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The era of Nokia as a mobile phone manufacturer is over after Microsoft completed a deal to buy the Finnish firm's troubled device division.

Microsoft acquires Nokia's smartphone and mobile phone businesses as part of the $7.5bn (£4.46bn) deal, plus its design team, most of its manufacturing and assembly facilities and operations, and sales and marketing support.


Nokia led the phone market for years
The closure of the deal ends the production of mobile phones by the Finnish company, which had led the field for more than a decade.

It peaked with 40% global market share in 2008.

Nokia says it will now focus on networks, mapping services and technology development and licences.

More details of its future plans will be given when it releases first-quarter earnings on April 29.

Microsoft will acquire 25,000 Nokia employees in 50 countries.

More than 4,000 employees in Finland will transfer to Microsoft, and Nokia's headquarters Helsinki will be taken over.

I'm personally saddened by this news even though it has been coming for a while now. Nokia once a mobile giant will now just be a memory you will tell your grandchildren of in years to come of how excited you were when you could eventually go through the walls on "Snake" and how you sent an email on the communicator all those years ago.

Goodbye Nokia you will be missed.


Stephen Elop, former Nokia CEO turned Microsoft executive, said: "The opportunity for Microsoft to be both a devices and services company, so that it can deliver the complete proposition to its consumers, is at the heart of this."

What are you fond memories of Nokia and what is their best ever phone and why?

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Posted: 2014-04-25 21:42:37
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Microsoft already taking down the Nokia sign at their headquarters in Finland
http://mblog.gsmarena.com/move-microsoft-logo-replaces-nokia-log/
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Posted: 2014-04-25 22:23:16
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A brief history of Nokia

THE EARLY YEARS

In the year 1865 Fredrik Idestam built a paper manufacturing mill in Southern Finland and followed it up by launching a second mill in the nearby town of Nokia in 1868. Three years later Idestam transformed his company to a share company and the Nokia company was formed.

Nokia kept growing through the 19th century and in the 1960s the company branched out into electronics. In the next two years it developed a host of electronic devices including radio telephones for the army. In 1979 Nokia took its first steps into telephony by creating Mobira Oy in a JV with Finnish TV maker Salora, and they created the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) service. This was the world’s first international cellular network and in the 80s, Nokia launched its first car phone called the Mobira Senator.

Five years later Nokia launched the Mobira Cityman, the first mobile phone that would run on the company’s NMT network. At 800 grams and priced at $6,308, it may be heavy and pricey by today’s standards, but the device soon hit cult status when Mikhail Gorbachev was photographed using the device.

THE GLORY YEARS

The 90s were the glory years for the Finnish company. In 1994, Nokia launched the 2100 with the now iconic Nokia ringtone. Three years later it launched Snake, one of the most widely recognized mobile games of all time. The Nokia 2100 was such a big hit that it went on to sell more than 20 million handsets worldwide, much higher than what the company had predicted.

In 1997, Nokia also launched the Communicator, which 11 years before the first iPhone was considered to be much ahead of its time. The device not only looked cool, but also offered features like email, fax, calendar and a massive display.

The same year, Nokia also launched the 6110 and the 5110 two more devices, which were way ahead of their time and competition. These devices offered a much sleeker way of text messaging, a beautiful menu system customization options like multiple color snap-on covers. These devices were followed by the 7110, which offered basic web functions, the 7650, with a built-in camera and the 6650, the company’s first 3G enabled smartphone.

By 1998, Nokia had firmly established itself as the global leader. Where its rivals like Apple, Sony and Siemens had failed to predict the global demand, Nokia sailed through these years with a turnover that increased 500 percent from $ 8.9 billion to $42.8 billion.

THE DOWNFALL

nokia-stephen-elopThere is an old Finnish tale, which talks about Sampo, an engine of eternal wealth created by the poor people of Kalevala. Sampo essentially grinds out gold, salt and wheat from three horns, day and night, but as nothing good lasts forever, one day Sampo drowns to the bottom of the lake and the people of Kalevala are returned to their gloom and poverty.

As is with old tales, one can easily relate Nokia to the Sampo. After the glorious 90s, in 2007 things began to go downhill — and rapidly. In the year 2009, Nokia posted its first quarterly loss in more than a decade. This was largely due to HTC developing a smartphone running on the yet new Google Android operating system. With the iPhones and various Android smartphones taking the market by storm, Nokia failed to keep up with them. Instead of joining the horde of Android adopters, Nokia’s new CEO Stephen Elop joined hands with Microsoft to develop smartphones running on the Windows Phone platform.

Though the partnership saw the development of Nokia’s popular Lumia series of smartphones, Nokia wasn’t able to rekindle its glory days.

END OF AN ERA

On September 3, 2013, Nokia announced that its hardware department would be acquired by Microsoft in a deal worth $7.2 billion. After eight months, the deal was completed today and with it came the end of an era.

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Posted: 2014-04-25 22:32:22
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Posted: 2014-04-25 23:11:02
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When I worked in a 4 star hotel for over a decade the hotel rooms used to have Nokia TV's I hate Elop
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Posted: 2014-04-25 23:14:19
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It is a shame but the the bigger they are the harder they fall. Elop certainly was a catalyst in the downfall of Nokia and his biggest failing was probably not to jump on the Android bandwagon and instead continue to develop a platform that was on its last legs in Symbian. Things did improve but it was to little to late.

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Posted: 2014-04-25 23:26:28
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So the last flagship with Nokia name maybe the Lumia 930
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Posted: 2014-04-26 00:14:23
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Nokia's arrogance
Their handling of Symbian Ltd
The N96
The N97
Elop

To me these are the main things that brought them down.

The Nokia N8 was something they should've launched a whole year earlier, along with Symbian Belle, their final range of Symbians were well specced devices in their time and we still have the 808 PureView as the benchmark for mobile photography, it was all too little too late and Microsoft's interference was a catalyst indeed.

Never thought I'd see Nokia reduced to what it is now, unbelievable. Thats ALL the main veterans gone: Nokia, Ericsson, SonyEricsson, Motorola, Siemens etc... The mobile industry is just so cruel, one day we may be saying R.I.P Apple and Samsung, and some Chinese OEM like Huawei will be at the top.
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Posted: 2014-04-26 00:23:37
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I think if Nokia didn't have it's great camera tech there wouldn't be much left.
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Posted: 2014-04-26 00:57:00
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I wonder if Microsoft will change the Nokia splash screen on phones they update to 8.1. I know Sony done that with the Arc S when the buy out from Ericsson was complete.
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Posted: 2014-04-26 10:34:31
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