A startup called HMD Global Oy (Helsinki, Finland) has been formed to takeover the Nokia brand for mobile phones and tablet computers and has said it intends to spend $500 million marketing Nokia as an Android-based mobile device over the next three years.
HMD has signed a license agreement with Nokia Technologies, the licensing unit of Nokia Corp., giving HMD sole use of the Nokia brand on mobile phones and tablets worldwide for a decade as well as licenses to patents essential to cellular communications standards. The company has conditionally agreed to acquire from Microsoft Corp. the rights to use the Nokia trademark on feature phones until 2024, and design rights relating to Microsoft’s feature phone nusiness. This transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2016.

HMD is owned by Smart Connect LP, a private equity fund managed by Jean-Francois Baril, a former Nokia executive, as well as by HMD management. The company said it would get funds from investors and from the profits of the acquired feature phone business.

As part of the same deal Microsoft is selling remaining feature phone business assets, including a manufacturing facility in Hanoi, Vietnam, and global distribution and supply chain networks to FIH Mobile Ltd., a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industries (trading as Foxconn Technology Group).

Microsoft is cutting an additional 2,850 jobs as it further curtails its smartphone efforts and restructures its sales force.

About 900 of those workers have already been notified, Microsoft said.

The new cuts, which were disclosed in the company’s annual report on Thursday, come on top of the 1,850 layoffs announced in May as the company retreated even further from the phone business.

At this point, Microsoft has essentially shed nearly all of the Nokia mobile phone business that it acquired back in April 2014 for $7.2 billion.

Software giant Microsoft had a 10-year dream, where it could catch the domination of the smartphone from Apple and Google. Yesterday, it was decided to abolish its own production and design. It is estimated that Microsoft made a total of US $ 10 billion in losses over the years.

At the same time Microsoft’s decision to end the so-called practice. a third ecosystem, which also Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop time justified the decision to choose Windows Phone Nokia smart phone platform. For example, a Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanese, Nokia had to make a choice between Android and Windows. The choice was a mistake.

When Nokia announced its decision to choose Windows Phone smartphones, Windows’s market share was 3.6 per cent. This year’s first quarter market share was down to 0.7 per cent.

Microsoft wanted Windows Phone to be the “third ecosystem” – it might have reached point that it was the third most popular mobile ecosystems on popularity, but the popularity was so low that you could not think it as a real strong contender in ecosystem war.

Microsoft managed to practice during the two years to drive down to the old Nokia’s Devices & Services division, which it bought 5.44 billion euros. It is one of the most unfortunate of transactions in recent years and definitely Microsoft’s most expensive failure.

Finland in terms of the fate of our Devices & Services group is a disaster.

Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4493:microsoft-teki-10-miljardin-dollarin-virheen&catid=13&Itemid=101

According to a rumor out of China, after selling only 15 million feature phones during the first quarter of this year, Microsoft is closing the division and will license the Nokia name to contract manufacturer Foxconn. Under the terms of its acquisition of Nokia Devices and Services a deal which closed in 2014, Microsoft owns the rights to use the Nokia name for smartphones until 2024.

If you’re looking for further hints that a Surface Phone is coming, the same rumor says that after closing its feature phone group, the remaining part of Microsoft Mobile (which produces Lumia handsets) will be folded into the Surface group. 50% of Microsoft Mobile employees will be laid off.

Analysis: Microsoft is Scaling Back on Windows Phone Dramatically
https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/windows-phone/4512/analysis-microsoft-is-scaling-back-on-windows-phone-dramatically

Yes, we were right to be worried about Windows Phone. Satya Nadella’s email only touches on first-party phones for the short term, buying Microsoft time to transition to a “mobility of experiences” future in which it doesn’t matter which phones its customers use.

Windows Phone is failing

Actually, that’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. The company that makes over 96 percent of all Windows Phone handsets in use just wrote off $7.6 billion related to its Windows Phone assets, and has announced plans to dramatically scale back its mobile operations. And, yes, Windows Phone has fallen to just 3 percent market share worldwide too. Things aren’t going well. Sorry.
Phone business restructuring means a total loss from Nokia purchase

Nadella said that Microsoft was “fundamental restructuring” its phone business. This includes an “impairment charge” of approximately $7.6 billion related to assets associated with the acquisition of the Nokia devices and services businesses last year, plus an additional restructuring charge of approximately $750 million to $850 million. When you consider that Microsoft paid $7.2 billion for the only parts of Nokia that mattered (minus HERE), this is a total disaster. Nokia was going out of business. Now only a tiny part of what used to be Nokia remains. And I believe the remainder is on borrowed time.

MIcrosoft’s Finland offices and its Sales and Marketing Organization will both be impacted by the company’s 7,800 job cuts. Here’s COO Kevin Turner’s mail to the troops.

Microsoft will lay off more than half of the Microsoft staffers based in Finland, the home of Nokia, as reported by Yle. That means a maximum of 2,300 jobs will be cut in Finland “as the company shuts down its Salo operation and moves tasks from there to Microsoft facilities in Tampere and Espoo,” according to Yle. Currently, there are 3,200 Microsoft employees in Finland, Yle said.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that this report is correct.