Microsoft will pay about $5 billion to buy Nokia 's smartphone business, it announced Monday night, and will pay an additional $2.18 billion to license the Finnish company's mobile device patents.
Surprise? Probably not.
Because as we have proven in the past, we don't just look at the surface of the news, but almost always try to see what's going on beneath the surface, yesterday's move-announcement from Microsoft has probably been brewing for quite some time.
Microsoft has always been wary of Apple and it seems that it is willing to pay $7.17 billion to get into the smartphone game. The assets it will take from Nokia, in addition to the know-how, also include a fairly large patent portfolio that will probably cause headaches for its rivals. But the hidden ace is Stephen Elop, the former head of Microsoft's business division who left Redmond in September 2010 to become CEO of Nokia.
Would you be surprised to see him as CEO of Microsoft? Probably not. If Microsoft wants to remain dominant in the markets, it will have to reinvent itself. This means that a change of leader is necessary.
Two weeks ago, Steve Ballmer announced that he would step down next year, and Elop seemed to be the obvious choice to succeed him. Elop has always supported Microsoft even after his departure.
In February 2011, just six months after Elop took over as CEO of Nokia, the Finnish company made a spectacular shift towards Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. Coincidence?
However, the steps are exactly the same as those of Google , which as the manufacturer of the Android operating system also bought a mobile phone manufacturer Motorola, in an attempt to compete with Apple. In recent years, Redmond seems to have been following closely in the footsteps of Google and Apple and probably will not stop.
The question is how Microsoft wants to reinvent itself? By following the beaten path or by bringing ideas that don't exist in the market. Apple's recipe before and after Steve Jobs remains the same, resulting in a decline in sales, leaving room for celebration for Samsung, which is seeing its sales skyrocket.
