Windows Phone 8

• Tech Industry
• Microsoft
• Nokia
• Windows Phone
• Windows Phone 8

Microsoft acquires Nokia’s Devices & Services divisions for ~$7.1 billion

Microsoft has just announced that they are purchasing Nokia’s devices and services divisions. Nokia has been the main manufacturer of Windows Phone 8 devices, and it looks like Microsoft will be using this acquisition to further merge their software and hardware engineering and design.

In a joint statement from (outgoing) Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, the two executives stated, “Today’s agreement will accelerate the momentum of Nokia’s devices and services, bringing the world’s most innovative smartphones to more people, while continuing to connect the next billion people with Nokia’s mobile phone portfolio.”

This is not a complete takeover, as Nokia will still be its own entity with its own patent portfolio. However, Microsoft will be granted a “10-year license” to Nokia’s patents.

The purchase is expected to close the first quarter of 2014 and will net Nokia EUR 5.44 billion (~$7.1 billion).

Some interesting tidbits from the announcement:

• “At closing, approximately 32,000 people are expected to transfer to Microsoft, including 4,700 people in Finland and 18,300 employees directly involved in manufacturing, assembly and packaging of products worldwide.”
• “Microsoft is acquiring Nokia’s Smart Devices business unit, including the Lumia brand and products.”

• iOS
• Tech Industry
• Microsoft
• San Francisco
• iPhone 4S

Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8

Microsoft’s Windows Phone Summit is happening now in San Francisco with Microsoft Vice President Joe Belfiore giving a demo on eight of the big new features to be included in Windows Phone 8. Some of the notables, as highlighted in the images above, include: a new SIM-based NFC wallet experience that will initially launch on Orange (and it appears to include iOS 6 Passbook-like features for third-party cards, etc.); Nokia Map technology for offline maps and turn-by-turn; and, an updated customizable home screen. During the presentation, Belfiore also showed the slide above (via CNET) of SunSpider benchmark results showing IE 10 on Windows 8 beating out the iPhone 4S (running iOS 6 beta—Developer NDA be damned) and Android devices.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Microsoft’s strategy is that it is—yet again—totally refreshing. That means no single Windows Phone 7 device will upgrade to Windows 8; all current devices are orphaned. For consumers, the company did this same thing with Windows Mobile. The only difference is that Windows Phone 7 looks like Windows 8. It is a completely new ballgame underneath, and the device is actually running an entirely new OS that gets its roots in Windows NT. For developers, things are easier due to the shared libraries.