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Why the Microsoft – Nokia acquisition happened

Nokia and Microsoft just ended their joint press conference, in an effort to explain the acquisition the companies announced earlier today. As with any major announcement, especially with a brand like Nokia which invokes a lot of emotion, the reactions were predictably…. emotional. Risto Siilasma probably said it best, at the joint Nokia press conference in Finland – The acquisition is “Rationally perfect, emotionally complicated.” which we wholeheartedly agree with. But what drove the companies towards this deal? Why did Microsoft buy Nokia? What’s in it for both the companies? We try to explain with two points of views, read on.

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Microsoft and Nokia, what does it mean?

By now, you’ve likely read about Nokia’s Devices and Services division being acquired in a deal by Microsoft. You’ve also likely read about the movement of CEO Stephen Elop amongst others back to Redmond and Microsoft. What has been less clear is the fallout likely to come from this deal as well as the reasoning behind this acquisition.

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Microsoft agrees deal to buy Nokia Devices and Services Division

In a deal that would surprise noone in it’s happening but everyone in it’s timing, Microsoft will be acquiring Nokia’s Devices and services division in addition to licensing a significant portion of Nokia’s patents in addition to their mapping services. The deal in it’s entirety amounts to 5.4 Billion Euros paid in cash, 3.79 Billion for devices and services 1.65 Billion for the associated patents.

The transaction will see 32,000 Nokia employees transitioned over to Microsoft including 4,700 in Finland and 18,300 employed in manufacturing positions worldwide. In addition, a significant number of senior executives are expected to be transferring to positions within Microsoft, including Stephen Elop, Jo Harlow, Juha Putkiranta, Timo Toikkanen, and Chris Weber.

This is an absolutely monumental transaction and will go a long way towards shaping the smartphone landscape for years to come. We will keep you updated with any details as we receive them.

Via: Microsoft News Center

There Are Six Major Problems with Windows Phone, and Apps Isn’t One of Them

I keep running into this same sentence, over and over again “Windows Phone lacks apps”. Every single review of a Lumia for example ends with the same foregone conclusion: “it’s a great phone but there are no apps”. I usually shake my head at this statement, but the recent talks about Nokia blaming Microsoft and the lack of apps have me worried.

If anyone — at Nokia, or elsewhere — thinks that this is the culprit behind Windows Phone’s failure to gain market traction, then they’re clearly disillusioned. It’s not as if the release of Instagram will be the magical panacea to the platform’s issues.

While the app problem is partly true, it is in no way, shape or form, the sole reason why Windows Phone isn’t gaining traction. As a matter of fact, you will likely find 80-90% of the same or equivalent apps that you are used to on Android or iOS, and the community is very active — and creative — in trying to fill the remaining gap, so the app problem is only minor, if anything.

Windows Phone’s issues run way deeper than that. The apps are a symptom of the problem, an outward expression of it, if you will, but they are not the underlying cause. And while I don’t claim to be an expert on mobile phone markets and strategies, there are six problems I can see with Windows Phone that I will explain below.

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Google extends Windows Phone calendar and contact syncing deadline to December 31st

There was huge uproar after Google announced its plans to drop EAS support for all non-corporate GMail accounts, mainly because that affected Windows Phone, which has no in-built support for the new CardDAV and CalDAV technologies. Hence Microsoft and Google decided to extend the support for Windows Phone devices until July 31st, yesterday, a date from which devices without the GDR2 update would have stopped supporting syncing to Google servers. Thankfully, the companies have extended the date yet again, to December 31st, since most devices haven’t got the update yet.

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Halo: Spartan Assault lands on the Windows Phone and Windows 8 Stores

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Halo has been a celebrated game franchise that was popularized during the original Xbox era. People had longed for a similar gaming experience on other Microsoft devices as the company slowly brought their different divisions together, and to much surprise, Microsoft’s own 343 game studio announced Halo: Spartan Assault for Windows 8 and Windows Phone. A trailer that was revealed along with the announcement showed off a much different type of gameplay, based in the Halo universe. And today, it has landed on the Windows Phone store at $6.99, and for the same amount, you can grab it for Windows 8 here, while watching the trailer below –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxsYQtltOco

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Age of Empires to land on iOS and Android in 2013, more first party games later

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In a landmark change to the mobile gaming scenario, Microsoft has decided to bring some of its hugely popular first party titles to iOS and Android beginning with the Age of Empires in 2013. This is facilitated thanks to a license agreement by Microsoft with Klab, a mobile game developer in Japan which plans to port Age of Empires within this year to iOS and Android.

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Microsoft almost bought Nokia’s phone business – WSJ

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Wall Street Journal, the publication that is always bang on target with rumours and speculations reports that Microsoft recently held talks with Nokia to acquire its mobile phone business. The recently held meetings apparently broke down due to various reasons like price and market position. The most interesting thing is that these meetings were held recently and not a thing of the past. Recently there was a non-news that Huawei was planning to acquire Nokia and later completely denied it.

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Windows Phone 8.1 update with notification center, additional features spotted

Jeremiah Wong, a Reddit user, has posted a series of screenshots that are said to be from a Lumia 920 running on pre release software. The handset that was purchased via eBay is running on a software version that identifies itself as 12084.WPMAIN(wpbldlab).20130509-1407. This particular build was compiled on 5th May and has a number of additions that Windows Phone users have been clamoring for.

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Jetpack Joyride finally arrives on Windows Phone 8

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Months and years after making its presence felt on other platforms, including Windows 8, the Halfbrick hit game “Jetpack Joyride” has finally landed on the Windows Phone 8 store. It is incredibly frustrating that the Windows Phone 8 version took nearly 8 months after launching on Windows 8, and we thought Windows Phone 8 shared code with its parent. But anyways, the game is finally here and it’s free. The “endless runner + Helicopter” style gameplay is incredibly addictive and the power ups are worth playing for.

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Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 to power future Windows RT 8.1 tablets

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It is a well known fact that Qualcomm is one of the leading chip providers for the Windows RT ecosystem as well as the Windows Phone ecosystem. At the Computex event in Taipei, they have gone ahead and announced that their Snapdragon 800 series of powerful high end chipsets will include support for the Windows RT 8.1 platform. Powered by quad core processors with upto 2.2 GHz clock speeds per core, this marks a huge upgrade from the yesteryear dual core S4 plus chipsets that were used for the first Windows RT tablets, like the Dell XPS 10 for example. The Adreno 330 graphics is supposed to offer even greater graphics performance, and with additional support of in-built LTE and USB 3.0, the performance and feature gains for the Windows RT 8.1 are massive.

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SkyDrive updated for iOS, brings iPhone 5 support and high resolution image downloads

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SkyDrive, the cloud storage solution from Microsoft has its app updated for iOS finally, after a long time. The reason it took so long was due to Apple wanting a cut from Microsoft for an in-app subscription model for SkyDrive storage upgrades, initially planned for the iOS app. The app was reportedly re submitted a number of times until now, when Apple and Microsoft have finally come into a consensus on what to do with the IAP type subscription. Microsoft now doesn’t have an option for storage upgrade inside the app but users can always upgrade the storage from the web.

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Photosynth arrives for Windows Phone 8 with a lens app

Photosynth, the 360 degree(horizontal and vertical) photo stitching panorama app that has been there on Windows Phone for quite a while, has finally received an update for Windows Phone 8, with a nice lens app as an addition. Microsoft has been pushing the Photosynth service for a long time with its nice photo stitching capabilities, that are very similar to what you can find in the Android 4.2 camera’s photo sphere application. The Windows Phone 7 version has been there for the Mango devices and above since May 2012 and it is about time that it has been updated for Windows Phone 8, that too with a lens app for the camera.

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Acer to launch low cost Android and Windows tablets next year

Acer has been a prime contender in the Android tablet sector. Now they are planning to release Android devices starting from $99 next year.

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Google has no plans to build Windows 8, WP8 apps

Hoping to use an official Gmail or Youtube app on your brand new Windows Phone device ? You might be out of luck as the company is not too keen on bringing its products to Microsoft’s mobile offering.

Google Apps Product Manager, Clay Bavor, said in an interview with V3 that the lack of interest in the platform means that the company is not planning to develop apps for the platform just yet. Continue reading “Google has no plans to build Windows 8, WP8 apps”