They had to restructure so they laid off most of the staff which cost them $500 000 in severance. This move increased the company's revenue by over $4 000 000 a year in addition to gaining control of all patents the company owned also removing the need to pay royalties for some of their own products. The ROI was less than a year.
Without seeing all of the financial data behind the purchase it's hard to understand if MS is actually being financially smart or reckless. I'm sure the data is available but I have no idea where to look and even if I did I wouldn't know how to read it properly.
Wrong. (Score:3)
They are writing off *more* than they paid for Nokia, pretty much saying Nokia was worse than worthless...
Wow ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, basically Microsoft successfully killed the actual Nokia, successfully transferred the IP to themselves, have completely screwed the pooch in terms of being able to manage an acquisition which never made any sense ... and now they've written off the purchase.
I'm sorry, but if you're taking over $7 billion in writedowns, maybe the decision to but it in the first place was stupid and misguided?
This just sounds like Microsoft pissed away billions trying to prop up their failing phone, and are now leaving the rotting carcass of Nokia in their wake.
Is this anything but mismanagement and hubris? Because it sounds like other than fucking up Nokia it hasn't achieved a damned thing.
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, basically Microsoft successfully killed the actual Nokia, successfully transferred the IP to themselves, have completely screwed the pooch in terms of being able to manage an acquisition which never made any sense ... and now they've written off the purchase.
So, basically Microsoft got access to all of Nokia's IP and a big portion of their customer base for $7b in cash they didn't know what to do with, and destroyed a competitor in the process?
Is this anything but mismanagement and hubris?
Sounds like a bargain to me.
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You got that right. Without seeing the financials behind all this we can't tell how much MS lost or won. I'd be on the side of saying they won pretty big here.
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... What customers?
didn't need help (Score:2)
by the sound of it, Nokia was doing a fairly good job at destroying themselves anyway, MS did't really need to help.
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by the sound of it, Nokia was doing a fairly good job at destroying themselves anyway, MS did't really need to help.
So you're Microsoft. Your lunch is getting eaten by smaller competitors, but you still have cash lying around and cash coming in. You get a chance to kill one off rather than see it merge with someone else and potentially make them both stronger. In the process you can get a handful of customers and a browse through their IP for any goodies you can license at very agreeable terms. So, do you just wait to see what happens, or drop some of your cash to make something happen?
There is no right or wrong answer,
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Interesting)
... an acquisition which never made any sense
Apple makes an iPhone for about $200, and sells it for about $600, for a gross profit of about $400 per phone.
Google makes no money directly from Android software, and the Android handset makers make a tiny fraction of what Apple makes.
There are HUGE advantages to controlling the entire HW/SW platform. Just because Microsoft screwed it up, doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea. The concept made a lot of sense, but the execution was mismanaged.
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Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Insightful)
maybe the build is nice (Score:4, Insightful)
but for tablet use they are just too darned heavy. When I hold one like a tablet I think, "where can I put this down" because it's too heavy to just nonchalantly carry like a tablet.
And then when you try to use it like a laptop, you say, "what is with this terrible keyboard" and "why can't I use it as an actual lap-top"
The Surface is like a Pontiac Fiero, trying hard to be two things at once and not doing either of them particularly well.
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is the only company successful with this business model. Blackberry failed, Nokia failed (with symbian, before Microsoft), Samsung failed (Bada), Palm failed. That Microsoft failed isn't surprising at all.
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Bingo. If you implement this strategy successfully, you can make a lot of money, but you've got better odds in Vegas.
Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Customer lock-in wasn't invented by Apple. What makes Apple impressive is that they've managed to do it while getting their customers to keep asking for more of the same.
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MS had their own HW/SW platform it did spectacularly miserably for them. Having that combination might be necessary, but it isn't sufficient. What Apple brought was a new way of looking at a mobile phone, then they executed on that view. And Google tried a HW/SW combo with Motorola and still came up snake eyes.
What I took away from these pathetic attempts is that when a company's brass thinks they can just throw together existing crap and somehow beat others, they wind up getting beaten themselves. What mat
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Except Microsoft, then and now, had no real experience in the phone market ... Nokia was never a good fit, got the scorched earth treatment from an idiot who was grooming it to be bought out, and basically left a rotting corpse.
This at the time it was happening was listed as a "WTF is Microsoft thinking?", and which then became what appears to be a comedy of stupid by Elop.
Other than taking someone out of the phone industry, it's pretty much debatable if Microsoft did anything other than flounder around in
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Well, to be fair, 400 is not the gross profit. There are also engineering costs (product design and engineering), packaging, transportation, and overhead costs (administration). Your point still stands that Apple does have a much higher profit margin than the various Android handset manufacturers.
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Well, to be fair, 400 is not the gross profit.
Yes it is. Things like engineering and administrative costs are included in net profits, but not gross profits. Gross profit is just the sale price minus the marginal cost of producing the product.
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The reason Apple's margins work are because of the scale to which they operate. The less than 2% market share which MS owned at the time of purchasing Nokia was no where near enough to operate at those scales, and the equation on their ledgers would and did look nothing like what Apple had. MS was desperate to get a hardware manufacturer, to make their phones which most others refused to touch. The math in buying Nokia was not entirely unlike putting out Win 8/8.1 in a touch format to force their entry int
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the execution was mismanaged
I feel the execution was very well managed. Nokia was a failing and falling company, its biggest asset was the IP. Microsoft got hold of the IP for cheap, and used that to negotiate royalty bearing patent licenses with Android device makers. They pretended to make Windows Nokia phone 'cos otherwise they'd be accused of being NonPracticingEntities.
So now MS makes more money from Android phones than all Android mfrs put together.
And then Nokia is now executed along with Elop. Mis
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s'okay - they've got the "Blame Ballmer" shields on full for this one.
(Yes Ballmer is/was an evil idiot, but still...)
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Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Informative)
Nokia is still around, they've just reverted back to their core business - selling telephony equipment.
Nokia's well known for their handsets, but handset business is awful, due to its consumer nature. It's low profit, mass production, with lots of time wasted on stuff like warranty and support.
Microsoft bought that business.
Nokia's core business of selling equipment used to run cell networks is still around - Microsoft didn't buy that, and the core is honestly where the money's at. Think whenever a carrier goes and sets up a new cell tower all the equipment they need to buy - controllers, baseband processors, amplifiers, exciters, receivers, antennas, etc. all costing 6 figures minimum. And one set for the bands in question, another set for 2G, 3G and 4G, ... and you're talking millions of dollars of hardware, the BOM cost of which is probably well under $100k.
And with 5G on the horizon, that's more opportunity.
The real Nokia is still around, and they've shed the crappy parts of their business.
Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Interesting)
You are so wrong about the Telephony business. If anything, it is an even worse business than handsets. Chinese competition has killed the profit margins. 10 years ago, 3 of the top 5 telco vendors were based out of North America. Lucent, Nortel & Motorola. They have all gone bust and their carcasses have been subsumed by European companies. Similar consolidation has happened in other markets.
What is now the `Nokia' company is the amalgamation of Alcatel, Lucent & Nokia. The big dogs who have any clout left whatsoever are Ericcsson and Hauwei.
I used to work in the industry. Till the late 90s/early 2000s, Telecomm Infrastructure was superhot, and some of the best brains in the world joined these companies. Those days are long gone, the pond has shrunk dramatically and anyone who is halfway decent and motivated has long flown to other companies. The best brains these days are going to Google, Amazon, Facebook etc.
The telecomm industry is now full of former big fish jockeying for position in the ever-shrinking pond. There are several categories of people: the politicians, the option-less and the clueless. The percentage of idiots &/or assholes is very high. As much of the technical work as possible is outsourced to India and China, and the work ethic is mostly `sweatshop'. Engineers in the industry have no bargaining power, salaries are flat or shrinking, and it is brutually hard (if not impossible) to find a job at least in the developed world. Most folks who have had to leave are having to retrain and take jobs in `sister' industries like storage and having their careers reset.
Nowadays, telecomm companies give away the equipment at cost or lower, hoping to make money on support contracts.
I would not wish a career in Telecomm on my worst enemy.
Conspiracy theory vs business plan? (Score:2)
Maybe this was the plan all along. Get a huge tax break [investopedia.com], and get essentially [seekingalpha.com] free patents to troll with. [latestpatents.com]
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How many of those valuable patents are FRAND?
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in 2011 when Elop wrote the burning memo the handwriting was on the wall. Nokia was going to have trouble in the smart phone market. There is no way of knowing if their Linux offering that Elop canned to go with WinMo would have worked out for them. What was obvious even back then, was that moving to WinMo was a mistake. MS had gone from 12% of the smart phone market to under 4% by that point. No one was clamoring for new Windows 7.5 phone. Every Windows 6 phone user I knew had left for Apple or Google by that point in time, fed up random reboots on their phone that took 2 minutes to complete.
It did not help that at that point most of his wealth was invested in Microsoft stock and only a small amount in Nokia stock. It was in his best interest to try and save the Widnows phone. Elop had drank to much kool-aid and was convinced that anything Microsoft was the way to go and coupled with that financial interest he took Nokia in the wrong direction.
The only thing dumber than Elop tanking Nokia was Microsoft purchasing Nokia.
I take that back. Microsoft purchasing Skype was just as dumb. After spending over 9 billion on Skype and then having to upgrade the hardware infrastructure Skype runs on. I suspect Microsoft has another 10 billion or so it will need to write off.
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Don't blame Elop for OPK's problem.
When Elop got on board at Nokia, Symbian was dead in the water. Sure, the Android was gobbling up most of the market, and by that time even the Finnish didn't care.
They sat on the smart phone and didn't push it because ... ? Reasons? I mean, the Symbian developer program was a huge mess too.
The iPhone shouldn't have upturned the market the way it did, if Nokia was capable of executing from an engineering point of view.
Not to say that they didn't have capable engineers, the
Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Informative)
All besides the point. I was not talking about HOW they got to 2011. Instead I was talking about WHAT they were doing in 2011.
Symbian was a cash cow that had been milked past the point where it was healthy for Nokia. To that point, Nokia saw Maemo/Meego as their way out, switching to modern Linux based OS. Elop offered another choice. Shitcan Maemo and go to Windows Mobile instead.
No one knows how sticking with Maemo would have worked out. Would it have saved Nokia? Who knows?
We know how going with WinMo worked out. They lost a year of sales. Who wanted to buy a Symbian phone when they knew it was dead, anyone who wanted a non-linux Nokia handset just sat back and wait a year, thus tanking sales. The Linux based Nokia phones were selling like hotcakes despite the fact they were not being marketed. That was a pretty good sign going with WinMo was the wrong thing to do. Then when the new WinMo Nokia handsets arrived, the market rejected them.
Since they killed Maemo and sold off QT they had no option but to stick with WinMo at that point. The rest is history
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No one knows how sticking with Maemo would have worked out. Would it have saved Nokia? Who knows?
You're right, nobody knows. But the probable answer is "not bloody likely." No matter how technically superior the OS may have been, it was going to be playing in a crowded space against entrenched competitors... the appropriate military metaphor would be a frontal assault against a numerically superior enemy entrenched in defensive positions. With one notable exception (Apple), every vertically integrated OEM (OS + hardware) in the mobile space has gotten mediocre results - BlackBerry, HP and Palm/WebOS, S
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7.8 billion in write offs. They are going to have to sell a LOT of phones to actually make a profit. At $78 profit per phone, they would need to sell 100 million phones just to break even.
I would also like to state that they hold about 3% of the market. Percentage wise they would need to quadruple their market share just to get back to 2005 numbers. A large shift is not likely. It is like Linux in the desktop market. Sure there are some bitter clingers who will hold on a Windows Phone (or Linux desktop for
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Yes, at the point Nokia was trying selling WinMo phones no one was buyingj and would not sell any Linux based phones though they were flying off the shelves despite not being marketed. The point where the company sold off Nokias phone business to Microsoft. That was the point Nokia was tanked. Having to leave the phone market by selling off to Microsoft.
The fact that Microsoft is now writing off more than the purchase price of Nokia AND is firing all the phone employees they picked up from Nokia, at this po
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While I really liked the idea of a Linux phone from Nokia I have to wonder if those sales where just the faithful.
Honestly I think Nokia's problems where a lack of urgency more than anything else. Symbian was dieing fast because it like PalmOS was was designed for low power and memory constrained hardware. Nokia made brilliant stuff but just could not seem to get it out the door. QT plus what every Nokia called their phone version of Linux that week could have been great. Nokia could have also pushed out a
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Nokia's Linux-based phone was "flying off the shelves" (I honestly hate that term) to pimply smartphone enthusiasts, in limited production quantities compared to the rest of their line. Not to mainstream consumers.
I'm not saying it was a bad phone, from everything I heard it was pretty good, but it wasn't some guaranteed "hit" in the waiting.
Going with Windows Phone turned out to be a bad choice, but the other choices they could have gone with may have also turned out to be bad. It could very well have been
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Your Finance-Fu is weak.
Buy company for $7B
Strip it of it's assets and IP (plus kill a competitor).
Announce a tax write-off of more than you spent.
Result: money back on your tax bill, plus you get to keep the bits you stripped.
Die, white whale, die (Score:2)
Re:Die, white whale, die (Score:5, Insightful)
indeed there are many companies that resemble Microsoft, for instance Starbucks is the Microsoft of coffee and equally evil.
Yeah, like that time that Starbucks paid less than the average wage? Woops, they pay more. Or like that time that Starbucks put the competition out of business by dumping and then raised their prices, destroying jobs in the process? No, they put the competition out of business by being consistent, and they are totally willing to open a starbucks across the street from a starbucks so there's plenty of jobs. Wait, like that time they underpaid their suppliers? No, they pay more than fair trade amounts, although those amounts are arguably too low at least they've over the baseline. So in what way is Starbucks like Microsoft? Because they produce a product that more people want to use than the stuff you like?
FWIW I think starfucks coffee is ass and if I wanted a cup of sugar I'd just ask for it, but seriously, how is Starbucks like Microsoft? The occasional bullshit trademark lawsuit? That's lame, but nowhere near that territory.
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Try asking someone who works there. They screw people over on a regular basis. Like systematically making sure they can't get enough hours to qualify for health benefits.
They also screw their customers in 100 ways. Do you like having your MAC address uploaded to their servers?
But you have no idea. Just put your head back in the sand and everything will be happy.
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Try asking someone who works there. They screw people over on a regular basis. Like systematically making sure they can't get enough hours to qualify for health benefits.
That's not special, though. That's normal. That's why we need national health care.
They also screw their customers in 100 ways. Do you like having your MAC address uploaded to their servers?
Who gives a shit? I can change my MAC all day.
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How about that time when Starbucks stacked the ISO committees to get a ratified undocumented XML as a standard? Or that time when Starbucks had the FUD campaign threatening to sue corporations and home users who used other coffees, due to the Non Disclosed coffee patents they all were infringing?
Starbucks sucks, I won't step foot in one, but MS has a special sort of evil that has fostered a long term distrust and disrespect, that has only been achieved by precious few companies.
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Besides their(usually) good customer service and clean spaces, the one glaring consistency is how bad Starbucks coffee is. It tastes like drinking water ran through a smoldering campfire. It requires large additions of cream and sugar to make it palatable, so in the en
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Or like that time that Starbucks put the competition out of business by dumping and then raised their prices, destroying jobs in the process?
they are totally willing to open a starbucks across the street from a starbucks
It seems like you know what 'dumping' means, and yes this is exactly what they did.
Re:Die, white whale, die (Score:5, Insightful)
Stalin was evil, Mao was evil, Lil'Kimmy Jong Un is evil. How many people has MS, Google, and Starbucks killed?
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How is Google forcing you to use their search engine on your browser?
Also gone is Elop (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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For what windows does in the real world, other companies already do better and most importantly cheaper. games? steam is a household name.
I never did get it to work on Linux, on the very same machine on which it worked on Windows. Just always gave me a network failure. No firewall rules on the Linux box, same rules on the gateway, same IP. No uPnP. Windows is ten times the household name that Steam is. Virtually no AAA titles run on Linux, so you neeed Steam and Windows to play them.
word processing? a google docs enabled chromebook has that covered in spades along with social networking and internet.
Yes, but it doesn't actually deliver a better experience there; you have more flexibility on Windows. Sometimes a site craps itself in Chrome, I have the option t
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There are enough AAA titles to run on Steam Machine now to consider its library comparable to a 'launch window console'. It doesnt have to run everything windows does, just like PS4 doesnt play everything on PC. Steam Machine is the 4th platform, with a limited library, just like the major consoles.
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Steam Machine is the 4th platform, with a limited library, just like the major consoles.
Historically, there's been room for 1st place, 2nd place, and nintendo in the console market. The Steam Machine is a hard sell; it needs to be cheaper and better. And if you're building a real gaming PC, you're going to install Windows on it.
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Going from ballmers dominator approach in which all markets become a subservient cash-cow for Microsoft
Ballmer is who brought MS to a halt in the end user market. That's all on him for not surrounding himself with the right people
walled gardens of commerce and perpetual licensing
How is MS licensing a walled garden? I'm confused as I find their licensing model to be tailored for each specific facet of their industry: Retail, OEM, Business.
For what windows does in the real world, other companies already do better and most importantly cheaper
Define real world. You mean end users right? MS sunk the ship with end users. That's been pretty clear for a while now but the new CEO is trying to remedy that.
As for business, I find they improved their product offering a
In other news (Score:4, Funny)
In other news, Microsoft is hiring 7800 H1B workers to head up their new mobile division.
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Source? We can't tell if you're joking or not.
This isn't Apple envy. This is Google envy. (Score:2)
"We are moving from a strategy to grow a standalone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem that includes our first-party device family,"
This isn't Apple envy. They didn't say they want to focus on one offering. They said they want a vibrant ecosystem that includes their first-party devices. They've learned that when you're making the bulk of your OS's phones yourselves, there's little incentive for competitors to license your software. However, if you make a reference mo
Microsoft tried the wrong business model (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't Apple envy. They didn't say they want to focus on one offering. They said they want a vibrant ecosystem that includes their first-party devices.
Distinction without a difference really.
They've learned that when you're making the bulk of your OS's phones yourselves, there's little incentive for competitors to license your software.
Microsoft's problem is that their business model has been to SELL software. That worked fine in the PC market place because the hardware and the software were abstracted from each other AND they managed to become a de-facto standard before something like linux came along. Microsoft's problem in mobile is that they tried to replicate that business model (selling software to third party hardware makers) while Google was almost literally giving away Android to all of Microsoft's potential customers. Google makes their money from ads, not software sales so Google effectively evaporated any profit margin for Microsoft or anyone else who wasn't vertically integrated in mobile. The moment Nokia dumped their own platform for Windows they were effectively dead because nobody else wanted to use Microsoft's software and Nokia wasn't going to be able to drive it into the mobile marketplace by themselves.
So instead what Microsoft is belatedly realizing is that they should have followed Apple's model and vertically integrated for mobile. Apple is a software company [youtube.com] fundamentally. What makes a mac different from a PC is OS X. What makes an iPhone different from an Android phone is iOS. The hardware is basically the same underneath. So Apple sells you their software but won't sell it without a fairly nice device to go along with it. However an important feature in this is that Apple has design chops and retail experience in their DNA. Microsoft doesn't. So Microsoft has to replicate what Apple is doing without the design culture that makes Apple successful at doing it.
Basically it's fortunate for Microsoft that they have a huge amount of cash in the bank because I think they are going to burn through a lot of it trying to transform the company into something they currently are not. They have enough cash that I'm not about to declare them dead but Microsoft doesn't have an easy road ahead of them I think.
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Nobody will license Windows for mobile (Score:2)
The thing is, Windows Phone is a better OS than either iOS or Android, so it makes sense that they'd think that companies would want to pay to license their software.
"Better" in what way that matters? It has a different interface but the Windows version for mobile is functionally basically identical to iOS or Android. It's fine but there is nothing customers care about that Windows has that iOS or Android lack.
Anyway Microsoft's PC business model won't work in mobile. It makes no sense for companies to license Microsoft's software when Google is giving Android away for free. Microsoft should have pursued Apple's business model and vertically integrated for mobile.
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For me, it's because the brand name is poison. I wouldn't even look at Windows Mobile when it came out, after the horrible Windows CE devices and ugly desktop experiences I've had. By the time I realized that Windows Phone is a pretty decent platform, I was already well established with Android in my household.
The think that gave Microsoft power, that people tend to stick with one platform once they've invested time and money into it, is now working against them. It's pretty tough to get people to switch fr
Indifference and lots of cash (Score:2)
For me, it's because the brand name is poison.
I think that's true among many geeks but most people are basically indifferent to Microsoft. Unlike Apple which (deserved or not) seems to get much love from the general public, Microsoft generally gets about as much attention as the water company. People just don't care about them one way or the other.
No idea how MS can pull out of this one. I've mostly chalked it up that the sun is setting on the Microsoft empire, and someone new is going to take over the 2020's.
Unlikely I think. Microsoft has roughly $100B in cash. At current market caps they could buy both Ford AND GM in cash if they wanted to. They could buy a controlling stake in Amazon or Oracle in cash. M
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Distinction without a difference, really? Do you think Apple has a healthy ecosystem of devices that only includes first-party devices? No. Apple has only first-party devices. You can't buy an iOS phone from a non-Apple source. Google has the Nexus but the vast majority of Android phones are from other vendors. That's what a software company calls a "healthy ecosystem".
Basically the announcement reads "We want Windows Phone to be delivered the way Windows on the PC always has been: by every OEM out there".
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I tend to agree. MS isn't going to wipe the big players out, they will just end up becoming a big player themselves. At 3% market share they still have a long way to go but as long as their numbers continue to increase they will eventually see the light. I strongly believe that once they break the 10% share it will start increasing quickly as carriers will start pushing their phones.
All this above is only going to be true if they can dissolve the old rumors (that are not longer accurate) and get the carrier
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Windows is losing ground in the mobile sector. The return rates are insanely high on Windows phones. The app selection is losing ground as the ones already made sit aging without updates. Win 10 ubiquity of apps etc is the same claim they had for 8/8.1 and 7 etc.
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Losing ground? How so. Numbers show otherwise. You can look at one of many stats site such as Global stats and see this. When looking at these numbers you need to narrow down to Europe and NA as that's where their focus has been. In Europe MS has gained 1% in the last year alone. Considering the size of the market that is HUGE. It's small compared to the big players but growth is growth no matter how small it is. In NA it has gained just under a 1%. Again, small number of a very large market.
Another round of layoffs (Score:2)
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I'm skeptical that the executives and HR staff of Microsoft is able to identify the "garbage" from the treasure. More than likely they randomly let go thousands of good people. An attempt at cutting the fat turned into cutting the muscle and bone. I'm not saying that Microsoft should be able to sustain an infinite number of employees forever, I'm only pointing out that the layoffs are not a positive thing and Microsoft is not suddenly going to be on the rise now that they are [theoretically] rid of the dead
Nokia's return? (Score:3)
Vibrant! Growth! First party! (Score:2)
Such sweet words to coat a turd for people to swallow.
Maybe this will be good for them? (Score:2)
I read this whole thing as an end to the whole Windows 8 chapter. This whole thing started when Ballmer freaked out about the iPhone/iPad, and Microsoft immediately set out to turn Windows into iOS, make a tablet, and make a phone, just like Apple. Windows 8 and even Windows 10 to some extent is so heavily driven by the hope that people will be exclusively buying software from the Microsoft App Store, and tablets/phones from Microsoft. During the preview, those of us using traditional PCs complained bitterl
"impairment charge" (Score:2)
$7.6 billion write down = profit (Score:2)
Remember, Microsoft has been suing droid phone makers and makes a tidy annual profit from those deals. It also pushed Google over the edge to buy Motorola and develop its own arsenal to help defend droid phone makers. Also, while a write down is usually not a good thing, it does carry with it some tax benefits in the present as well as years to come.
I hate Apple (Score:2)
but wow their business model and strategy seems to be solid while MS is a cluster fuck. How times have changed.
Why Microsoft bought Nokia .. (Score:2)
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Well, since Samsung and Apple are pretty much the only ones making any profits out of phones right now I can see why not many other companies wouldn't want to make them. Though Microsoft is probably making a bunch of money on royalties through Android.
Samsung phone profits falling (Score:2)
Well, since Samsung and Apple are pretty much the only ones making any profits out of phones right now
Apparently not so much for Samsung [appleinsider.com] lately.
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They've stated that they weren't going to give out separate sales figures. Personally I don't care what the numbers are as I'm not interested in the watch at all. I've never seen a good reason to get a smart watch (a reason that works for me, other people may have good ones that work for them). Same goes for the latest phones. I don't like the larger phones as I want one that works well one-handed and until they make one that does I'm sticking with my 5s (or if it takes them too long I'll find another c
Different needs (Score:2)
When is Apple going to publish current iWatch sales figures? The new product is cratering, a dismal failure. Word is getting out, the thing is a dud.
There doesn't seem to be clear evidence one way or the other [appleinsider.com]. Personally I don't much care but we'll find out in due course. I suspect it is probably selling fine but it never was going to sell like the iPad or iPhone. Most likely it will take a generation or two to really hit its stride like most Apple products.
Apple is still selling phones, but most of us* aren't willing to spend that much on a phone.
Given that their sales figures keep going up, so far the evidence seems to show that isn't true. Furthermore they haven't even really hit their stride in quite a few less mature markets like Chi
Re:First Jolla and now Microsoft (Score:4, Funny)
I say we wait another 80 years. If most cellphone users are dead by then, it means that those wavelengths really are dangerous.
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No, they want to be Google (write an OS that gets used on many phones). They already tried being Apple (making both HW and SW) but failed.