Quote:
Originally Posted by KaptKaos
if they are only licensing, and don't own the patents, this is a really bad deal IMO.
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Yup 10 year non-exclusive licensing agreement.
Microsoft really had to do something. Management has certainly put their eggs in the mobile basket.
At first I thought it was a pretty bad deal for Nokia shareholders. It appeared as though MSFT bought the handset unit with almost no premium paid. IE they got half the sales and paid about half the market cap of the company. Not many mergers get done without a premium being paid. But MSFT has committed 2 Billion+ over the past 9 quarters to Nokia and will be foregoing royalties payments to the tune of 1.7 Billion or so.
The story for Nokia as a stand alone company now are much different than before. I assume they are going to focus almost entirely on their NSN network business. Maybe they can get apple to license some of the HERE mapping features. Lord knows the Iphone could use some mapping help.
To MSFT's credit they have been talking about streamlining the home experience for a LONG LONG time. Well before an Iphone ever hit the market. Honestly the Xbox360 does an OK job of doing that, but still has some work to go. I can stream movies, music, photo's etc to the xbox, but it needs to be simplified. It'll be interesting to see what the Xbox One brings to the table this fall. If they could streamile the xbox experience some and market it as a gaming / home entertainment hotspot it could really work well.