Why Intel Should Buy Nokia 200
An opinion piece at ZDNet makes the case that Intel is the best match for struggling handset-maker Nokia, arguing that Intel needs help breaking into the smartphone market and Nokia isn't tied as tightly to Qualcomm/ARM hardware as other vendors. From the article:
"Another factor in favor of a union is Nokia and Intel's shared history — albeit not the most successful — of working together in mobile, thanks to their collaboration on the Linux-based MeeGo mobile OS. What's more, Intel has a long relationship with Microsoft, handy given the impending release of Windows Phone 8 and Nokia's new-found commitment to Microsoft's platform. The fact that Intel is currently using Android, as seen with Orange's San Diego smartphone, isn't much of a hindrance; Intel has already said it hasn't written off the idea of using Windows Phone 8 in future, and due to the x86 architecture, Android phones that use Intel's Atom processor won't even run all of the apps on Google Play, suggesting the relationship between Android and Intel isn't all it could be."
Why Intel should buy RIM and Qt (Score:4, Interesting)
Since we're speculating wildly, what about this scenario: Intel buying RIM and Qt. Nokia isn't using Qt anymore for new development and is looking for a buyer. RIM is switching to Qt and Intel has Qt experience from MeeGo. RIM is looking for a niche market rather than compete head-on with iOS and Android (see the recent interview with the CEO), so an Intel-owned RIM would be less of a direct competitor to Apple and Android manufacturers, which would increase the chances of them adopting Intel CPU's in the future. After all, getting into the mobile market would not be a goal in itself, just a way to sell more CPU's.
Re:No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Your analysis seems pretty right but you've missed that breaking up Nokia can finance quite a bit of the cost of a bid.
As ever; Tommi Ahonen has about the best analysis about this [blogs.com]. Beside the three you have named there are companies like LG or ZTE which could get quite a bit out of the "dumbphone" divisions. With Nokia's current strategy, where it's smart phones are barely selling outside Finland and the US, Nokia can't really get future value out of that division. Almost any company that can deliver Android, however, could use the dumbphone distribution network to get its self into the best position in most of the new upcoming smartphone markets.
One of the key things seems to me that a live buy of Nokia has to happen extremely soon so that Nokia still retains some experties outside the Windows phones and it looks like Steven Elop is trying to make that as difficult as possible.
Trolltech QT must survive (Score:5, Interesting)
If Nokia had had half a brain they would have made QT for iPhone and then Android so that people could port their iPhone apps quickly to Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, Window Mobile, and oh yes the Nokia phones. Nokia would have then become the center of the app universe while their own app library would have grown somewhat. I reluctantly learned Objective-C and have little desire to relearn Java so that I can port my iPhone apps to android. So with a C++ code once and tweak a bunch of times portability I would have been very happy.
My worry is that they will pull the rug on QT and then sell the carcass off to some group one step away from being a patent troll.
Re:Nothing left to buy (Score:2, Interesting)
The most talented engineers fled as soon as the Windows announcement was made
I hate seeing this. Prove it. A lot of the MeeGo/Maemo guys stayed on to work on Meltemi. The Qt guys didn't go anywhere... so who are these talented engineers that left? I worked with the Meltemi team and can tell you that they were insanely good. That OS and Qt were the only things keeping me at the company.
Re:No. (Score:4, Interesting)
[..] Nokia is most likely tied to microsoft contractually with significant fines on breakage, making for a nice poison pill for any microsoft's competitor [..]
Tommi Ahonen's argument is that these contracts are clearly actions of an agent of Microsoft and so those contracts could be invalidated. I'm not well exactly that would work, but it's definitely true that Microsoft has always been very arrogant in such matters just expecting to get away with things. There are quite a few things in Microsoft's operations which look very clever, but are actually very risky. People like Sendo and Lindows have managed to get a fair bit of money out of them.
One of the main things, for example, is that Microsoft always involves lawyers in any discussion of contract negotiations. This looks clever since it means that all such discussions are in theory "undiscoverable" and so not usable in courst. However, it also opens up Microsoft's lawyers to conspiracy in things such as destruction of evidence. If a sufficiently aggressive and clever attacker manages to threaten the MS lawyers with something which looks like jail time they will sing like Nightingales.
Probably someone who was willing to persue a really aggressive litigation strategy against Microsoft could get most of the cost of the Nokia purchase out of them in a legal settlement, free themselves of all sorts of legal restrain and get a very excellent deal on patent liability protection.
Re:No. (Score:3, Interesting)
He was actually there when Nokia made all the decisions that got them in the mess they were even before
Bullshit. Ahonen left Nokia in 2001 [blogs.com] which, coincidentally is about the last time that Nokia was showing excellent iPhone like marketing prototypes [drmenlo.com]. The iPhone came out in 2007. The person you are looking for is the person who was CEO during the time the iPhone was developed and up until the point that Elop was installed.
Apart from that; Ahonen's speciality is the mobile phone market, not technical side, so you can expect him to see what is wrong with that side more than the technical side of the company; his emphasis on "channel, channel, channel" misses the bad effect that insisting on delivering many models with slight variations had, but at the same time it's completely reasonable for an established player. Apple had to work incredibly hard to get around Nokia's channel dominance and the fact that Symbian was still selling many more phones than the iPhone until Elop's brainfart / memo just shows how right that strategy was.