Microsoft To License Nokia Brand To Foxconn, Says Report (techtimes.com)

SmartAboutThings quotes a report from Windows Report: It's no secret that Microsoft's phone business isn't going according to plan. Last quarter alone saw a 46% drop in phone revenue, slightly better than the 49% drop the quarter before that. And now it seems that Microsoft is finally realizing this: according to rumors, the tech giant is considering licensing 50% of its mobile business to Foxconn -- in other words, the Nokia brand it had purchased for 10 years, until 2024. It appears that negotiations have reached very advanced stages, with Microsoft and Foxconn currently deliberating the final clauses of the deal. Some of the implications of such a deal could mean about 50 percent of the Microsoft Mobile members would be looking for new jobs. The rest of the team is said to join the Microsoft Surface team, and may be tasked with working on an upcoming Surface Phone which has been rumored for some time now.

Comments

Re:Foxconn...

[nawcom]

According to Wikipedia, they make products (hardware) for: Acer, Amazon.com, Apple, BlackBerry, Cisco, Dell, Google, HP, Huawei, InFocus, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba, Vizio and Xiaomi. So yeah they build a little more than iPhones.

Re:Microsoft's reverse Midas-touch

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends which Nokia. Nokia, as in the one that makes phones, is history. The networking side of Nokia just slurped up Alcatel-Lucent [1], and seems to be doing solidly.

[1]: Alcatel-Lucent makes telco grade stuff. It is expensive... but there is a big difference between a telco-tier, NEBS compliant appliance than even enterprise-tier fabric.

Re:No objective evidence of customer interest

[Stormwatch]

If people were really excited about MeeGo (which they weren't) then it makes little sense that Nokia would have seen continued market share erosion after its release and before Elop killed the platform in February 2011.

Because Elop the Saboteur had already declared that the N9 would be Nokia's only MeeGo device, and they were going with WP no matter what. The reviews at the time were all: "this phone is fantastic, the operating system is the best, too bad it's a dead man walking."