Nokia will adopt Microsoft's Windows Phone as its main smartphone operating system in a major streategy shift brought on by rapidly tanking sales for its Symbian-based phones.
The Finnish company that once ruled the handset world before the advent of the Apple iPhone and smartphones using Google's Android system has recently seen its market share go into free fall.
IT research firm Gartner reports smartphone sales rose 72 per cent last year from a year earlier, to 297 million units but Nokia's share fell to 28.9 per cent from 36.4 per cent. Nokia uses the Symbian operating system which is seen as outdated compared to the slick, easy to use Apple and Android platforms.
The deal should help Microsoft's new Windows Phone platform, launched against Apple, Android and others in late 2010, get some market traction.
'Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward," said Stephen Elop, Nokia president and CEO.
"Today, we are accelerating that change through a new path, aimed at regaining our smartphone leadership, reinforcing our mobile device platform and realizing our investments in the future," he said.
In an internal memo leaked before the announcement of the Microsoft deal, Mr Elop had told Nokia employees that " our platform is burning.'
The company will split its phone operations into two new units as of April 1. The Smart Devices unit will concentrate on high-end smartphones while the Mobile Phones unit deals with mass-market phones.
Under the deal, Nokia's app store will be integrated into Microsoft's Marketplace online app store and the pair will combine other assets - Nokia Maps would appear in Microsoft's Bing search engine.
Symbian will stay as a franchise platform. The company said there was an installed base of 200 million Symbian owners worldwide and it expected to sell about 150 million more Symbian devices in the future.
The Finnish company that once ruled the handset world before the advent of the Apple iPhone and smartphones using Google's Android system has recently seen its market share go into free fall.
IT research firm Gartner reports smartphone sales rose 72 per cent last year from a year earlier, to 297 million units but Nokia's share fell to 28.9 per cent from 36.4 per cent. Nokia uses the Symbian operating system which is seen as outdated compared to the slick, easy to use Apple and Android platforms.
The deal should help Microsoft's new Windows Phone platform, launched against Apple, Android and others in late 2010, get some market traction.
'Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward," said Stephen Elop, Nokia president and CEO.
"Today, we are accelerating that change through a new path, aimed at regaining our smartphone leadership, reinforcing our mobile device platform and realizing our investments in the future," he said.
In an internal memo leaked before the announcement of the Microsoft deal, Mr Elop had told Nokia employees that " our platform is burning.'
The company will split its phone operations into two new units as of April 1. The Smart Devices unit will concentrate on high-end smartphones while the Mobile Phones unit deals with mass-market phones.
Under the deal, Nokia's app store will be integrated into Microsoft's Marketplace online app store and the pair will combine other assets - Nokia Maps would appear in Microsoft's Bing search engine.
Symbian will stay as a franchise platform. The company said there was an installed base of 200 million Symbian owners worldwide and it expected to sell about 150 million more Symbian devices in the future.
