https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Microsoft-kill-the-Nokia-brand
Why did Microsoft kill the Nokia brand?
3 Answers

Adam Gering, cypherpunk, startup advisor, investor, founder.
Updated May 22, 2015 · Author has 1.7k answers and 1.8m answer views
Nokia lives on. Microsoft didn't buy Nokia, they bought Nokia's smartphone division. Nokia is still an active business, albeit one that no longer makes handsets.
Besides deciding the Lumia brand was sufficient versus the Nokia brand, they quite possibly didn't purchase the right to use the Nokia brand indefinitely.
Nokia's non-compete agreement with Microsoft (not to manufacture phones) expires in 2016. Nokia Denies Return To Phone-Making Business
The agreement was a save-face to avoid having a company that bet its fate on Microsoft's phone platform (and lost) enter bankruptcy, and to avoid disruption with a flagship line of Windows Phone devices.
The agreement was not entirely unlike Microsoft's rescue of Apple in 1997, although unlikely to end as successfully for Nokia; and moderately similar to Google's purchase of Motorola's smartphone division.
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Dion Guillaume, Tech Prophet
Answered May 11, 2015 · Author has 326 answers and 191.6k answer views
Microsoft didn't kill the Nokia brand. Nokia is still an independant company that sold it's mobile hardware division to Microsoft, who licensed the Nokia name on feature phones for a decade, but no on smartphones. As such Microsoft was obligated to manufacture smartphones under their own name.
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Aaron Nedumparambil, Nokia Fan. Lumia user.
Answered May 8, 2015 · Author has 310 answers and 205.1k answer views
Trojan horse theory is bullshit. Nokia was all ready sinking when Elop came in, though they were still making massive profits. Symbian was clearly aging and Nokia didn't have a strong replacement ready yet, meego the intended successor was going to be too late.
WP was virtually the only remaining option for Nokia cause they knew Android wasn't for them with allready Samsung and many others onboard engaged in a death battle. WP however couldn't prop up Nokia as WP with its obvious drawbacks couldn't increase in sales rapidly as much as Nokia wanted while Symbian was collapsing in all front. Nokia was leaking cash and had to sell the mobile unit realising that they didn't couldn't fight the ongoing smartphone market. Nokia sold their mobile phone unit to MS while still keeping their network and Maps businesses. MS didnt buy Nokia brand and has permission to use it only for 2 years untill 2016 for smartphones.
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Did Microsoft destroy Nokia?
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3 Answers

Arno Brevoort, worked for Nokia when Elop sent the burning platform memo
Answered Aug 1 2015 · Author has 1.1k answers and 768.3k answer views
There's whole books written about this. Microsoft didn't help but arguably Nokia was on a path of self destruction too.
I worked for Symbian, which later became part of Nokia.
Symbian's business model was basically what Android is today -- provide and license a smartphone operating system that anyone can use, with the technical expertise for hire to get it working on your hardware. It was at the time fairly succesful in Europe and Japan. Licensees included Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, Siemens -- basically every mobile phone manufacturer had a high end Symbian smartphone. You could get Symbian running on fairly modest hardware -- it is less hardware hungry than Android. The price to pay was that Symbian used a curious dialect of C++ to write applications, which, although efficient, caused new programmers a steep learning curve.
Nokia in those days was developing phones on 3 different operating systems -- Series40 (homegrown), Series60 (Symbian) and Maemo. Maemo was the new Linux+Qt based that could have become the future. Series40 was mainly used for cheap feature phones. Series60 was Nokia's bread-and-butter -- high end smartphones that made the most profit.
Nokia was the market leader in mobile phones, and Symbian was the market leader in smartphone sales. What could possibly go wrong?
Well -- Nokia figured that paying license fees to an external company that supplied the OS to it's main competitors wasn't a smart thing to do. So for about the sum of licensing fees due in 2-3 years, they gobbled up Symbian, and now owned it outright.
Nokia's competitors figured that having your OS owned and controlled by your main competitor possibly wasn't a good plan. If you're SonyEricsson developing Symbian phones and the Symbian guys are now Nokia guys instead, perhaps, just perhaps, some of your bugfixes might get a lower priority than getting Nokia product shipped out the door. True or not, the thinking was there, and one by one Symbian's licensees dropped out and moved on to pastures green -- mostly Android.
Apple had been succesful with a *single* model -- The iPhone. One model.
Nokia on the other hand believed in "variety is the spice of life" and I've seen a year where Nokia brought out 52 (fifty-two!) different new phone models. Some series 40, some series 60, some Maemo phones. There's a lot of duplication of engineering effort and not really the razor sharp focus that Apple could have on their single phone.
So, Nokia in their wisdom decided that they too needed "focus". 3 different OS's and 52 different phone models wasn't the way to go. They didn't want to drop the low-end Series40 phones for fear of losing the emerging markets. So they announced that they'd drop Symbian, their bread and butter phone OS that was selling well -- and would replace it with Windows Phone. Except that that wasn't ready. Or proven. Or known to work on Nokia hardware.
Nokia's old high-end customers *had* been using Symbian, for better or worse. There would now no longer be an upgrade path for them. And the future was unclear. So they started to look around and bought other phones -- if you've got to change your habits anyway, you might as well change them all the way.
Sales plummeted. From market leader, Nokia dropped down to an also ran. Apple and Samsung were the new top dogs.
Only then did Microsoft step in and bought Nokia out. I guess Nokia did an excellent job all by themselves.
... in an alternate universe, what could have happened would be that Series40 phones were replaced with Series60/Symbian phones. That would mean the whole line would be running the known quantity of Symbian. There could then be a number of experimental high end phones, perhaps the PureView Symbian phone, another Maemo phone, or maybe an Android phone too.
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Why did Microsoft kill the Nokia brand?
3 Answers

Adam Gering, cypherpunk, startup advisor, investor, founder.
Updated May 22, 2015 · Author has 1.7k answers and 1.8m answer views
Nokia lives on. Microsoft didn't buy Nokia, they bought Nokia's smartphone division. Nokia is still an active business, albeit one that no longer makes handsets.
Besides deciding the Lumia brand was sufficient versus the Nokia brand, they quite possibly didn't purchase the right to use the Nokia brand indefinitely.
Nokia's non-compete agreement with Microsoft (not to manufacture phones) expires in 2016. Nokia Denies Return To Phone-Making Business
The agreement was a save-face to avoid having a company that bet its fate on Microsoft's phone platform (and lost) enter bankruptcy, and to avoid disruption with a flagship line of Windows Phone devices.
The agreement was not entirely unlike Microsoft's rescue of Apple in 1997, although unlikely to end as successfully for Nokia; and moderately similar to Google's purchase of Motorola's smartphone division.
2k Views · View Upvoters
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- Why did Microsoft end such a great brand as Nokia?
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Dion Guillaume, Tech Prophet
Answered May 11, 2015 · Author has 326 answers and 191.6k answer views
Microsoft didn't kill the Nokia brand. Nokia is still an independant company that sold it's mobile hardware division to Microsoft, who licensed the Nokia name on feature phones for a decade, but no on smartphones. As such Microsoft was obligated to manufacture smartphones under their own name.
999 Views · View Upvoters
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Aaron Nedumparambil, Nokia Fan. Lumia user.
Answered May 8, 2015 · Author has 310 answers and 205.1k answer views
Trojan horse theory is bullshit. Nokia was all ready sinking when Elop came in, though they were still making massive profits. Symbian was clearly aging and Nokia didn't have a strong replacement ready yet, meego the intended successor was going to be too late.
WP was virtually the only remaining option for Nokia cause they knew Android wasn't for them with allready Samsung and many others onboard engaged in a death battle. WP however couldn't prop up Nokia as WP with its obvious drawbacks couldn't increase in sales rapidly as much as Nokia wanted while Symbian was collapsing in all front. Nokia was leaking cash and had to sell the mobile unit realising that they didn't couldn't fight the ongoing smartphone market. Nokia sold their mobile phone unit to MS while still keeping their network and Maps businesses. MS didnt buy Nokia brand and has permission to use it only for 2 years untill 2016 for smartphones.
938 Views · View Upvoters
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3 Answers

Arno Brevoort, worked for Nokia when Elop sent the burning platform memo
Answered Aug 1 2015 · Author has 1.1k answers and 768.3k answer views
There's whole books written about this. Microsoft didn't help but arguably Nokia was on a path of self destruction too.
I worked for Symbian, which later became part of Nokia.
Symbian's business model was basically what Android is today -- provide and license a smartphone operating system that anyone can use, with the technical expertise for hire to get it working on your hardware. It was at the time fairly succesful in Europe and Japan. Licensees included Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, Siemens -- basically every mobile phone manufacturer had a high end Symbian smartphone. You could get Symbian running on fairly modest hardware -- it is less hardware hungry than Android. The price to pay was that Symbian used a curious dialect of C++ to write applications, which, although efficient, caused new programmers a steep learning curve.
Nokia in those days was developing phones on 3 different operating systems -- Series40 (homegrown), Series60 (Symbian) and Maemo. Maemo was the new Linux+Qt based that could have become the future. Series40 was mainly used for cheap feature phones. Series60 was Nokia's bread-and-butter -- high end smartphones that made the most profit.
Nokia was the market leader in mobile phones, and Symbian was the market leader in smartphone sales. What could possibly go wrong?
Well -- Nokia figured that paying license fees to an external company that supplied the OS to it's main competitors wasn't a smart thing to do. So for about the sum of licensing fees due in 2-3 years, they gobbled up Symbian, and now owned it outright.
Nokia's competitors figured that having your OS owned and controlled by your main competitor possibly wasn't a good plan. If you're SonyEricsson developing Symbian phones and the Symbian guys are now Nokia guys instead, perhaps, just perhaps, some of your bugfixes might get a lower priority than getting Nokia product shipped out the door. True or not, the thinking was there, and one by one Symbian's licensees dropped out and moved on to pastures green -- mostly Android.
Apple had been succesful with a *single* model -- The iPhone. One model.
Nokia on the other hand believed in "variety is the spice of life" and I've seen a year where Nokia brought out 52 (fifty-two!) different new phone models. Some series 40, some series 60, some Maemo phones. There's a lot of duplication of engineering effort and not really the razor sharp focus that Apple could have on their single phone.
So, Nokia in their wisdom decided that they too needed "focus". 3 different OS's and 52 different phone models wasn't the way to go. They didn't want to drop the low-end Series40 phones for fear of losing the emerging markets. So they announced that they'd drop Symbian, their bread and butter phone OS that was selling well -- and would replace it with Windows Phone. Except that that wasn't ready. Or proven. Or known to work on Nokia hardware.
Nokia's old high-end customers *had* been using Symbian, for better or worse. There would now no longer be an upgrade path for them. And the future was unclear. So they started to look around and bought other phones -- if you've got to change your habits anyway, you might as well change them all the way.
Sales plummeted. From market leader, Nokia dropped down to an also ran. Apple and Samsung were the new top dogs.
Only then did Microsoft step in and bought Nokia out. I guess Nokia did an excellent job all by themselves.
... in an alternate universe, what could have happened would be that Series40 phones were replaced with Series60/Symbian phones. That would mean the whole line would be running the known quantity of Symbian. There could then be a number of experimental high end phones, perhaps the PureView Symbian phone, another Maemo phone, or maybe an Android phone too.
2.9k Views · View Upvoters
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