Microsoft Dumps Nokia — Its Official Now

Say hello to Microsoft Lumia

With the acquisition of the Finnish giant Nokia in 2013, Microsoft had clearly announced its interest in the super-heated smartphone industry.

Subsequently, Microsoft confirmed that Nokia’s premium (and largely the only successful smartphones line from Nokia) Lumia series will be relaunched under the Microsoft brand name and thus the Nokia tag will be severed from all current and future Lumia devices.

Why?

Well, Nokia had been fairing pretty badly against its competitors from the Android and iOS worlds — its global market share being a thin red line just about touching the 2.5% mark.

Microsoft is looking to stem some of the bleeding by disassociating the troubled manufacturer’s name, and replacing it with some (hopefully) positive sentiment by attaching its own, somewhat more popular (OS) brand.

The American multinational corporation seems to be angling to hit two targets with one swing — give their ‘new’ baby a lease of life and also get a running launch into the smartphone world for the “Microsoft” and “Windows” brands.

This didn’t come as a bolt from the blue, as Microsoft had already dropped a few hints prior to officially confirming the brand shift with the official website for Nokia mobile being redirected to the new mobile website for Microsoft.

In the recent months, several applications in the Windows play store including Treasure Tag and App Social too, have been using Microsoft Mobile as the official name against the former Nokia Mobile.

In another development, Nokia had scaled down the production of phones at their Chennai plant in India, indicating, that they might be looking to shift their focus on networking, mapping and licensing businesses rather than manufacturing smartphones and tablets.

Nokia France will be the first to mark the shift from the Nokia brand to Microsoft for the Lumia devices on its Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts. Nokia France on its Facebook page mentioned that, “In the coming days, you will receive a Facebook message regarding the change of name of this page”.
They also hinted that the upcoming Lumia series is well-set to take on the Microsoft brand of identification.

Microsoft disclosed its intentions to expand their mobile business with the launch of the Microsoft Lumia 535, the first Lumia smartphone not attached with the Nokia brand name. The smartphone will initially be launched in China, Hong Kong and Bangladesh and then gradually percolate to other nations.

Priced at a modest USD 110, Microsoft looks forward to occupy a prominent position in the industry esp in the developing nations, thus increasing its share of mobile devices in the global market.

As far as the Nokia brand is concerned, they will continue their mobile device business by producing mobile phones, with a very limited range of devices being launched in this category. The existing devices in the market with the Nokia brand name will however continue to roll out until they are totally replaced by the new models.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.