Daily Video: Alcatel-Lucent Shareholder Opposes Nokia $16B Buyout Bid

Today’s topics include objections to the Nokia/Alcatel-Lucent deal, several new releases from Microsoft, plans for Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 10 OS and network virtualization plans from Verizon.

Nokia’s planned $16.6 billion acquisition of rival Alcatel-Lucent is getting pushback from a major Alcatel-Lucent shareholder that is complaining the price is too low.

Investment firm Odey Asset Management, Alcatel-Lucent’s second-largest shareholder, reportedly told clients in a letter that Nokia’s offer significantly undervalues the networking vendor, which is based in France.

The combination of the two companies will create a networking technology company that can challenge such giants as Ericsson, Cisco Systems and Huawei Technologies. Together, Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent generated $27.5 billion in revenue last year and $2.45 billion in profit, and have more than $5 billion in R&D.

At the Build 2015 Conference, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2015 Release Candidate, .NET Framework 4.6, Team Foundation Server 2015 RC and Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 RC.

The company also previewed a new tool that runs on Mac OS, Linux and Windows called Visual Studio Code. In a blog post, John Montgomery, director of product management for Visual Studio at Microsoft, called Visual Studio Code the big announcement of the day.

This new member of the Visual Studio family is a free, lightweight, cross-platform code editor for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows.

Microsoft says it has big hopes for its upcoming Windows 10 operating system. In a statement released during its Build developer conference in San Francisco, the software giant announced “its ambition to have 1 billion active Windows 10 devices” by fiscal year 2018.

To help reach that number, Microsoft says it will take cost out of the equation for current Windows users. It will start by delivering Windows 10 with a free upgrade offer to encourage customers to upgrade quickly, Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Operating Systems group, wrote in an April 29 blog post.

Verizon is embracing software-defined networking, becoming the latest telecommunications vendor to say that it will adopt network virtualization to transform its architecture.

Verizon officials said April 28 that it is working with a number of top networking technology companies—Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Juniper Networks and Nokia Networks—to create a new network infrastructure that will help Verizon save money and more quickly spin out new services for its customers.