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Report: Microsoft to Buy Nokia Mobile Division

By - Source: Eldar Murtazin | B 41 comments

It’s been a big year for Microsoft so far. Between signing a landmark deal with Nokia and its more recent bid to purchase Skype, the Redmond team has certainly been busy. However, it seems Ballmer and co. may have another trick up their sleeve for us.

The latest scuttlebutt says Microsoft has its eye on Nokia and the two companies will be entering discussions next week. If fruitful, they would see Nokia’s mobile phone division sold to Microsoft. The source of these reports is Russian blogger Eldar Murtazin. Murtazin focuses mostly on phones and has a pretty decent track record. Though he doesn’t know the finer details, Murtazin claims both parties are in a hurry and that the deal could close before the end of this year.

Of course, lending credence to the rumors, is the fact that Nokia recently signed a deal with Microsoft that will see Windows Phone 7 become the Finnish company’s primary smartphone OS. Prior to this decision, Nokia was very dedicated to its own software and desperate to differentiate itself from other manufacturers by developing its own OS. That all changed when current CEO Stephen Elop took the reigns. Oh, and did we mention that he's a former Microsoft employee?

For its part, Nokia has rubbished the rumors, labeling them inaccurate:

"We typically don't comment on rumours. But we have to say that Eldar's rumors are getting obviously less accurate with every passing moment," said Mark Squires, Nokia's UK director of communications.

What do you think of a Microsoft-owned Nokia? Let us know!

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  • 0 Hide
    rpgplayer , May 17, 2011 4:54 AM
    didn't microsoft already try the cell phone business? the kin 1 and kin 2? from what i recall they couldn't even get microsoft employees to use them.
  • -1 Hide
    efta , May 17, 2011 5:04 AM
    Desperate situations call for desperate moves. Microsoft and Nokia are two desperate companies.
  • 0 Hide
    rohitbaran , May 17, 2011 5:08 AM
    Nokia's CEO is from MS right? He is an insider agent of MS. First ditching Symbian and now this.
  • Display all 41 comments.
  • -1 Hide
    deltatux , May 17, 2011 5:16 AM
    Having a former Microsoft exec running Nokia was a terrible idea. As each day passes, more and more I believe Microsoft planted Elop to weaken Nokia down even further. First, the Windows Phone deal, now this?

    I already vowed that my Nokia 5800 is my last Nokia phone when the Windows Phone deal happened, if this happens, I'd be even more pissed.

    Nokia's a great hardware company and Elop is dismantling it piece by piece and only benfitting Microsoft while doing so.
  • -3 Hide
    Flameout , May 17, 2011 6:31 AM
    i thought people would know by now that microsoft are evil
  • -2 Hide
    bebangs , May 17, 2011 7:21 AM
    Nokia is dead.
  • -1 Hide
    qhoa1385 , May 17, 2011 7:22 AM
    IMO
    Should Microsoft buy Nokia? No
    Should Nokia start switching to Android and WP7 OSes? Definitely yes!
    Symbian is so outdated now... (as of Dev supports and apps)
  • 1 Hide
    angelraiter , May 17, 2011 7:22 AM
    *Facepalm*
  • 4 Hide
    rantoc , May 17, 2011 7:45 AM
    I wouldn't be surprised if something good actually came out of this in the end, Nokia have always made quality phones that won't die a day after the warranty is out. They don't require its users to "hold it right" and it wouldn't take them around a year to overcome the "engineering difficulty's" to release a phone in another color.

    Microsoft on the other hand make solid corporate trusted software, combine the two and market it right and there could be a major success.
  • 1 Hide
    Anonymous , May 17, 2011 8:10 AM
    Fully integrated Skype on my Nokia W7 Phone with best in class HD capable camera, I want one NOW!

    Thank goodness my contract still has three months, I so so hope good things are available, if so, good bye HTC and WINmo, my long long time friend (all the way from XDA Exec)
  • 1 Hide
    helmto108 , May 17, 2011 8:26 AM
    Isn't Nokia huge in Europe? This has potential. Microsoft is trying very hard to branch out from just a computer platform.
  • 1 Hide
    Aravind Aarumugam , May 17, 2011 10:06 AM
    If i were Stephen Eloop i will not let this happen not until next year!

    They throw the Ovi branding down for building back the reputation of the name Nokia yesterday , and now i hear this .,just terrible.

    Nokia in a in a whirl. Unclear of it's path and current status and future.

    I think it was happy on the sales volume front and now deeply regrets it.

    They should atleast stop these rumors going around
  • -1 Hide
    Aravind Aarumugam , May 17, 2011 10:09 AM
    helmto108Isn't Nokia huge in Europe? This has potential. Microsoft is trying very hard to branch out from just a computer platform.

    It's failing in Europe and also in Asia :(  Samsung and other manufacturers are gaining up.
    Apparently Ericsson is also losing out.
  • 2 Hide
    mirkec , May 17, 2011 11:42 AM
    No one can match Nokia in dumbphones. But it's been steadily loosing market share in the more profitable smartphone market segment.

    Microsoft of the 1990s has been quite paranoid under Gates. In the middle of past decade, under Ballmer, MSFT has become Mr Nice. But in the last year or so, Microsoft has become paranoid about possibly missing the next big thing.

    Its Xbox efforts have resulted in having an undeniable presence in the living room. Its smartphone and tablet efforts were not awarded with huge market share, although it was one of the first vendors to offer a solid Windows Mobile OS and Windows PC Tablet formats.

    With its own hardware design, MSFT can take on AAPL, head to head.
  • 1 Hide
    twu , May 17, 2011 12:11 PM
    Flameouti thought people would know by now that microsoft are evil


    Evil? well I don't see that by compares to Apple and Google tracking you where you went for the past year. Or you just saying that you like to pirate microsoft's software.
  • -2 Hide
    twu , May 17, 2011 12:15 PM
    deltatuxHaving a former Microsoft exec running Nokia was a terrible idea. As each day passes, more and more I believe Microsoft planted Elop to weaken Nokia down even further. First, the Windows Phone deal, now this?I already vowed that my Nokia 5800 is my last Nokia phone when the Windows Phone deal happened, if this happens, I'd be even more pissed.Nokia's a great hardware company and Elop is dismantling it piece by piece and only benfitting Microsoft while doing so.


    Just a life cycle. It's a burning platform, like palm, both are dead platforms....
  • -1 Hide
    macewrox , May 17, 2011 12:22 PM
    Anyone else feel like Microsoft is pacman eating up all sorts of other companies?
  • -1 Hide
    epdm2be , May 17, 2011 12:26 PM
    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
  • 1 Hide
    epdm2be , May 17, 2011 12:44 PM
    qhoa1385Symbian is so outdated now... (as of Dev supports and apps)


    SYmbian is NOT outdated. It's the only platform with decent core phone features. It's the only true low power high performance OS (it needs significantly less powerfull cpu's and significantly less memory while yet maintaining a terrific feature set). It has great media capacities including FM-TRANSMITER and subtitles!!! There is a great amount of development tools even easy ones like QT. So all you do is just repeat what the Android/apple-fanboys say without any knowledge.

    In fact some features aren't even in MSFT's top o/t line Windows phone TODAY (call-recording, copy/paste, FULL multitasking etc...) and you dare to call Symbian outdated.

    Not to mention Nokia's hardware is topnotch considering the lower prices that's been asked for their devices. This is wat some of you seem to forget. A Nokia c7 which is suposedly middle-class but which has most o/t high-end features of it's expensive sibling cost significantly LESS then a low-end iPhone 3G 8GB.

    I don't get it why everybody is picking on Symbian? It's the only phone with reall usefull interactive widgets (e.g. the notifications widget not only shows what events you missed but also the text of the missed SMS, appointement, email, etc...). Not some stupid icon with a number on it. The same goes for the email widgets (which shows the last 2 messages), RSS feeds etc... It's obvious that most of only took the time to play with a Nokia device for 5 minutes in a departement store instead of actually USING the phone for a couple of days or months.

    And yest Nokia embrasses the one real failure in this industry... Microsoft.
    Shame on you Nokia!
  • -1 Hide
    back_by_demand , May 17, 2011 1:13 PM
    deltatuxHaving a former Microsoft exec running Nokia was a terrible idea. As each day passes, more and more I believe Microsoft planted Elop to weaken Nokia down even further. First, the Windows Phone deal, now this?I already vowed that my Nokia 5800 is my last Nokia phone when the Windows Phone deal happened, if this happens, I'd be even more pissed.Nokia's a great hardware company and Elop is dismantling it piece by piece and only benfitting Microsoft while doing so.


    Nokia was on a slide into nowhere long before Elop joined.

    Maybe MS should have sat back and watch them disintegrate as HTC, Samsung and Apple carved up the world smartphone market between them, MS is doing Nokia a favour.
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