14 DAY TRIAL // Finnish telecoms giant Nokia will continue to make mobile phones despite increased interest from Microsoft into its handset division.
The company, long striving to regain the leading position it once had on the mobile phone market, has no plans on selling said division, although other companies are reportedly interested in acquiring it.
A recent article on The Wall Street Journal claims that Microsoft attempted once again to take over Nokia’s phone manufacturing business earlier this month, after being said to have tried similar moves a few years ago, but that it was unsuccessful once again.
For those out of the loop, we should note that reports on Microsoft’s interest in Nokia’s handset division emerged about two years ago, when the Finnish vendor announced plans to launch Windows Phone devices.
Since then, numerous rumors suggested that the two companies might plan a merger, given their tight collaboration on the building of Windows Phone handsets, but none proved real until now.
Even before announcing plans to part with Symbian, Nokia saw its market share dropping in the smartphone segment, due to the fast growth of Android, and things turned to worse after its plans on focusing on Windows Phone became official.
Two years later, however, Nokia has started to regain its foothold on the market, with Lumia smartphones accounting for around 80 percent of all Windows Phone sales, and with Microsoft’s OS overtaking rival software out there to become the third mobile platform in the world.
Of course, although it shows signs of recovery, Nokia still has a long way to go before being able to successfully compete with rivals such as Samsung and Apple, though upcoming smartphones might actually help it achieve that.
Recently, the company was rumored to plan the launch of a Lumia handset with a 41MP PureView photo snapper, thus capable of delivering a great imaging experience, while also said to be considering the release of 5.5-inch or larger smartphones, the first of them expected to arrive in September.
For the time being, Nokia appears set to keep its handset division intact, despite Microsoft’s interest in it and a long series of layoffs announced in the past few years. Things are likely to remain this way, should Lumia handsets increase their success, but only time will tell if this will indeed happen.