The long-known brand Nokia is slowly disappearing from the mobile phone market and we are witnessing the much deeper acquisition by Microsoft.

The flagship smartphone Lumia will get the name Microsoft from now on in the new fresh batches appearing on the market in short.

And additionally we see the re-branding of all the social channels, websites, apps and e.t.c., all to reflect the ownership of Microsoft from now on.

The original purchase and the result

In September 2013 Microsoft announced the acquire of Nokia's phone segment for $7,2 billion. The license to use “Nokia” name was granted for a temporary period. While on the other side Nokia's network equipment segment could keep the name and the brand. For the latter it turned out to be the best quarter in a very long time, which brought them into profit.

Microsoft understands the reality of how hard it would be to compete with iOS and Android in the same market segment, so a wise choice was made to concentrate on low and middle end.

While not excluding only the new phone segment, generally the quarter is counting good for Microsoft – $23.2 billion in revenue and $4.5 billion profit.

Nokia was by far at the start the only to use the Windows Phone 8. Now the support is growing and Windows Phone license is getting attracted by a variety of manufacturing partners, who are targeting the so-called budget-friendly Windows Phones for the emerging markets.

The Windows 8.1 operational system after producing some changes made it possible for HTC to take it up for the One (M8), which already announced a re-release with the new OS that will change Android.

Lumia

The name Microsoft and the logo is soon to be on every Lumia, while they also still have 10 years license to use the name Nokia with a number of low-end models.

As for the profitability of Lumia Windows Phones – the current quarter in sales got 9.3 million phones, which is slightly up from 8.8 million in the same last quarter. To compare – Apple sold around 40 million Iphones last quarter, and Iphone 6 and 6 Plus in three days sold in numbers equally what Microsoft sold in the entire year.

Windows Phone platform according to the numbers is holding only 3% of the market, falling far behind the two leading competitors, iOS and Android.

The vision

All the changes follow a vision of Microsoft to a unified ecosystem of devices. Microsoft has a clear pattern that it has drawn – the tablet line Surface, the Xbox console and now the Lumia phone, which all are running on the Windows OS. The pursuit looks clear - the ultimate synchronisation of all the possible consumer gadgets that run on the same software.

 

Author: Sviatoslav Maryniak, handelot.com

Sources:

Say Hello to Microsoft Lumia – official interview with Tuula Rytila, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Phones at Microsoft by Tiina Jaatinen
RIP Nokia: Microsoft Lumia is the new face of Windows Phone by Sebastian Anthony, ExtremeTech
Microsoft Smartphones Drop Nokia Name by Michael Endler, InformationWeek