Microsoft In Talks To Buy Nokia's Smartphone Division?

lightbox32 writes "Analyst Eldar Murtazin announced today that Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer was soon to meet his Nokia counterpart Stephen Elop to finalize the purchase of Nokia's smartphone division, which would see patents, staff, and some plants transferred to Microsoft, for an undisclosed price. From the article: '“Steve Ballmer, Andy Lees and Stephen Elop and Kai Ostamo will meet in Las Vegas to finalize agreement about Nokia smartphone unit. Bye Nokia,” he tweeted on Thursday morning."

This story is a lie

[DCTech]

Nokia already said that they won't sell their smartphone division several hours ago. Why is this rumor still echoed on slashdot?

Re:This story is a lie

[sconeu]

About to post the same thing.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/05/nokia-will-sell-crown-jewels-to-microsoft/ [theregister.co.uk]

Re:Qt

[Microlith]

The agreement still stands, and since it's LGPL you could fork from the last LGPL version and still use it in commercial projects. Of course, losing corporate support would be crippling to no small extent, which is one reason the Qt people have been working overtime to separate Qt from Nokia as much as they can short of being spun off.

Re:But...

[Nerdfest]

It means he's done enough damage to the stock price to make it affordable. It amazes me that what they did is considered legal.

Re:But...

[Desler]

Nokia lost 80% of their stock value high of ~40 bucks in Nov of 2007 to under 10 dollars in March of 2009 and it was riding in the low teens until Elop was announced as joining. Any :"damage" he has done was far less than Nokia was already doing to itself during the prior 3 years before Elop came along.

Re:Apple?

[ILongForDarkness]

Yes because being on call might be part of the job description. If you are getting 2X or more times a normal salary and have specialized skills your employer isn't likely to keep a bunch of spare "yous' around for after hours support. You're special which means in the ways you are special you are expected to "make it go" whenever it is needed. That is part of the reason for the good salary: you have more responsibility. Oh and you can add that on call is a very nice leash much preferable to actually having to sit at a desk at 10pm "just in case". Getting paid beer money to watch Star Trek reruns and than (at least anywhere I've worked) getting overtime pay if you actually get called is a pretty sweet deal.

Re:This story is a lie

[Anonymous Coward]

You're out of touch with reality [wikimedia.org].

Re:Apple?

[mvdwege]

If you need a phone, don't get an iPhone, period.

Seriously, everytime I get someone on the line with bad reception or heavily distorted speech, it's an iPhone user.

It's a neat, well-styled application platform, but it's a lousy phone. Get yourself an iPod Touch or an iPad if you like the apps, and buy a small dumbphone for your phone needs.

Mart

Re:This story is a lie

[TeXMaster]

Nokia already said that they won't sell their smartphone division several hours ago...

Why would Microsoft buy it when they already got it for free?

Because Nokia can pull out of the deal at any time now, and considering how much their Linux and Symbian smartphones are still in high request compared to their WinPhones (which is ridiculous if you consider that the N9 is essential an EOL, and still there's people in Italy, where it's not officially sold, getting it from Switzerland just to be able to put their hands on it), they actually might realize they're doing the stupidest possible thing by tying their technology to the MS o.s. —if MS buys their smartphone division, MS has the o.s. and hardware under its control. Much cheaper in the long run. I wouldn't be surprised if patents get in the deal as well, just so that they might fight a legal battle with android phones (specifically the reason why Google bought Motorola).

Re:Not plausible

[TeXMaster]

Sold well? Who bought it ? I hardly know anyone anymore who owns a Nokia phone, just eighteen months ago half my friends had one, hell I had a N900 myself. I had high hopes for the N900, sadly Nokia didnt...

Many people with N900 didn't get an N9 because the N9 is EOL. Despite this, though, there are markets where the N9 has not been officially sold (like Italy) that have to go look for their N9s eslewhere (e.g. Switzerland) _and they do_ (there are quite a few online Italian shops that sell imported N9s).

Nokia expresselly killed their Linux line of phones, by making the N950 a "developer preview" only and only releasing the N9 in "selected" market. _Despite_ this, and their Lumia phones being everywhere, the N9 is still in high demand.