Is Nokia Headed for Troll Country?

Peter Clarke, EETimes
9/3/2013 08:35 AM EDT

The sale of its handset business to Microsoft provides Nokia with money for yet another reinvention of itself, but it presents the Finnish company with a fundamental choice. Will it retreat into the minority activity of licensing, or can it revitalize itself (and Europe) with a manufacturing-led business? Or is value-in-information now the name of the game?

It is interesting that Microsoft threw a $250 million datacenter to be built in Finland into its deal to acquire Nokia's handset business -- possibly as a sop to keep at least some of the regulators happy.

A datacenter may be able to make use of Finnish water courses for cooling, but it is no replacement for engineers designing and making material products that are then bought globally. Nokia will continue to sell networking infrastructure equipment, but its remaining focus on mapping services and technology development and licensing suggests that it is seeking the low capital intensity of the IP licensing uplands that lie adjacent to troll country.

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