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Comment by boyter | Hacker News Reader

Nothing but patents and IP worked pretty well for IBM while getting their act together.

My bet is that Microsoft will "save" Nokia a couple years from now and use its remaining patents to extort every phone maker.

"Embrace, exterminate, litigate"?

Possible. The Nokia patent portfolio in the hands of an NPE partly funded by Microsoft would be able to do a whole lot of very selective damage.

If you are going to predict any major actor right now of aggressively and offensively suing people into oblivion, Apple would be the obvious target of that accusation and not Microsoft.

Microsoft has enough business vested all over the place. They don't need mobile to profit. Apple's only real source of income however, is now reduced to iOS-devices only. They need mobile, desperately.

The fact that Apple is already suing left and right, right now, when their platform is going well and they technically shouldn't need to be in any state of despair, that should tell you who to fear the most.

Oh. Apple will litigate aggressively, of course. But Nokia is clearly moving towards becoming either a target for acquisition as a whole or, after dismemberment, its patent portfolio is. Microsoft won't do it openly, however. It's more likely they'll employ proxies for that, not unlike the way they funded SCO's campaign. Besides, we are talking about Nokia's current relationship with Microsoft, not Apple.

Don't you think it's a bit suspicious a recently hired CEO who was until recently a high profile Microsoft employee discontinues a major platform investment on the eve of launching a competitive product (I have played with the N9 and it's a very good phone) and bets the company on a yet-unproven (and I am being more than generous on this assessment) Microsoft product?

I haven't tried the N9 so I cannot comment on it nor the platform which powered it, only that historically, Nokia's only edge has been good hardware. They have been (and still are, as far as I have seen) absolutely horrible at software.

I would trust a platform made by Microsoft infinitely more than anything coming out of Nokia HQ, and that is despite all the failings of Microsoft in the mobile and tablet space.

Now... With that said: There is no doubt that by going the Microsoft route Nokia is losing something. They are now a generic phone-vendor delivering someone else's OS. They no longer fully own their own platform and stack.

This is quite a significant loss and definitely a big risk. However: Given Nokia's history with delivering software and software-platforms, I think it's a smaller risk than trying (once again) to deliver something made in-house.

And I really don't find it "suspicious" that a recently hired CEO choose to turn to technology and people he already know. I find it a very obvious move, even though it's not very obvious if it is the best choice or not.

Even if you discounted MeeGo as a no-go (no pun intended) as I did before playing with the N9, Android would make more sense - they already had Linux kernels running well on their hardware and had them for ages. Building Android on top of that would be trivial. And quick.

Nokia could also be the only Android phone maker that would be completely imune to lawsuits by any other phone maker. And from Microsoft ("It's a shame you are suing us, you know. It would be horrible if we decided to sue all your WinMo 6 and 7 OEMs").

Even if you discounted MeeGo as a no-go (no pun intended) as I did before playing with the N9, Android would make more sense

Just to clarify: I never claimed that doing Windows Phone 7 was the better option over than doing Android. I claimed that delivering someone else's OS is probably the wiser bet for Nokia, as historically they've been just awful with software.

And with a CEO coming straight from Microsoft, going the WP7-route instead of doing Android, seems like a pretty obvious and "safe" decision.

> And with a CEO coming straight from Microsoft, going the WP7-route instead of doing Android, seems like a pretty obvious and "safe" decision.

I always tell my friends who work for Microsoft to never, ever drink their Kool Aid.

I think both MS and Apple have a vested interest in seeing Android destroyed. Mobile products are already selling more than PCs and no one expects the trend to slow down in favor of mobile. Tablets, in a short time, have already affected PC shipment numbers. If Jobs, Gates and Kay are right that tablets are the future, then this is a very serious threat to MS. These users are adjusting to life without MS software.

MS may not necessarily need mobile for profit but they need it for growth. These patent royalties are not going to last forever.

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