For Nokia the deal makes a lot of sense. Once a leading manufacturer of mobile handsets, it’s long been eclipsed by Apple and Samsung and now commands just a sliver of the market it once dominated. These days Nokia makes its money selling low-end feature phones and slow-moving Windows smartphones.

“After a thorough assessment of how to maximize shareholder value, including consideration of a variety of alternatives, we believe this transaction is the best path forward for Nokia and its shareholders,” said Risto Siilasmaa, the company’s interim CEO, in a press release.

Under the terms of the deal Microsoft will license Nokia’s patents as well as license and use its mapping services. Nokia Solutions and Networks, formerly known as Nokia Siemens Networks, will become its namesake company’s biggest line of business following the transaction.

Tony Cripps, principal analyst of devices and platforms at Ovum, commented on the news of the deal on the analyst firm’s website early last month: “While Microsoft and Nokia have jointly been increasing the money flow through the Windows Phone marketing faucet of late, it will take mega bucks to take on Apple and Android head cheerleader Samsung for marketing volume and volume shipments.” 

He continued, “There is also a sense that while Microsoft has many of the key elements for consumer-tech market success in place, too many of those elements feel not quite at parity with their rivals. That said, Microsoft has some areas of definite advantage over its rivals across this vast battleground, especially in gaming (via Xbox), in consumer-business crossover services such as VoIP (Skype), and in the ease of integration of Windows Phone with its own Office 365. Moreover, we shouldn’t forget its huge global installed base of PCs, which are as much a part of the complete picture as smartphones, tablets and online services.”

Cripps concluded, “Ovum needs to see sustained progress in Windows Phone shipments over the next three or four years—15 percent market share is a good target to aim for—to be convinced that Microsoft can establish itself as a real consumer-tech market maker rather than a follower.”

How well are your mobile policies performing?

In the quest to deliver more personalized and dynamic service packages, mobile operators have implemented more sophisticated policy controls. At the same time, these service providers have a hard time understanding how effective their policies are in real time, and need the ability to model how policies may impact the customer experience across a range of network conditions, preferences and behaviors.

A new solution from VPIsystems that hit the market last month could help. OnePlan Policy Analytics, which the company is calling the industry’s first policy-analytics offering, enables mobile operators to create policies that accurately reflect their subscribers’ behaviors, preferences and network conditions, and to model and analyze network requirements for new business opportunities and promotions by exploiting their existing PCRF (policy charging and rules function) event records or logs.

“The telecom market today, as it continues to roll out LTE services, is marked by intense competition and constant change,” said Tito Sharma, president and CEO of VPIsystems, in a news release. “Operators have to adapt quickly to new business models, technological advances and rapidly evolving subscriber demands. OnePlan Policy Analytics provides end-to-end insight on how subscribers are interacting with their services, applications and networks in order to evolve policies quickly, and to optimize their networks from their 2G/3G/LTE access networks through to their packet and voice cores.”