No NOKIA brand name anymore
Microsoft
Corp. looks set to ditch the Nokia name from its Lumia range of smartphones
just months after buying the Finnish company's handset business.
According to
a post on Nokia France's Facebook page on Tuesday, the page will change its
name to Microsoft Lumia "in the coming days."
Microsoft
declined comment.
Under the terms of the $7.2 billion deal, which was struck in September 2013 and completed in April, Microsoft acquired Nokia's handset business, though not the name of the company itself.
Finland's
Nokia continues as a networks, mapping and technology licensing company. It
owns and manages the Nokia brand and only licenses it to Microsoft.
Microsoft has
said in the past it plans to license the Nokia brand for its lower-end mobile
phones for 10 years and to use the name on its smartphones only for a
"limited" time, without saying how long that might be.
New Microsoft
Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has begun to reduce the scale of its
phone-making operations. Of the 18,000 job cuts he announced in July, about
12,500 came from the unit acquired from Nokia.
After a long
and complicated relationship that first involved just a close partnership with
Nokia handling hardware duties, and then Microsoft acquiring Nokia’s
phone-making business during what appeared to be a fairly acrimonious
separation, there will be no more confusion as to who’s making first-party
Windows Phone hardware going forward: they’ll be called just “Microsoft Lumia”
devices going forward.