Comments on: Will Microsoft buy RIM or Nokia?

By: chas

chas — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 07:49:04 +0000

microsoft would further sully it’s reputation by buying rim. ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’.

By: minzhu

minzhu — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:43:15 +0000

RIM has strange culture and self distruct political environment.

In RIM if a new hired person figure out major problem and introduce efficient approach, both manager and his buddy group member will proof their wrong approach works. just like someone point out driving a car is right way, pushing a car is wrong way, then both manager and his buddy group member will hate you, and proof that 3 person can also move the car by pushing it. cheating email will be sent to some vice president, saying like: see, the car moving, pushing a car is a natural part of the process, in order to deny new hired contribution of introducing skill of drive a car, they have to deny merit of driving a car.

It is very strange company culture and strange company political environment, it promote stealing and cheating skill. RIM’s management may be a typical instance in MBA course.

This culture deny or steal hardworking team members’ contribution/innovation, generate strange political environment, destroy RIM.

so will someone buy it?

and RIM is a low effecient software company, lived on OS, if it live on device like moto, it will die thousand times, that why 10 moto will be sold but no one will buy RIM.

By: suspicious

suspicious — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:48:37 +0000

There is also the “conspiration theory” : Elop’s a Microsoft’s mole, which mission it to bring down Nokia and make it puppet slave or a weak foe for Microsoft acquisition.
Such point of view is relayed in some articles, such as : http://www.osnews.com/story/25480/Microsoft_To_Acquire_Nokia_s_Smartphone_Division_

Sound too far fetched ?
Well, unfortunately, such tactics were already employed in the past. Gemplus is such an example.

By: jason

jason — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:31:21 +0000

the purchase of rim would be a joint effort by microsoft and nokia not one or the other. microsoft will absorb rim while nokia will improve hardware and implement an ios of microsofts design with nokias imput.

the next blackberry will be the nokia blackberry with windows mobile 8. 2 versions will hit the market. one with hard keyboard will be similar to the e6 and the other large touchscreen will be similar to the 900.

of course nothing i said is true but it does make more sense.

By: @antoniofonseca

@antoniofonseca — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:29:52 +0000

Insightful analysis.

By: Will Microsoft buy RIM or Nokia? | Monday Note » اطعج ... للحقيقة أصول

Will Microsoft buy RIM or Nokia? | Monday Note » اطعج ... للحقيقة أصول — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:55:50 +0000

[...] the latest speculation Will Microsoft , at long last, buy RIM? The idea has been kicked. Link: Will Microsoft buy RIM or Nokia? | Monday Note Posted by أحمد جبر at 6:15 م Tagged with: a-has-been, along-the-lines, [...]

By: JF Susbielle

JF Susbielle — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:45:02 +0000

Mobile was never a priority for Microsoft. I am convinced that WinMo consistent failure over the years was seen as positive for the company’s image as it distracted the attention away from their core monopolistic PC business, Windows/Office.
It all worked well as long as there was a steep divide between the PC and mobile worlds.
It all dramatically changed in 2010 with the arrival of the iPad, bridging PC and mobile. Microsoft’s business is now challenged from above by the Cloud, and from the bottom by tablets.
Cloud + Tablets is a potentially lethal combination.
The tremendous challenge for Microsoft is the tablet, not the phone. Meaning Microsoft has no interest to buy a phone manufacturer.
Nokia has done a tremendous, deadly and final mistake in partnering with Microsoft. They had to embrace Android with enthusiasm and speed.
Nokia is left with phones doubling as torchlight and hammer for remote Indian villages.
Eventually, RIM and Nokia are worth what their patent portfolio is worth

By: Walt French

Walt French — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:36:50 +0000

And with regard to the Nokia/Microsoft relationship: Nokia seems to have specifically aimed its 3 devices for the US at 2009-era standards. Although the Lumia 900 has LTE, the others are a little optimistic in calling themselves “midrange,” given that they feature quite modest hardware and extremely limited expansion into functions such as video/photo edits, games that demand a bit more technically than Cut The Rope, and even things like screen resolution is well back from competitors’ offerings.
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Surely, Nokia and Microsoft both know that WP is far from competitive in many ways, so they have not tried to attract enthusiasts at the high end, the way that Motorola and RIM tried, and failed badly for their weak efforts, doing.
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The current state of affairs for Microsoft is weak across the board:
* Software (a very nice basic UI that lacks multi-tasking and likely has relatively weak support for developers’ more challenging tasks);
* 3rd-party apps (a smallish count, and no reason for a developer to try cutting edge or niche apps;
* no history of muscle in relations to the powerful duopoly that is today’s US carrier situation.
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So Nokia has met Microsoft’s not-there-yet package with some hardware that may not turn heads but is fully good enough in a CYA sense (only). Why Microsoft says they are banking on Nokia is beyond me; either there is some other shoe about to drop or Microsoft is ceding the phone business; if Ballmer is half the manager everyone thinks he is, we will see something dramatic inside of six months. Or we will see something dramatic around six-twelve months.

By: Walt French

Walt French — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:21:50 +0000

Hmmm. Three loci of value in RIM: its Enterprise messaging business, still heads and shoulders above the competitors (although arguably, merely better than “more than good enough,” and so not as valuable as before. Second, its BBM business, the medium of choice for bankers and their clientele in Indonesia, for teenagers in South America, etc. And third, its handset business, meeting the need for an inexpensive, reliable gadget on which to talk and exchange text.
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I’d think that the Enterprise business could stand independently of the others, but it’d take new ownership — vultures — to carve it off and link it up with WP7′s, Androids and iProducts. I suppose some developing world telecomm or consortium would be happy to have the very customer relevant BBM, but without some sort of moat that network risks being torn asunder by the many freeware/99¢ messaging apps, country by country. But the most visible piece, the handsets, would seem to have no cachet in a world headed for smartphones.
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Oh, there’s a fourth piece: QNX and the Playbook. Except there’s not: first publicly announced in October 2010, it’s still woefully incomplete on the software front, mostly supporting Adobe AIR and having no critical mass or must-have apps.
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So out of 4 pieces, two could have value to firms that would NOT continue the identifiable business in North America and Europe.
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LBOs and similar bottom-fishing are hardly my specialty so there could be some other way to squeeze some value out of this carcass, but it looks to me that RIM has let its core competencies rot away into irrelevance: why would any firm already in handsets buy the demoralized, old-fashioned or even obsolete assets, and why would any firm NOT already in the business not just start with a clean sheet of paper, as Amazon has?

By: SR

SR — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:12:10 +0000

Buy neither.
Wait for a vulture capitalist or two to buy both these companies and watch them tear apart the meat for the juicier parts of these companies.
MSFT can build their own share the hard way because Google’s failure is around the corner – Android is a failed system pretending to be an iOS competitor. MSFT should wait in the wings to step in.

By: Karthik Ramani

Karthik Ramani — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:41:44 +0000

I think for MSFT to really succeed and stay relevant they have to invent /reinvent a category / app spaces and create a market. That early lead is simply invaluable. Apple has mastered that aspect. Simply answering with their “me too” (phone, music, search) products is not going to help them. Their profits still come from products that are more than a decade old.

By: Pedro

Pedro — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:14:51 +0000

RIM could have been a good alternative for Amazon. The true war in the mobile space is about ecosystem apple vs google vs amazon, the problem for Amazon is that they share the Android platform with google, without using google services, something I think goolge will try to stop in the future.

By: Jean-Louis Gassée

Jean-Louis Gassée — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:05:37 +0000

@ jehrier: You’re right, sharp eyes, thanks, we’ll get it fixed on the site. The link points to the correct info, that is the quarter ending in Nov 2011, that is Q1 FY 2012.
(Fixed by FF, thanks!)

By: jehrler

jehrler — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:57:31 +0000

Just a nit, you say “cash equivalents line went from $2.7B last February to $1.1B in November 2001.”

I think you mean November 2011.