Eldar back on form, more Microsoft buying Nokia Smartphone division rumours.

Sponsored by Samsung? joke

I’m trying not to write this or press publish as I’ve tried to ignore now to report Eldar’s stories just because you can feel all the anti-Nokianess despite his attempts of claiming to be a journalist without bias. I think the fact that folks keep talking about him kinda self-sustains the reputation that he can some how predict things (and amazingly ignore the instances where he’s wrong. BTW repeating info that’s already public/rumoured is not predicting it). Maybe if you throw enough darts on a board you’ll score the right points, no?

https://twitter.com/#!/eldarmurtazin

Again this is about Microsoft buying Nokia’s smartphone division. I wasn’t going to post about it except for the fact that Nokia Conversations had an interview with head of mobilephones unit, Mary McDowell where the summary blurb talked about whether Nokia was ready to have a woman CEO. Perhaps that was just talking about gender differences in general, or are they hinting to what Murtazin is talking about – Nokia will just be dumbphones and thus McDowell will be the new Nokia CEO? He also said something about the dumbphones from Nokia being raised to be smartphones (meltemi?). Also remember the news that Nokia HQ would stay in Finland as long as Elop was CEO? Hmm…What do you mean as long as…where’s he going?

The tweet that has raised a lot of eyebrows today:

Steve Balmer, Andy Lees and Stephen Elop, Kai Ostamo will meet in Las Vegas to finalize agreement about Nokia smartphone unit. Bye Nokia

Other snippets

• Nokia brand wouldnt be used for smartphones in this new MS unit. Thats a kind of deal between Elop and Balmer
• Nokia brand will be used for dumb phones and updated category of devices which they count as smartphone competitors. I dont believe in that
• Most interesting thing about Nokia/MS deal that everything depends only from MS now. If MS decide then deal will be closed in 2012
• I’m not sure how fast Nokia will be destroyed if that deal happens in first half of 2012. May be 1-2 years.
• Without smartphones Nokia won’t survive. But Motorola or SE shows that smartphone itself isn’t save companies
• Stephen Elop will be resign as Nokia CEO in 2012 (I told that several times but repeat again).
• MS partners aren’t keen about WP7 and saying that publicly. MS aren’t glad about that. MS want to create own successful products (like XBox)

I think yesterday he also tweeted something along the lines of not hating Nokia, just posting facts. I think we’ve seen and showed plenty of examples of his bias against Nokia, such as recently his criticism on the N9 at launch, e.g. mediocre screen/resolution (it’s on par with SGSII and has more pixels -_-). Maybe it’s not a hate for Nokia, just more love for a certain brand beginning with S and ending in (pleaseletmebeaniPhoneAMSUNG). Or he could be posting actual insider info that people are leaking to him or making poor conclusions with info he already knows. We can’t be sure.

What we do know is that Eldar has said this way, way too many times now. I’m sorry for posting it, but there are things from Nokia themselves that are kinda hinting this too. Perhaps it’s just the case that if you think of something enough you associate everything with it. Possibly, after the N8 fiasco and the situation between Nokia and Eldar, he’s been keen on revenge and so repeating the mantra that Nokia will soon die in the hopes we would spread his news and some how it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

At this point and time, Nokia are at a very crucial stage of seeing whether Nokia-MS and Lumia is going to work. We’re just about to see Nokia Ace, but we’ll still really be waiting for Apollo to see just what Nokia can do. The incoming Windows 8 is also going to be key to getting users to adopt a Metro interface. Also, Nokia and MS need to do something big with that 8B MS paid for Skype. Please let us have skype video.

When can we begin effectively judging if it might work? Well Q2 and Q3 2012 results perhaps.  Hopefully Nokia will still be around.

What’s the sense in Microsoft buying Nokia’s Smartphone division?

Via TechCrunch

Thanks KF for the tip.

Category: Nokia, Windows Phone