Microsoft copies Apple again: Buys Nokia

Microsoft announced today they are buying Nokia’s Devices & Services business.  Effectively copying Apple again by trying to own the smartphone product end to end.  Just like Apple does.  Apparently the fragmented strategy that MS has used from day one, and the one that Google has employed with Android, just ain’t cuttin’ it any more.

This is creepy crazy, cuase just 2 days ago I read a great article on All Things D that threw this very idea on the wall, to see if it could stick as a way to save the ailing Red(mond) monster.  GREAT article by the way – you gotta read it.  Like deja – friggin’ – vu !!!!  Check it out:

“Of course, before it picks a CEO, Microsoft might make some massive move to reconfigure the company via acquisition or spinoff.  Top of mind: Buying Nokia to solidify its phone efforts, as well as bringing back former Microsoft exec and current Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. This move would be a whoa-nelly one, but not completely out in left field, either.”

(Shivers down spine)  Like…. What The !!!  ….Right !!!

Apparently Big M thinks that they’re Epic Fail with the Surface was a fluke.  They sure pissed off their hardware partners with that one.  And now they’re doing that in phones.  Samsung and HTC may not be too thrilled with this move.  Wall Street’s none too thrilled with MS either, but they’re likin’ Nokia now.  Nokia hasn’t seen a good day since 2007 when their stock price peaked.

Nokia’s CEO sure did a major flip flop since July when he didn’t see this coming.  Guess the face of doom has a way of changin’ a guy.

“But earlier this summer, Elop was spinning a very different story, one in which Nokia would hold on to its struggling handset business and make it successful. Indeed, this past July, he told The Wall Street Journal that it was “hard to understand the rationale” for selling Nokia’s devices business.”

Sounds like another mobile CEO in total denial.  Can you say… Blackberry ?

Nokia’s new interim CEO had this to say:

“Siilasmaa said that the phone industry is “becoming a duopoly,” with the leaders (clearly iOS and Android) gaining increasing momentum.”

“‘Nokia alone does not have the resources,’ Siilasmaa said. Microsoft, he said, does have the resources but lacked the business model under the existing arrangement, noting that Microsoft made less than $10 in revenue for each phone sold.”

Seems that Blackberry’s chances at being number 3 are fading fast.  Unless Microsoft stumbles like they did with Surface.  But Surface was different, in that MS tried to build the hardware themselves.  With Nokia’s know how in building decent hardware though, it will take MS at least a couple product cycles to totally screw it up.  So MS might have a chance at the number 3 slot.