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That time when Microsoft bought and killed Nokia phone unit
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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I had completely forgotten that it was Microsoft that killed Nokia.
I haven't. The n9 with meego was amazing. The n900 too but I'm still sour thinking how great meego would be now instead of android.
N900 and Maemo were already awesome. There was absolutely no need to rewrite the entire operating system. Damn I am still angry.
Maemo was so much better than any os coming after it... Meego was in my opinion the wrong path to take. I still miss the N900, what an amazing device it was...
I was just waiting for the n900 whining so that I could join in. Damn, I miss my n900. It had flaws but for its time, it was amazing. With a good CPU, I'd buy it today in a heartbeat.
To be fair I think Nokia was already one foot in the grave before the M$ deal. Largely thanks to Mr. Ollila.
It wasn't really Microsoft that killed Nokia's cell phone division, but gave it the final blow that made the house of cards fall.
Nokia was basically getting super arrogant. "Oh, trust us, we're the #1 phone manufacturer on the planet. We know what's best for the market". They got caught completely pants down when iPhone came out. Despite the fact that they had already made successful smartphones (Nokia Communicator line). Despite the fact that there was this one small Finnish company that had made a touchscreen based phone and Nokia just laughed them off when they offered to help.
Every move Nokia made after iPhone was basically playing catch-up with some really strange decisions.
I believe that Nokia could have salvaged themselves if, instead of going with Windows Phone, they had just announced they'll be Yet Another Android Manufacturer. But Nokia had to be special about it. They had invested in Ovi (app store) and Here (map service) and they just had to be special. (And even more ironic is that HMD Global is doing just fine as a maker of Nokia-branded Android phones these days.)
To be fair, Microsoft only bought and killed off the phone division. The rest of Nokia is still around including their R&D department bell labs. You know the same bell labs that's developed some little know inventions like C and C++, solar panels, the transistor, and UNIX...
Nokia bought the parent company of bell labs in 2016. By that point bell labs had already been completely restructured to the point that it has basically nothing to do with the historical bell labs.