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Ten Years Ago Microsoft Bought Nokia's Phone Unit, Then Killed It As a Tax Write-Off

The Register provides a retrospective look at how Microsoft "absorbed the handset division of Nokia" ten years ago, only to kill the unit two years later and write it off as a tax loss. What went wrong? "It was a fatal combination of bad management, a market evolving in ways hidebound people didn't ...

"It was a fatal combination of bad management, a market evolving in ways hidebound people didn't predict, and some really (with a few superb exceptions) terrible products," reports The Register. That meant stepping down as CEO of Nokia, for which he trousered an 18.8 million bonus package -- a payoff the Finnish prime minister at the time called "outrageous." Nadella clearly wanted out of the whole business and the Finnish startup concentrated on selling good-enough Android smartphones to Nokia's traditional cheap markets.

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