May 16, 2011 18:41 GMT  ·  By

Straight out of the rumor mill, comes news on the possibility that Nokia would be considering selling its mobile unit to Microsoft, and that the meeting to discuss the deal might go down as soon as next week.

While this might turn out to be nothing more than just a big rumor, there is also the possibility that it would pan out, and that Microsoft and Nokia would announce the largest acquisition of all times in the near future.

The news comes from Eldar Murtazin, who has a record of being right about various aspects regarding Nokia's business, and who claims that Nokia and Microsoft are getting ready to sit at the table and discuss the potential merger during the week of May 23rd.

Provided that the rumor would indeed prove real, Microsoft would then become the largest phone maker in the world, which is not something that one might have expected from the software giant.

Indeed, Nokia is not doing so well at the moment, since it has been losing a lot of market share lately, and might lose even more of it before bringing to shelves enough Windows Phone-based devices to torn the table.

The company has just announced the re-branding of Ovi services to Nokia services, which follows the earlier announcement that it would fire 4,000 people, after having 3,000 of them transferred to Accenture as part of transitioning the Symbian development to this company.

All these, along with the launch of new high-end Symbian devices that failed to impress when compared to other high-end smartphones on the market, clearly show that the company is going through a rough time.

However, things could not be that bad for Nokia so as to determine it to sell the mobile business to another giant.

Not to mention that Nokia has just finalized the agreement with Microsoft through which it would load Windows Phone on new Nokia devices, and making this move would not be a logical next step.

Why Nokia would have bothered to wait several months to sign the deal if it was considering to sell the mobile division would be a mystery.

For many, this would not make sense, and they are considering Eldar Murtazin's sayings as being nothing more than just a rumor, which might never pan out.

However, in case the two giants would meet next week, more info on what they are up to would emerge at that time, that's for sure, so stay tuned for more on this. For the time being, we'll take the news with a big, big grain of salt.