Linksys for sale, should Microsoft buy it?

If Microsoft is serious about creating its own hardware ecosystem, I think this would be a potentially interesting investment. If I am reading the right numbers online, the price is not very much for a Microsoft size company (in the hundreds of millions).

What part of Microsoft making its own tablets, keyboards, mice, Xboxes, surface tables, home media centers, phones and mp3 players makes you think that Microsoft isn't serious about hardware, or that it needs to buy someone else's failing company in order to suddenly become good at it?

It's a shame, really.  Linksys' name used to mean quality and their wireless hardware was know as more interoperable with other competitors hardware. 

And then cisco bought them and ran them into the ground.

Mine was kind of a rhetoric question: I do think they are serious (though I think the phone is just a rumor...).

I think that Linksys has good reputation with the consumer market while Microsoft one is not always so stellar (Microsoft made routers years ago, but they were never highly regarded). I think Microsoft could use the Linksys brand more than anything else.

How many average consumers still buy a router though? Even most of techie people I know just use their ISP supplied box (at least as their modem, if not their router).

@blowdart: Less tainted than D-link or others... I do understand that the router market is not a high profit one, but, except for Apple, hardware makers were pretty good at a race at the bottom (as always).

However, I think this is an important component in a multiple devices market.

I have a Linksys wireless router and a Microsoft router (not wireless) that I am using right now that is enabling me so send this very comment. My Linksys router is one of the best devices for value of any technology I have ever bought. The Microsoft router is o.k. too, does its job, has no problems.

1 hour ago, giovanni wrote

If Microsoft is serious about creating its own hardware ecosystem, I think this would be a potentially interesting investment. If I am reading the right numbers online, the price is not very much for a Microsoft size company (in the hundreds of millions).

well the first question is this:

what IP rights, patents or other assets would MS get in such a deal that they need to buy them?

if they do not have something special in that area then it's not a good move.

MS can do a wireless router any time they want with out having to buy Linksys.

so what are the items they have that should make MS want to buy them ?

@figuerres: I think the only advantage would be a brand with a good reputation.

6 minutes ago, giovanni wrote

@figuerres: I think the only advantage would be a brand with a good reputation.

then it's not much of a deal, no really major advantage for Microsoft as they will wind up renaming it to "Microsoft ______________ "

@figuerres: probably true, but they didn't do it with Skype

Linksys hasn't been a brand with good reputation for years...