Microsoft Capture Nokia On Transfer Deadline Day

Yesterday was the day of the big spenders. Gareth Bale became the world’s most expensive footballer and joined Real Madrid for £85 million,  Vodaphone announced the selling off of its huge stake in Verizon for a mere £84bn and Microsoft has agreed a deal to buy Nokia's mobile-phone business for 5.4bn euro ($7.2bn; £4.6bn).

Tottenham have already spent the cash and replaced Bale with half a team of international talent. Vodaphone are planning on giving their shareholders a huge dividend of some £54bn to sweeten the windfall and true to their nature will avoid paying any tax on the deal. But what of Microsoft and is the deal going to reverse their fortunes under its new leadership?

Only some ten years ago Nokia ruled the mobile world and was the device of choice for the majority. However, Nokia made some fatal errors of judgement around its operating system and also failed miserably to compete with its new competitors from the Far East and Apple. Today it finds itself with saes falling at the rate of 24% in the last year. Microsoft, like a giant tanker spent 10 years trying to change course in changing seas and took too long in doing so.

So will a marriage of two of yesterday’s men make any difference to their fortune moving forward?

Microsoft will now license Nokia’s patents and mapping services and take on some 32,000 Nokia employees but will it win the consumers over? Microsoft will also licence the Nokia brand for the next ten years which may sound a good move but may also not appeal to the consumer.

Mobile is the area of tremendous potential but it has been one of weakness for Microsoft. There attempts to fix their OS offer have had the hype but delivered little. Microsoft’s Surface tablet should have been a winner but turned out a loser and its weakness was down once again to the OS and its offer.

Nokia greatest weakness has been their inability to adapt and sort out its OS. So will Windows OS mobile be the new must have or will it merely burn a deeper hole in Microsoft’s purse?

The new Lumia phones, which run a Microsoft operating system, may offer a small rest bite and the potential for greater integration, but will the marriage also drive other mobile manufacturers away from Windows offers and yet closer to Android?

Real Madrid have already covered their expenditure with the sales of Kaka and Ozil and in shirt sales. Vodaphone believe they can survive as a smaller global player and have a wedge of cash to soften the move and we now have three clear mobile offers; Apple, Android and Windows/Lumia/Nokia/whatever brand they finally choose? 

Kindle to be Pre-Loaded on Verizon Androids

Verizon Wireless have announced that they will preload Amazon.com's free Kindle ereader application across Android smartphones. This will include Motorola's Droid 2 and the Samsung Fascinate. Kindle for Android is already available via Google's Android Market but this move signals a that the battle to get software preloaded on devices is getting hotter and follows similar moves by Amazon’s smaller competitor Kobo. The move also starts to add further beef to the Android offer over Apple. What is clear is that Apple’s venture into ebooks and their iBookstore may yet prove as shallow as Sony’s bookstore in its offer and a mere side game as the battle moves onto a clear multi platform and any device war.

We wonder whether someone will now take the bold step and buy Kobo and whether that would be to develop it or effectively take it out?

A Tablet A Day?

It may be starting to rain tablets as manufactures line up to take on Apple and its iPad. The game may be more about getting to market quickly than getting all the bells and whistles into the devices. The Android platform has clearly shown that Apple is not without strong competitors and its adoption onto the tablet market may be interesting to watch. So who is bring what to the tablet wars?

Google / Verizon
The week that Google pulled out of direct retailing its Nesus One and admitted that others can do it better is one aspect to consider. The other is that Google let HTC design its Nexus One and anyone with a HTC Android will tell you it’s a HTC phone.
However Google has some great things to build into the tablet; email, search, maps, office and an apps store and well as a cloud approach and that is without YouTube, Google Editions etc.

Acer
Acer is rumoured to be almost ready to launch and they have the channel distribution and technology competency to make a good splash. There are questions as to whether they will use Google’s Android or Chrome platforms but you can see a trend developing in the Google versus Apple wars.

RIM Blackberry
We like the name BlackPad or BlackSlate and it certainly would be interesting to see RIM move up to compete outside their comfort zone. They did make the transition from email to smartphone and from keypad to touch but this will seriously take them into the PC world and it will be very interesting to watch whether their corporate base continues to remain loyal or as some have already started ditches them for generic safety. It is rumoured that the tablet will not be 3G network connected and will be a 8.9” screen and will not be on the market till the end of the year.

Dell
Dell appear to have interestingly chosen to take on the iPad in Europe first with their 5 inch Mini 5 tablet running on Android. The real question is whether a 5” screen is big enough to differentiate it from a phone and to compete with the larger screens. Dell again has marketing clout and and a very strong distribution and sales operation.It will be interesting if they also can apply some of their good design concepts to the Mini 5.

HP
HP announce their intentions early and also announced their changes early too! It is unclear what operating system they intend to use but they surely can’t afford to be late to the party and will certainly throw money at their sales and marketing operation.

MSI
Micro-Star International is launching a tablet powered by the powerful Nvidia Tegra chip. It appears they are caught between operating systems and have both an 8.9” and 10” models and the user can then chose between Android and Windows 7. We would suggest that if they can’t make up their minds its not always wise to leave it to the consumer. It also demonstrates that Microsoft is loosing the plot.

BT
Apparently it is reported in The Telegraph that BT has announced it will be releasing a touchscreen tablet PC that can apparently make and receive phone calls via built in speaker/ microphone or bluetooth. What operating system it will be based on is unclear but the logical move to integrate telephony makes sense and will wake others up to what their offers should be. It doesn’t make any sense to have to pay twice for the internet service as in the Apple model and either loose tethering could have strong financial appeal. However BT is not strong in this market and although it does have distribution and channels its brand is somewhat unaligned.

The tablet, which will be launched later this year, will be offered as part of a BT package and targeted at the family and home users market. This narrow perspective could make it an also ran before it even gets to market.

Trends

Industry analysts Gartner and IDC are now making a distinction between tablet PCs and tablet Pad devices The tablet PC use an x86-based processor and a full operating system, such as Windows, whilst the tablet Pad devices use ARM-based cell-phone and smart-phone chips and mobile operating systems such as Android, Web OS or the iPhone’s OS. This is a significant step change in the market and starts to confirm that Microsoft is on the decline and seriously threatened as computing starts to converge on the mobile.

IDC project that 6 million tablet devices will ship this year and that 4 million will be iPads. Interestingly they also see HP as the main threat to Apple. Our money would be on sitting tight and waiting till its time to do the Christmas shopping when things may be a bit clearer!

Open US Mobile Market

The biggest disappointments this year was not that England didn’t make the soccer European Finals or that they didn’t win the rugby World Cup, it was that Apple decided to launch the iPhone in the US with ATandT and in the UK with O2. Many were put off by the hassle of changing networks, or having to find a man who could make it happen but in spite of this the launch was a huge success and set the design bar for all to follow.

It appears that Apple wanted to break the carriers’ stranglehold on handsets, so that Apple could sell iPhones on any network. Verizon has now announced that next year it would be allowing any phone and any application on any phone, to be used on its network. This legitimately will start to open up iPhones to all.

The question now is whether Apple is already on a solution so the phone will work seamlessly on the different Verizon CDMA network. A mere five months after the launch of the iPhone changes are happening and those subsidised handsets are looking increasingly venerable and the US market starting to resemble those in Europe and Asia, where a carrier’s customers can use any compatible phone and take their phones with them when they switch companies.

Next we must watch Google both in terms of the open software it aims to push at the market and of course its own gPhone. If Verizon’s effort is successful, then content creators, software developers and device makers, who have been restricted under the control of the wireless companies, will have fresh opportunities.