Agreed. but that would then leave the handset business free to invest the cash that it did not have to send on NSN. They cannot afford to wait, they need to get cracking now rather than wait for the deal to close.

MSFT has to spend a lot. some $billion every year to really nove the needle. I am sure that it will do this. It has nothing else to spend its money on after all.

IBM never sold its patent portfolio, why do you think Nokia is going to sell it? Does NSN need the money? Your previous bullet points (quoted below) suggest Nokia is not short of money, but I am not so sure.

> “Microsoft has made available to Nokia €1.5bn of financing that is, in effect, a prepayment on the acquisition. Nokia is not short of cash and so the only rational reason for this is a fund for Nokia to immediately ratchet up spending on Windows Phone.”

Is the loan made out to Nokia handset business, which would revert back to MS upon closing, or to NSN? The commentary I’ve read elsewhere suggested it was for NSN. Actually, today’s news say Nokia is using the money to finance its buy out of Siemens’ share in NSN. It makes more sense for Nokia to spend just enough money to keep the handset business afloat, but to not go deep into debt that needs to be paid back by NSN later. Considering Siemens’ half share in NSN is valued at 1.7 billion euros, this loan is not a small chunk of change for Nokia.

And secondly, how will MSFT’s shareholder react to seeing historical and future profits being transferred from the Windows/Office hemogeony to new mobile customers?? Not well I suspect….