Hacker's ramblings

This has been in the rumors for a long time. The Finnish pride Nokia chose to exit their Devices & Services branch now that Lumia phones are finally getting popularity. It is kind of a sad day for Finnish ICT-industry as the biggest company divests roughly half of itself with a very cheap price. Lot of people, including me, were waiting for Microsoft to buy out entire corporation. Any business transactions of this size take months to prepare, if not years. So, most of the rumors from early 2013 appeared to be true. Our beloved (NOT!) "mole-man" or "Microsoft agent" Mr. E-flop managed to push the corporation's value down so that his seat for CEO of Microsoft could be granted with this move.

This is also a good day for Finnish ICT-industry, as lot of what-iffing can stop, and people can concentrate doing actually good things.

Bullshit floating around:

• Part of Finnish national identity was lost: Sure thing, Nokia was our own pride and joy, but things keep changing get used to it! After all Nokia did fuck up their own business with having too much pride for not to see what others were doing. Not to mention their horrible reorganizations that managed to completely kill their ability to innovate. I was proud what they did in the 90s and how they ruled the mobile world then, but not how they managed to get too cocky in the 00s.
  
• Nokia was about to go bankrupt: No, according to their Q2 2013 interim report, they had assets for 4,4 billion €, does not sound like bankrupcy to me
  
• Nokia was about to abandon Windows Phone and go to Android: I don't think so, Lumia was starting to sell like hotcakes
• Press is stating that "Microsoft bought Nokia": Idiots! No they did not! They purchased Devices & Services division. Lot of Nokia is still left. Neither did Google acquire Motorola, they just got Motorola Mobility division. There is a difference there.
  
• Nokia should have chosen platform X instead of Windows Phone:
• Apple iOS: really not available
• Blackberry: perhaps, ready platform, low on features, but Nokia guys could have done something with it, not as ready-to-go as they'd hope
  
• Palm / webOS: naah, too old crap, HP was ready to eject it, though. Price would have been cheap, but same story as Blackberry.
  
• Nokia's own MeeGo: Technically superior to anything, the trouble was that they put a lot of money into it, and due to their own organization's mis-management they could not produce anything real in time and decided to sink it. New platform is lacking developer community, though. Ex-Nokia people bought it and formed a new company Jolla.
• Android: Buggy, insecure, totally dominated by Asian companies like Samsung, LG and HTC. Really difficult to create something innovative with cheaper price. Totally out of the question.
  
• Windows Phone: History has proven that Nokia really managed to get it working. Trouble is that Microsoft has very slow development cycle. They're not accustomed working in mobile field at all. Perhaps Microsoft will now detach Windows Phone from Windows completely and allow them to move rapidly.
• Microsoft made a mistake when they did the acquisition: I don't think so. Their PC-business is fading and they really want to expand. Mr. Ballmer has set the vision to be a devices & services business and that's what they bought.
• Finland will lose lot of ICT-jobs: Why would Microsoft move the mobile phone development to Redmond? They have a proven track record of that not working. Also what many people are afraid of, is Microsoft scaling down the mobile business. Why would they do that? They just spent 5,4 billion € for it, why would they kill it after that? So, I don't think this will have a major impact on ICT-workforce.
• Nokia will have a grim future: Well, no. They divested the division not doing any profits. They kept their patent portfolio which is generating 1 billion € revenue each year. They have plenty of money, probably they'll just purhcase Jolla and start doing nice mobile phones again.