

Microsoft has $60b in cash while Nokia's market cap is just $12b - quadrahelix
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/06/us-nokia-microsoft-idUSBRE84504C20120506

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nextparadigms
Why buy it for at least $15 billion now (they'll have to pay a premium
obviously), when they can wait say until the end of the year when it will be
worth half of that? Nokia's share price is going down fast together with their
revenues and market share. It will be worth a lot less 6-12 months from now.

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parfe
And the only staff remaining will be the people who couldn't find better
positions elsewhere.

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Tomis02
Wrong. Nokia still does some of the best maps and guidance software on the
market. You don't do that with "people who couldn't find better positions
elsewhere".

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parfe
Excellent work changing from the future to the present tense!

Your time travelling comment totally invalidates my reply regarding someone's
prediction of the future.

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lebski88
This article ignores Nokia's large cash reserves (€9.8 billion). If windows 7
works then they likely have the cash to do it themselves. If it doesn't work
then it's hard to know what the smart phone plan B is.

> Microsoft is already paying Nokia $1 billion a year to use its software on
> Lumia smartphones.

Is that number even remotely accurate? I couldn't find any sources that didn't
discredit it. Wouldn't it be a matter of public record if true though?

Also disclaimer - I work for Nokia but have absolutely no knowledge about this
topic beyond an obvious interest and a few google searches.

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sp332
Microsoft and Nokia signed a deal last year, rumored to be $1B. Nokia
disclosed in its financials for Q4 2011 that there was a payment of
$250,000,000 so the rumor seems accurate so far.
[http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/26/2736132/microsoft-
nokia-25...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/26/2736132/microsoft-
nokia-250-million-platform-support-payment)

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jacquesm
Microsoft won't have to buy nokia. They have all the advantages they could get
from that and none of the headaches.

If they do buy Nokia it will be for one reason only, to prevent another party
from buying it.

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possibilistic
Why doesn't Google buy Nokia in order to stop Windows Phone dead in its
tracks? Would that be a pointless investment? Does Google already feel they've
won?

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nl
Why doesn't Apple?

(Good) companies don't buy other companies to _stop_ things, they buy them to
_build_ things.

Neither Apple nor Google worry about stopping Windows Phone - they are both
concentrating on moving as fast as possible to no competitor will keep up with
them.

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fungi
so should we all buy nokia stock in expectation of a takeover?

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lis
You shouldn't. I doubt that they will buy them, they might support them even
more to market their Windows Phones, but why would MS buy them? They already
have a deal to produce Windows Phones.

MS didn't buy any other pc vendor for the same reason. They want to sell and
license the software, without having to build the hardware.

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loverobots
Yeah, and my house is for sale for just $300K when MS has $60 Billion in cash
:). I would be shocked if they bought Nokia, it would mean a stop to all other
non-Nokia Win phones. I am willing to bet that MS will suck it up and help
Nokia for quite a while though.

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nextparadigms
I don't know why the other manufacturers haven't quit already. By staying on
WP7, they're just helping Nokia, which at least was in the past one of their
biggest competitors. All the credit for WP7 goes to Nokia right now, and
Microsoft will also make sure of that.

If they didn't choose WP7 a year and a half ago, we wouldn't even be talking
about WP7 right now, and they could've gotten rid of Nokia much more easily
(which I'm sure it's something they'd like to see). But instead they sustained
it until Nokia was ready to get all the credit for it, and now they'll get
nothing out of it.

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underwater
If Microsoft and Nokia can make Windows Phone work then it will be very
attractive to other manafacturers. They can how up late to the party and still
have something that -- in the eyes of the public -- is identical to leading
product.

