14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Nokia’s shareholders have agreed to allow Microsoft to purchase the company’s Devices and Services unit, Financial Times reports.
The news site notes that 99.7 percent of Nokia’s shareholders have participated in the vote, and that all of them agreed to the deal.
Following acquisition, said to be worth $7.2 billion (€5.34 billion), Nokia’s Lumia and Asha families of devices will be integrated with Microsoft’s structure, through it remains to be seen what specific plans the Redmond-based software giant has on the matter.
Stephen Elop, formerly Nokia’s CEO, is expected to return to Microsoft after the deal has been completed, to run the company’s devices and services team.
At the moment, Nokia is the largest smartphone partner Microsoft has, and it has been so for the past two years, ever since the first Lumia handset was launched.
Nokia’s Windows Phone devices have seen a slow start on the market, but they’ve picked up some momentum lately and helped the mobile operating system rise to 4 percent market share, which pushed it to the third position in the segment, following Android and iOS.
Most probably, Microsoft will start selling Windows Phone devices under its own brand following the acquisition, which is believed to close in early 2014.
At the same time, the company is expected to keep the Asha lineup alive for the next several years, despite the fact that devices in this series are powered by Nokia’s Series 40 software.
The big question here is what the future of Lumia phones will be, since Microsoft is expected to focus heavily on integrating these with its current lineup.
As The Verge notes, the software giant might choose to launch new Windows Phone handsets under the Surface brand, or it might decide to adopt a completely new name for them.
Unfortunately, specifics on what will happen next are not available for the time being, though Microsoft and Nokia might offer some details on the matter soon.