The end of Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V) is near. Nokia users in the United Kingdom are now being redirected from Nokia.com to Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s website. This is part of Microsoft’s absorption of the Nokia brand. As of this writing, this only affects U.K.-based users.
Microsoft starts to shed Nokia brand
The United States version of Nokia.com is still functioning. If or when the U.S. website will be dissolved is still unknown. The new Microsoft Mobile Devices website keeps the overall look simple, as it focuses on the products with large images.
This move isn’t surprising, considering that Microsoft confirmed plans to shed the Nokia name earlier this month. The company’s former chief executive officer, Stephen Elop, summed it up in a post, “Nokia as a brand will not be used for long going forward for smartphones. Work is underway to select the go-forward smartphone brand.”
Purchases and layoffs
Last April, Microsoft purchased Nokia’s mobile business for over $7.2 billion. Not too long after the acquisition, Microsoft changed the name to Microsoft Mobile in an effort to use Nokia to promote their own products and services.
Elop added, “It will not be Nokia Lumia 1020 with Windows Phone on the AT&T LTE network. Too many words! That somehow doesn’t roll off the tongue.”
Microsoft and Nokia teamed up to create their own line of smartphones in an effort to compete with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Android phones. The company’s lack of success in the smartphone market has kept both companies struggling.
Yesterday, Microsoft cut more jobs as part of the changes, and many of those jobs were Nokia-related. The company cut a total of 2,100 jobs, and roughly 747 of those jobs were from the Puget Sound area. Just last July, the company claimed it would cut a total of 18,000 jobs. There will be another huge round of layoffs within the next nine months.