Microsoft Buys Nokia Announcement

From the Microsoft Press Announcement: Steve Ballmer also sent an email to all Microsoft Employees on the Nokia Deal: “We announced some exciting news today: We have entered into an agreement to purchase Nokia’s Devices & Services business, which includes their smartphone and mobile phone businesses, their award-winning design team, manufacturing and assembly facilities around the world, and teams devoted to operations, sales, marketing and support.” In the email to employees Ballmer actually some general questions most people will have about the deal and how it will affect the company. Here’s a couple of interesting statements Ballmer made:

Stephen Elop will be coming back to Microsoft, and he will lead an expanded Devices team, which includes all of our current Devices and Studios work and most of the teams coming over from Nokia, reporting to me.Our operating system team under Terry Myerson will continue unchanged, with a mission of supporting both first-party and third-party hardware innovation. We are committed to working with partners, helping them build great products and great businesses on our platform, and we believe this deal will increase our partner value proposition over time. The established rhythms and ways of working between Terry and his team and the incoming Nokia team will serve us well to ensure that we do not disrupt our building momentum.We plan to pursue a single set of supporting services for our devices, and we will figure out how to combine the great Nokia efforts into our Microsoft services as we go through the integration process.

What do you think of the news? Brilliant step by Microsoft? Does this mean Microsoft will continue to enhance its development of Windows Phone, a possible “Surface Phone” in the future? Elop the next MS CEO? More tablets? A lot of questions for sure, and this story will definitely be fun for us to follow. Let us know your take in the comments below! Upadate: Steve Ballmer appeared on CNBC this morning to discuss the deal. Here’s the video of the five minute interview:

A lot of people will be jumping onboard the Elop will be CEO bandwagon, but that remains to be seen. Wow, so many possibilities, questions…etc. What I do know for sure is Nokia is the flagship Windows Phone — currently the Lumia 1020 and earlier versions were great too. I need to get one to complete my full Microsoft ecosystem. It’s the only missing piece! Wow, huge news for sure. Comment

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