Chinese netizens jokes about Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia

September 4, 2013 Leave a comment

China’s web reacts to Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia

September 4, 2013

by C. Custer

I think Nokia holds a special place in the hearts of a lot of Chinese mobile phone users. When I first moved to the country in 2007, my Chinese friends all told me: get a Nokia. They’re cheap, they’re durable, and they work; this was the mantra that helped the mobile phone company dominate China’s nascent mobile marketplace. Just a few years later, though, things have changed dramatically, as evidenced by Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia yesterday. Nokia’s dominance is long-gone in China, but could the acquisition put the once-popular company back on the upswing there? Sina Tech conducted a poll of 70,000 its readers — so mostly tech geeks, presumably — and found that more than 54 percent look favorably on the buyout, with just over 30 percent pessimistic about the company’s prospects under Microsoft’s wing and the remaining 14 percent not sure. The mood on Sina Weibo seems to be similar, with lots of people hoping the acquisition can re-invigorate the struggling company. Hope might be the key word there; China’s net users are definitely also engaging in a little bit of nostalgia for the (good?) old days when everybody had a Nokia brick. For example, this lengthy infographic charting Nokia’s handsets over the years is making the rounds. Of course, it wouldn’t be the Chinese web without jokes, so here’s a bit of one of the most popular images that’s being passed around. Translation by us:

elop-ballmer-microsoft-nokia-chinese-jokes

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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