Microsoft said to have dropped $500 million on Danger
By Donald Melanson 
posted February 12th 2008 4:41PM
posted February 12th 2008 4:41PM
While Microsoft was doing little to hide how much it was willing to spend on Yahoo!, the company's been decidedly more coy about exactly how much it dropped to pick up Sidekick-maker Danger earlier this week. The ever-dependable Om Malik now claims to have turned up a figure, however, and while it pales compared to that Yahoo! offer, it's still quite a doozy. According to Om, a "fairly solid source" informed him that Microsoft parted with a full $500 million to bring Danger into its fold, with later-stage investors in Danger the biggest beneficiaries of that payday. What's more, that hefty price also got Om speculating that Microsoft may be about to "pull an Xbox" with its cellphone business, fearing that its current approach would relegate it to the business market -- a pretty safe assumption, if you ask us.
Yeah, we all know how popular the N-Gage was...
Is. Nokia has started adding N-Gage emulation onto it's high end phones such as the N95.
Microsoft has a nack for spending lost of money on bad purchases. They always seem to be several years behind the curve. http://www.tagsum.com/news/10311/Microsoft-said-to-have-dropped-500-million-on-Danger
Hmmm, $500 million to Microsoft is like $50,000 to an NBA player, which is like $5000 to Paris Hilton, which is like 5 bucks to us average schmucks!
Red Ring of Death
ok that was harsh on my part i just really hope microsoft fixes this soon
"speculating that Microsoft may be about to "pull an Xbox" with its cellphone business"
i wonder what would have happened to the xbox if MS hadn't bought Bungie...
there are so many phones out there; an MS phone would have to be fairly redic to stand out.
The Sidekick was nice for what it was intended for. IM, SMS and non-corporate email. Browser sucked but it was going to with non-3G speeds. It was my favorite keyboard for messaging by far and I liked the flip screen. The Sidekick demographic seems to fit the Xbox demographic well. Put in strong XBox Live integration (playing your XBLA games on the go would be a strong start), slimmer form factor, YouTube, music and a reasonable price (carrier subsidies would help here, something LESS than $399) and it could do fairly well. It will be interesting to see how they handle carriers. MVNO, unlocked GSM (not likely), exclusive agreement (T-Mobile is the obvious choice per Danger's history).
ROFL ...instead of the Red Ring of Death, how about the Tone Ring of Death?
this didn't make me any happier. yup, the lx will be my very last sidekick.
ah i knew thee well.
If the phone runs Windows Vista, they could call it the: CrashPhone.
How about Microsoft makes a car that runs all Windows. Then you would have to reboot your car while doing 65 MPH on the freeway!