Microsoft And Nokia Case Study

12 Structuring alliances Microsoft and Nokia were long standing partners, but they acted as separate companies. Even though the two collaborated frequently, they each had to go through different development processes; both companies had their own resources, tools, culture and trade secrets, which created a lot of inefficiencies. The CEO of Microsoft announce “one Microsoft” initiative to restructure the company aiming to realign product development line , a month after the announcement CEO had announce the retirement which have send a wrong message to the investors. To fix this issue Microsoft acquired Nokia 's Devices and Services business, which includes both Smart Devices and Mobile Devices. Design teams, supply chain,

On February 11th 2011, the world’s largest software company, Microsoft and the largest handset company, Nokia announced their plans to form a strategic alliance together. Nokia would adopt Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system as the handset company’s primary smartphone platform, while Microsoft would provide Nokia financial, technical and marketing support to Nokia to help build up the Windows Phone ecosystem. Despite the rapid growth of the Windows Phone platform, Nokia’s market share in the smartphone market as well as Microsoft’s market share in the mobile platform market were still nowhere near to their historical peaks . Microsoft and Nokia had different priority, expectation, sense of urgency and hence different dedication level of resources devoted into the development of the Windows Phone platform. Both the partners were not trusting each other and started to deviate from their core strategic plan in three years. Lately the consumers behavior started to change from buying desktops to Mobile phone , the lack of focus by Microsoft were not favored by the shareholders

Even after many hours of meeting and knowledge transfer between them they accused of each other of not sharing the real essence of the technology. Until Microsoft acquired Nokia , the leader ship and the managers were all localized and controlled with the firm , after the acquisition Microsoft appointed Stephen Elop as the Executive vice president of Nokia and Microsoft alliance .Strategic Gridlock occurs during the Competition among the companies of alliances were very prevalent in the race of showing their dominance over the other in both technologically and financially to the respective shareholders. Microsoft and Nokia had different priority, expectation, sense of urgency and hence different dedication level of resources devoted into the development of the Windows Phone platform , Microsoft considered the revenue from Mobile technology is a fraction compared to the main stream revenue from Desktop PC and the related software so they shifted the focus to work along with Nokia who dedicated their resource to develop a new phone to get the lost market