[Console Edition] Satya Nadella: "We are going to make some difficult decisions"

I have no idea how impairment charge works...

They write off a 7.6 billion impairment charge for the 7.2 billion Nokia take over. I thought impairment was a readjustment of the estimated value of an aquisition. So nokia was worth 7.6 billion last year, and now it's in the negative?

 

What does that mean, they won't develop as many first-party phones? They didn't get a lot of third-party Windows Phones either.

Are most of those being laid off former Nokia people?

Nadella has been in charge for a year and he's wielded the ax on how many jobs?

 

Sometimes new management gets left a mess from old management that they need to clean up. Laying people off sucks, but sometimes it's the right thing to do.

 

Stock holders want more profit, no matter how much profit they already make. That's it.

Other countries wouldn't have allowed the purchase of Nokia which resulted in firing 25,000 people.

 

I'm sure that was communicated when they were vetting him for the job. Maybe they didn't discuss specifics but probably said there would have to be "difficult decisions" made, are you prepared to make them, etc.

It wouldn't be the first time someone got a coveted job with the proviso that he or she would wield the hatchet.

 

I've survived several of those hatchet wielding CEOs.

 

Spoiler

Last time I lost my job was during the dotcom bubble because the company didn't generate any revenue. VPs were snorting coke in their Porsche. 100% money out, 0% money in... until no more money. Nowadays revenue is actually important to investors.

 

Like Surface, or Google. They'll have one or two devices and leave the rest to third parties.

 

Google doesn't even build their own phones. They get HTC to build them, or some other hardware manufacturer. Microsoft could probably go the same route - make one premium phone that gets refreshed yearly, and have someone else make the hardware while you work on the software.

 

I must be a wizard or something.

It means they were counting on getting back that money through profits throughout the years, but they're now admitting that they won't ever come close to that, since WP8 has declined its feeble marketshare even more than when they bought Nokia.
So they're terminating the business, meaning they won't ever get those 7.2B back. They're probably still going to get some money back from patent licensing, but that income is probably overwhelmed by the severance packages they have to pay for the 7800 employees they're letting go.

The advantage of doing the write-off is that they won't pay taxes over that value, as it's given as lost.

 

Exactly honestly lumia line up is a mess a bit like Sony at some point they kept pushing too many new products out with no real differentiator, etc.
Now 7800 people out wow tough times indeed

 

Interesting as at least WP10 updates are going in the right direction, and they seem to be listening to what we are saying on the preview forums for phone. Being built off Win10 I wonder if 3rd parties will have more control to customize things?

I always had this strange feeling that the Nokia deal was going nowhere internally, and something would give. We know some flagship phones were later canned for whatever reasons. Wish Nokia had been left alone, at least maybe I would have had a decent replacement to my 1520 (wife has a launch 920 that she still won't replace due to bad current bad options).

 

MS to focus on three phone segments: value, business and flagship.

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsof...-business-devices-and-flagship-windows-phones

All three make sense. Hopefully this means Lumia devices for these segments, developed along side the surface tablets. 5xx and 6xx Lumias are excellent, with some good dual sim business models. Get a couple of high end models out (even just two would do) and refresh those every year.

 

Just as MS can support more than one phone or tablet, they can probably support more than one console.

Windows is scalable, the services are platform independent, the games are back compatible and digital libraries from 2005 onwards can now travel onwards.

Another Win/DX/GCN target platform for developers used to the PC isn't too frightening. Get a new console out for the end of 2017 and allow users to migrate naturally.

Just as most phones, PCs, laptops and tablets reflect the current state of technology (or a least the last two or three years) this might be the time to make Xbox more intune with the way the rest of MS works.

 

Sad to hear about the job cuts. Windows Phone has an option in the future if the use Universal Apps wisely. It's a feature many people are waiting for.

As I said before, a 22 year old former Android diehard extremist fan told me when he was fixing my ADSL that he was planning on switching to Windows Phone because of the universal apps and better battery usage and overall speed.

I hope I can have Whatsapp on my console, too, along with the phone.

 

Last I've seen it has longer animation, not a better speed. Apps were supposed to be universal since Win8.

 

Can we agree now that this thread no longer belongs in the console section?

 

Windows 10 universal apps are a new platform. Windows 8 universal apps were obviously not succesful. Hopefully they get it right this time.

 

Its not on Ipads so chances of seeing a console release are ultra slim from what I can tell

 

This thread belongs in the console section as all the talk is (was) about the console.

Feel free to make a new thread in the appropriate location with the new content.