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Comment by annnnd | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a great deal - for Alcatel Lucent. Hardware networking equipment is mostly going to become commodity (with SDN). Some networking equipment will stay expensive, but that will be a smaller market. I don't see what Nokia sees in this deal...

On the other hand Nokia can still turn things around once they get back the right to use the name in phones (afaik the name was sold to MS for a limited period). If they stop inventing new OS every month (and stick to stock Android) they could be a huge player.

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Nokias networking division is profitable, and Alcatel-Lucent fills out the product range of that division and removes a major competitor and brings the combined company to a similar size as Huawei. That's what they see in that deal.

The type of networking equipment these guys are doing is a very long way from being affected by SDN. Nobody buys this equipment from them because they can't do similar stuff with off the shelf computers if they tried really hard. They buy because it is seen as a low risk option.

Can you explain why their hardware functionality is a long ways off from being replicated by SDN?

That's not what I said. The point I was making is that replicating their hardware functionality is a small part of the puzzle. Their customers are buying solutions and trust, not just hardware. So even if you replicate everything, they still have a business.

That said, there is plenty of high end networking gear that is hard to replace without getting into similar price territory. If you're going to be handling throughput in the tens of Gbps per line card, with high enough availability to require everything (CPU, line cards, RAM) to be hot-swappable, you may be able to do that with PC's, but you're going to be looking at high end, high margin specialist servers of the type you won't be buying in a local store.

And even assuming you can save on the server, you'll still be paying for line cards and network cards that are produced in small quantities and that are high margin as well.

Maybe they'll buy Jolla (which is not doing great atm), get old Nokia engineers back and continue with Sailfish OS. Alien Dalvik is great for Android software compatibility but a push for official recognition from Google for Play services and such would definitely help.

Independent operating systems is a good thing imo, but interoperability is crucial for them to coexist like browsers.

I think they'd be much better off launching an independent Android store, with CyanogenMod, which doesn't rely on Play Services. Signing up to Play Services basically means signing up to being an Android OEM manufacturer.

>Hardware networking equipment is mostly going to become commodity (with SDN)

How is it a commodity? Very few companies are making mobile phone networking equipment. And now one of those few companies is buying another one. That leaves: Nokia, Ericson, Huawei, ZTE and Motorola. If you're a European country or the US, you might not want to buy from two of these.

I said: ... is mostly going to become commodity ...

Speculation of course.

Is there really a market for yet another whitebox Android vendor?

No, Nokia just wants to license their brand to some other whitebox Android vendor. They've got a lot of good western brand recognition that can be valuable to one of the Chinese oems on the verge of global expansion.

I believe yes, there's plenty of room and making Android phones is the one thing Nokia didn't do. The Lumia line was of great value, my wife received one as a gift, but the one thing we both couldn't stand was the OS. Windows Phone is what killed it.

They won't be able to use the name for phones again. The motivation behind that part of the contract was different.

They won't be able to use the Lumia and Asha names again, but they've specifically stated that from 2016 they will be licensing phone designs and the Nokia name to third parties to produce cellphones.

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