A recent article purports that “With Nokia, Microsoft has no more excuses.” It has all the pieces it needs now to succeed or to fail. We found this assessment quite compelling. Microsoft is not going to become a “Devices and Services” company overnight. It takes a long time for a ship the size of Microsoft (and even bigger with Nokia now in tow) to correct course once the rudder is moved. Between the company’s massive “One Microsoft” reorganization, the eventually “retirement” of CEO Steve Ballmer, the integration of Nokia and the naming of a new CEO, Microsoft is going to be in a state of flux for the foreseeable future.
When it all settles down, though, Microsoft will have all the tools it wants to turn itself into a success… or failure. It will have the hardware designers, engineers, marketing and distribution in house for its smartphones and probably tablets. It will have Windows 8 and its manufacturing partners. It will have its cloud services through Azure and other services like its Office suite of apps. It will have Bing to add as its Web linchpin to all those devices. Add all the legacy enterprise tech (including new additions like Yammer) and Microsoft has everything it needs to transition into the 21st Century of innovation and technology.
But no clear guarantee of success. It’s make or break time, and though the company will be in flux for awhile now, this can be big things, good or bad.
What do you make of the immanent acquisition of Nokia? What’s your prediction for where the chips will fall after all these changes (the re-org, CEO Ballmer leaving, Nokia acquisition) settle in?
