This is no surprise to anybody and is a straight forward move. By acquiring Nokia, Microsoft gets all the sales channels which are stronger in India and China and the low end markets that are not penetrated by Apple or Samsung. There are low cost android phones that has the considerable market share in the emerging markets but they are of low quality and none of them have a brand value stature as that of Nokia. Assuming the synergies and cost cutting from redundancies, this acquisition might be the best thing that Balmer has done to bring Microsoft back to relevancy in this new age of mobile computing given they don't both it.
There is a lot of potential here -
A $200 smart phone with decent hardware specs and a library of most used apps(it need not enter into the numbers game with Apple or Android) that has better integration with sky drive and other cloud based applications might be a winner. Microsoft should also think of promoting free apps to increase the mobile unit sales initially. It should also think about leveraging Skype to the fullest by integrating more closely with the mobile by allowing the same mobile number to be ported to Skype and make it the primary mode of communication. Skype should adopt an a freemium business model - All the calls should be free including the porting of the phone number and adopt an ad based model with a paid model for the conference calls. I hope Microsoft can also bring in some technology from Kinect to the mobile to implement some cool gesture based interface into the mobile.
Given the silos in Microsoft corporate structure, this might not be easily doable. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple he ditched all the clunky legacy stuff and concentrated on the cool stuff. May be Microsoft can learn something from this. I am not saying that Microsoft should ditch its cash cows but rather put the cool things together into one basket - restructure the organization and bring the startup like mentality and culture into this basket.
I do not think Balmer in his retiring year or Stephen Elop, a product of Microsoft himself, if given a chance to helm Microsoft can pull this off. Microsoft needs a product chief and not a sales chief at this point to rejuvenate it.
There is a lot of potential here -
A $200 smart phone with decent hardware specs and a library of most used apps(it need not enter into the numbers game with Apple or Android) that has better integration with sky drive and other cloud based applications might be a winner. Microsoft should also think of promoting free apps to increase the mobile unit sales initially. It should also think about leveraging Skype to the fullest by integrating more closely with the mobile by allowing the same mobile number to be ported to Skype and make it the primary mode of communication. Skype should adopt an a freemium business model - All the calls should be free including the porting of the phone number and adopt an ad based model with a paid model for the conference calls. I hope Microsoft can also bring in some technology from Kinect to the mobile to implement some cool gesture based interface into the mobile.
Given the silos in Microsoft corporate structure, this might not be easily doable. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple he ditched all the clunky legacy stuff and concentrated on the cool stuff. May be Microsoft can learn something from this. I am not saying that Microsoft should ditch its cash cows but rather put the cool things together into one basket - restructure the organization and bring the startup like mentality and culture into this basket.
I do not think Balmer in his retiring year or Stephen Elop, a product of Microsoft himself, if given a chance to helm Microsoft can pull this off. Microsoft needs a product chief and not a sales chief at this point to rejuvenate it.
