Microsoft's acquisition of Finnish firm Nokia's mobile phone business and patents is a bad piece of business, according to Jon "Maddog" Hall, the executive director of Linux International, a non-profit organisation of IT professionals that supports Linux-based operating systems.
The Microsoft-Nokia deal is worth $7.2bn (£4.6bn) and also includes the Finnish firm's Herec cloud-based mapping platform.
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In an interview with Computing held at Campus Party Europe in London's O2 Arena, Hall said that the move could yet pay off depending on how Microsoft markets any new products that are created as a result of the deal.
"It all depends on how they market the product, and in my experience it is not necessarily the technology that wins - if that was true we'd have used BetaMax instead of VHS - it's the relationships you make," he said.
However, Hall suggested that the acquisition may have a negative impact on some of Microsoft's existing relationships.
"It's like Google buying Motorola, [other suppliers] look around and ask ‘is Google going to make a phone and compete with us'. I think Microsoft should have spun off Nokia; they should have helped them but still licensed Windows Phone to other operators - so in a lot of ways Microsoft has shot itself in the foot," he stated.
Hall, who is a long-time advocate of open source technology, said that the purchase of Nokia would be a similar situation to Microsoft acquiring Dell 30 years ago.
"If they decided to buy Dell, then all of their partners who are also trying to produce systems would say ‘What? You've bought one of our major competitors - Why?' and Microsoft would have no answer apart from to say they wanted to make some more money out of hardware," he explained.
The move has triggered industry experts to speculate that Microsofts want to make its own hardware and software into a tightly integrated ecosystem, much like rival Apple. However, Hall doesn't believe this is the best approach for the long term.
"I don't buy the idea that companies need to have their own hardware manufacturing teams to figure out where the software is going," he said.
