Nokia phones to be renamed Microsoft Mobile

Per http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2013/sep13/09-02an... they did buy use of the brand, but only for current products. So if they want to come out with anything new, it's got to have a Lumia or Asha brand, which they bought outright, or something else, like Microsoft.

OK, here is why this is one of the worst, yet completely willful deals ever in tech:

1. Microsoft does not need Nokia. Anyone can work with an ODM to develop and manufacture a high quality smartphone, tablet, or PC.

2. Microsoft didn't even get "Nokia." After a short transition, the brand stays with the rest of Nokia.

3. Microsoft didn't get the patents.

4. Microsoft didn't get the ecosystem. No maps. No Music. No app store.

5. Microsoft got only a very short period of exclusivity. In 2016, around the time Jolla will have matured their business enough to spin back in to Nokia, which is still a large telecom company, Nokia gets to go back into making phones. Meanwhile, Jolla is where you will see Nokia's ecosystem on phones.

6. Microsoft gets ALL of Nokia's legacy phone business. Series 30. The briefly prospering and now dying Asha. Old Series 40. And the factories that make these devices. "Here ya go, Satya. Have fun with this. I'm outta here!"

7. Microsoft gets an interesting but under-developed Android -based successor to Asha. Microsoft will kill it. But they should keep it and allow it to compete against Windows Phone. The important thing is for Micrsoft to have an attractive ecosystem, and an internal competitor to Windows Phone that drives development of a Microsoft ecosystem accessible to Android users would be good for Microsoft. Maybe Satya Nadella is daring enough to keep it. But I would not bet on that happening.

8. It was a shotgun wedding. It was all about the downside of Nokia abandoning or de-emphasizing Windows Phone.

Windows Phone isn't worth saving. Bringing the Microsoft ecosystem to many phone platforms is what should be happening.

HN has changed, the new normal seems much more similar to Slashdot. The huge political slant, for one. But I sympathize with your complaint.

Well... to say it is not a strong brand "at all" it is not true. I can accept more "it is not strong on the mobile phones scope"

Also, can nokia keep producing phone or just recreate a mobile division with another os? (like rebuying Jolla) If yes, it would really be a problem for microsoft, nokia branding really saved the ass of wp for the first years

Windows Phone 7 was released in around November 1, 2010. Dell, HTC, and Samsung all shipped devices at launch. The first Nokia devices shipped in April 2012. By that time Windows phone 7.5, Mango, was available and that's what they ran.

At least in the US, consumer choice is significantly limited by the carriers, so I'm not convinced that sales are very brand-driven. Even the same model might use completely different hardware in the US than the rest of the world.

I bought my Windows Phone as an alternative to Android and iOS. The fact that it was a well-made Nokia was a certainly a bonus and an influencing factor, but I had no brand loyalty at the time. I always call it my "Windows Phone" in conversation and never mention Nokia or Microsoft, so it's possible the hardware rebranding will go unnoticed by the average consumer, as well.

I'd have considered a Nokia phone. No way I'd look at a Windows device.

Actually, if I found out the Nokia was running Microsoft code, I'd ditch it as well. RIP Symbian.

This might be true for countries like the US or China, but definitely not for Europe.

And if I ask my parents about apple they'll say their computers are "overpriced ripoffs"

I've long had a negative view of Microsoft, yes. But beginning in the ~2005 period, I started hearing some strongly critical views of the company in non-technical contexts -- one of the most notable was an aside made on NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me". Notable because 1) it was apparently spontaneous, 2) it was from a non-technical panelist, and 3) the specific comment was to the effect that Microsoft had a negative brand equity.

If anything, that's a trend that's accelerated and increased since then. Microsoft was the brand you had to use, not the one you wanted to use. It was familiar, but that can, as is said, breed contempt. Microsoft's direct consumers since the late 1980s have largely been OEMs and corporate CTOs / CIOs, not its end-users, and when it's tried direct mass-market products, it's failed hugely.

It's last significant unalloyed mass-market success was really Windows 95, and even that benefited largely from the utter unsuitability of alternatives: Windows 3.11, Apple (at its nadir and very nearly dead), Linux (far too techy). BeOS, Amiga, or OS/2 might have presented a preferable alternative, but Microsoft fought extremely hard to ensure that could not happen.

No, it's not just the techies.

Outside of gaming and partisans, Microsoft has really lost its brand.

In the build 2014 they announced a list of 12-14 vendors that are about to ship some new wp8.1, so I think that's not the case.

Surely the fact that now MS control also the HW and can produce phones directly will not encourage, in the mid-long term, other manufacturers to use that os, also if it is license free.

Nokia already has over 90% of the Windows Phone market share. Third party OEMs might as well not be making them already.

They can use Nokia brand only for few years, they don't have rights for it. It was known right from the beginning of this selling story that Nokia brand will disappear from mobile devices industry. Only the remaining parts of Nokia, not sold to Microsoft (part working on localization services etc.), will be able to continue to use this name.

Correct. But IIRC when acquisition was announced, they said that Microsoft would have license for using Nokia name only for Series 30/40 phones, so there would be Microsoft Ashas, Microsoft Lumias and Microsoft Nokias as 3 product lines. Later news media reported rumours about negotiations for additional licenses.

They have to, they didn't get this brand. They've just got rights to use it for few years together with mobile devices part of Nokia.

How is the brand valuable in a practical sense? On the other hand, it has plenty of negative association as a company that tried and failed to compete with Samsung and Apple.

Microsoft bought devices and services and right for Nokia name for few years. I think they need to drop Nokia name from new devices.

Someone saw me using my Nokia on the train the other day and commended me on Nokia's record with labor and child labor in particular.

They did beat them to the market. Then they screwed up, lost their whole advantage to Apple, and abandoned Windows Mobile...

No, it's just dead. Sorry.

Why u feel sorry for them ?

Nokia brand was not sold IIRC, it stayed with Nokia. Microsoft had a license for a few years and that's all.

On one hand the OS is Microsoft, on the other Microsoft just isn't hip and has baggage from past years. It's a dilemma