Nokia and Microsoft announce broad strategic partnership

LONDON: Nokia and Microsoft on Friday announced plans for a broad strategic partnership to combine both company's strengths for building a new global mobile ecosystem.

The partnership will result in significant benefits for consumers, developers, mobile operators and businesses around the world. It was announced by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and his Microsoft counterpart Steve Ballmer.

"We each bring incredible assets to the table. Nokia’s history of innovation in the hardware space, global hardware scale, strong history of intellectual property creation and navigation assets are second to none. Microsoft is a leader in software and services," said Elop and Ballmer in a joint letter.

The specific details of the partnership are currently being worked out but it is expected that Nokia will adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy in order to innovate on top of the platform in areas such as imaging.

Nokia will be a major contributor to the future of the Windows Phone on hardware design, language support and bringing the device to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies.

Microsoft development tools will be used to create applications to run on Nokia Windows Phones. The company led by Bill Gates will continue investing in the development of Windows Phone and cloud services so customers can enjoy more uses of their smartphones.

Nokia's extensive operator billing agreements will make it easier for consumers to purchase Nokia Windows Phone services in countries where credit-card use is low. The Nokia's content and application store will be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace.

"Today, the battle is moving from one of mobile devices to one of mobile ecosystems, and our strengths here are complementary. This is what we are creating; this is our vision; this is the work we are driving from this day forward."

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