It’s the end of an era as Microsoft apparently plans to retire the Nokia name when they finish acquiring the company’s devices division. In its stead, they will rebrand to Microsoft Mobile.
The rebrand will be effective when the deal is finalized, which is expected to happen as soon as April 25.
Nokia can trace its history past 100 years to 1865, as a rubber company. However, its entry into tech did not come until the 1960s, and it really only entered the cellphone business it has become famous for in the 1990s.
In the world of gaming, Nokia popularized Snake, and was a one-time big player in the Java wireless gaming scene. However, it never really found its place to compete against Apple’s iPhone App Store, and its dalliances into portable gaming with the N-gage and N-gage QD also faltered.
Tangentially, after the sale is done, there will still be a Nokia in Finland, now a telecommunications and internet services company, who happen to own quite a few patents Microsoft will be licensing. It’s a bittersweet end to one of the big tech companies in our lifetimes, but at least Nokia’s employees couldn’t have fallen in better hands.
