ESR has the scoop:
Just when you thought the smartphone industry couldn’t get any more soap-operatic, everybody’s favorite pair of aging drama queens — Microsoft and Nokia — may be at it again. There’s a rumor, from a gossip with a good track record, that Microsoft intends to buy Nokia’s Smartphone division.
Inexplicably, there are even some people writing about the rumor who think this might even be a good idea. I mean, a good idea for Microsoft. It probably really would be a good idea for Nokia — they’d get shut of their idiotic alliance with Redmond and unload a crappy, chronically underperforming division for a pile of cash (the rumormonger says $19 billion).
But for Microsoft? Nokia’s brand strength was probably the only thing keeping Windows-phone share as high as 5.2%. It hasn’t been Microsoft’s software doing it, that’s for sure. Botched upgrades and a pathetically weak app ecosystem have only been the most obvious problems.
If Microsoft bought Nokia’s smartphone division, they’d mismanage it into smoking rubble within two years. “But wait, Eric…” I hear you cry, “they haven’t done too badly with the X-Box!” Quite right they haven’t — but that’s because Microsoft runs that division as a cash generator, mostly hands off.
Smartphones, on the other hand, are strategic. That means that if Microsoft buys itself a smartphone division, Steve Ballmer’s going to poke his prong into it. Repeatedly. To, um, what’s the B-school jargon? “Maximize the synergies”. They might even be treated to more demented-monkey ranting. Two years. Smoking rubble.
