Nokia Shareholders Approve Sale To Microsoft 182
mrspoonsi writes "Nokia shareholders met today at an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to vote on whether or not to accept the terms of the company's proposed sale of its devices and services business to Microsoft. The deal, which was first announced in September, is worth €5.44bn EUR ($7.35bn USD / £4.57bn GBP), and also includes provisions for Microsoft to license patents from the Finnish company. 78% of those eligible to vote had already voted before the EGM. Of those early votes, a staggering 99% had voted in favour of the sale to Microsoft."
Get out while the getting is good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Elop has succeeded in destroying Nokia. Hopefully, it will take Microsoft with it!
Their only chance (Score:5, Insightful)
The two choices:
A) sell out to Microsoft and get some cash for the shareholders;
B) go bankrupt and lose everything.
Yeah, I'd choose A too. Interesting that Blackberry, in pretty much the same position, chose B.
Re:Increasingly irrelevant tech dinosaur.. (Score:0, Insightful)
When Slashdot sells out and disappears in a few years, it will be the same response.
Sadly, this site is as relevant as Nokia currently is.
Re:Increasingly irrelevant tech dinosaur.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Increasingly irrelevant tech dinosaur.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Desktops/laptops are not 100% of the world's computers!
Re:Increasingly irrelevant tech dinosaur.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the things that most computer users do. Now consider the devices that they can do (and do do.. ho ho) these things on. Smartphones, tablets, consoles, internet enabled TVs, and everything else that you can now use for things like Facebook, Netflix, editing documents, etc. You have now noticed that their market relevance is nowhere near 95%. And it's falling.
Re:Not so staggering. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but there's something fishy when a former Microsoft exec came in, gutted the company, made them entirely beholden to Microsoft, and then watched their market share collapse.
You couldn't construct a better tin-foil hat scenario than a corporate executive making the company ripe to be bought by his former employer.
To me, either Nokia was incompetently managed, leading to the eventual purchase by Microsoft -- or this was all part of someone's master plan to make this happen.
And if that person who either incompetently managed Nokia (or masterminded their demise) is a candidate to become the CEO of Microsoft ... you have to ask why someone who is either incompetent or dishonest is being considered.
CEOs and executives don't seem to get selected for actually being able to do something, but who they know that can make back room deals. To me, Elop was an abysmal failure at the helm of Nokia, so WTF qualifies him to be at the helm of another?
Re:Increasingly irrelevant tech dinosaur.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I consider it this way. My Smartphone has more power and RAM and runs more apps than my "High end" desktop PC from 13 years ago (Circa 2000), and in some ways has better features than the PC from 13 years ago. It isn't a "full desktop" so what, it is a computer!!
Re:Their only chance (Score:5, Insightful)
Blackberry isn't bankrupt, they still have some useful stuff, they just need to utilise it properly.
If they do go bankrupt it'll be because of management failing to realise their potential, not because they had nothing of value left.
For example, there'd still be massive scope for Blackberry to start releasing Android devices that were secured to a similar standard to their existing phones and to integrate their business tools into it like BIS.
Right now whilst business integration tools have improved for the major smartphone platforms iOS, Android and Windows Phone are still primarily consumer focussed operating systems.
So there'd be a pretty large market for someone with the past experience of Blackberry at satisfying corporate customers to create a purely corporate focussed line of smartphones that are based on iOS, Windows Phone or Android - I suspect Android would be the best bet as it's the easiest option for a third party to customise to the degree needed.
A range of Android handsets with a determined focus on security, business needs, and easy integration to corporate systems would basically hand them the entire business world and they have much of the groundwork in place that they need to do that. They just need management capable of realising it. A good CEO could have this up and running within a year, anything else and then they'll be bankrupt.
Re:Not so staggering. (Score:5, Insightful)
The staggering newsworthy thing in this case is that it was the company with a perceived strong market position that engineered the other company into a struggling position in the first place.
Or in other words, this was one of the most blatant planned corporate sabotages and subsequent buyouts of recent history.
Elop has abysmally failed as a CEO and yet Microsoft are treating him like a hero, even with suggestions he's the frontrunner to run Microsoft itself now. Normally in an acquisition like this he'd be first out the door for creating arguably one of the biggest corporate failures in history (the speed at which Nokia lost assets and fell into a loss making company was staggering). The rest of his family never even left America which strongly implies they knew he was coming back. If that doesn't make it clear that what many people suspect went on isn't just theory then I don't know what would.
So the news is that what many people theorised was the plan all along actually was. Maybe given that many of us theorised it from the outset means we shouldn't be surprised, but I think the shock that we were right, that Microsoft would be so blatant and open about the game they were playing and so utterly lacking in subtlety is shocking. Most of us are in disbelief that we were right, that the biggest and most succesful phone manufacturer on the planet and that had a strong anti-Microsoft culture could be turned round into a Microsoft takeover victim in just a few short years.
Lost non US advantage (Score:4, Insightful)
This would have garnered them a nice chunk of the market.
That is gone now.