With its $7.2bn purchase of Nokia's 'Devices and Services Business' Microsoft has just entered the smartphone big leagues in a do-or-die deal which will see it go head to head with mobile heavyweights Apple, Google and Samsung. The deal has risks (how will Microsoft juggle competition with its Windows Phone partners, which include Motorola and Samsung, for example?) but it is also a necessary catch up move.
Samsung has been methodically building its own operating system (Tizen) for two years and has already admitted it will sell numerous Tizen handsets before the end of the year cutting its dependence on Google and, yes, Microsoft.
Google aquired a handset division as the 'accidental' by-product of the patents it craved in buying Motorola, a deal which ended Motorola’s interest in Windows Phone and last month saw the launch of the Android-based Moto X. Finally, Apple has had the complete package of hardware and software since it launched the first iPhone back in 2007, the move which changed the smartphone market forever.
With the future of technology's biggest companies now clearly aligned to their success in mobile, Microsoft had to move and the only surprise is the Nokia deal took this long.
Questions will be asked of Stephen Elop's so-called 'Trojan Horse' role in the deal (Elop is current Nokia CEO and a former Microsoft man) but the fact is it works out well for both parties. Ilkka Pannanen, CEO of Finland's fastest growing company Supercell, tweeted "What an ending to Nokia's story. But, Finland needed this. Now let's all wake up and get to work. New opportunities are everywhere!"
No comments:
Post a Comment