Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.17 billion

Nokia today announced that Microsoft will be acquiring substantially all of Nokia’s devices and services business for $5 billion. Microsoft will also license Nokia’s patents and mapping assets for another $2.17 billion making the complete deal worth $7.17 billion in cash.

Building on the partnership with Nokia announced in February 2011 and the increasing success of Nokia’s Lumia smartphones, Microsoft aims to accelerate the growth of its share and profit in mobile devices through faster innovation, increased synergies, and unified branding and marketing. For Nokia, this transaction is expected to be significantly accretive to earnings, strengthen its financial position, and provide a solid basis for future investment in its continuing businesses. “It’s a bold step into the future – a win-win for employees, shareholders and consumers of both companies.

Bringing these great teams together will accelerate Microsoft’s share and profits in phones, and strengthen the overall opportunities for both Microsoft and our partners across our entire family of devices and services,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive officer. “In addition to their innovation and strength in phones at all price points, Nokia brings proven capability and talent in critical areas such as hardware design and engineering, supply chain and manufacturing management, and hardware sales, marketing and distribution.”

The deal will see 32,000 Nokia employees transfer to Microsoft, with Microsoft also acquiring the Lumia and Asha brands while licensing the Nokia brand for continuity with current Nokia-branded hardware. Microsoft will also acquire Nokia's long-term license with Qualcomm for chip technology. 

Microsoft and Nokia have seen some success with Lumia phones running Windows Phone, but the platform remains well short of becoming a third major player in the smartphone market alongside Google's Android and Apple's iOS. 
By uniting the hardware and software, Microsoft seems intent upon offering a more complete and end-to-end user experience, similar in some ways to Apple's work integration of iOS and iPhone. 

Nokia Announces N9 MeeGo Phone with Swipe Interface

Nokia’s future lies with Windows Phone 7 and Symbian, but the Finnish phone maker has decided to give MeeGo one last hurrah before abandoning it to the cold darkness of forgotten operating systems. The Linux-based mobile OS gets a final day in the sun later this year when it launches on the Nokia N9, an all-touch smartphone with a 3.9 inch curved AMOLED display and unibody polycarbonate frame.

Nokia’s hyping a new “swipe” interface that eschews buttons for nothin' but finger controls. A swipe inwards from the edge of the screen will return to the home screen PlayBook style. Despite its imminent shift to Windows Phone 7, Nokia’s putting some decent hardware into this final MeeGo phone and claiming it delivers the best multitasking experience on a smartphone.

The 3.9 inch curved glass AMOLED runs at a resolution of 854x480 with power coming from a 1GHz OMAP chip from 2010. The OMAP 3630 has been kicking around for awhile now in phones like the Droid X, Droid 2, and LG Optimus Black. The SoC’s PowerVR SGX530 graphics won’t blow you away, but the N9 won’t be a complete slouch and should handle day-to-day tasks just fine. The phone will go on sale in 16GB and 64GB configurations sometime in 2011.

Other hardware includes an HD video-capable 8MP camera with dual LED flash, 28mm lens and auto focus support. The phone supports Dolby Headphone and Dolby Digital Plus for giving stereo audio the surround sound treatment, and Bluetooth and NFC support are in for short-range data transfer. A 1450 mAh battery keeps the WCDMA phone running.

Nokia’s big on the N9’s touch interface: it uses a double tap to unlock the screen and has a trio of home screens that focus on different phone elements. One shows your installed apps, another lists social feeds and notifications and the third houses the applications currently running on the phone. The Webkit 2 browser is HTML 5 ready and Nokia Maps comes with a Drive application for in-car navigation.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has said that the company will likely launch its first Windows Phone 7 device before the end of 2011. Production won’t seriously ramp up until 2012, and that may well be for a Europe-only launch. Nokia plans to launch up to 10 more Symbian devices by this time next year and will continue to support the platform until 2016. MeeGo won’t be so lucky--the N9 may well be the last Nokia MeeGo phone to hit the market when it launches sometime between late summer and winter 2011.