Microsoft to acquire Nokia mobile for $7.2 billion

It is now confirmed that Nokia mobile will be purchased by Microsoft for $7.2 billion. This deal will be sealed by early 2014 and all 32,000 Nokia handset services employees will be working for Microsoft. Following this deal, Stephen Elop will step down from his position of President and Chief Executive of Nokia and resign from the company’s board. Current Chief Executive, Steve Balmer has also announced that he will be retiring from Microsoft within 12 months and Mr. Elop is the closest candidate for Balmer’s position.  This is the second largest acquisition from Microsoft after the company acquired Skype for $8.25 billion.

Nokia has been doing very well the low end mobile phone market but it has been struggling at the high end smartphone market. Competition from giants like HTC, Samsung, Sony and Apple is intense in the mid and high end smartphone section.  Nokia’s Lumina smartphones have done fairly well but still the revenues are not much compared to its competitors.  Nokia’s share in the smartphone segment is largely affected by its Windows Mobile OS. Currently Android is the top OS choice among consumers followed by Apple’s iOS.

HTC and Samsung also use Windows Mobile OS in some of their devices and they might not take the recent Microsoft-Nokia acquisition lightly. Still, over 80 percent of Windows Mobile OS devices are Nokia.