Nokia shareholders vote to sell mobile business to Microsoft

PanARMENIAN.Net - Nokia shareholders voted Tuesday, Nov 19, overwhelmingly in favor of selling the company's mobile business to U.S. software giant Microsoft in an attempt to reinvent the once-proud Finnish telecoms titan, AFP reports.

According to Nokia -- which will now become a telecom equipment and services company -- the deal was almost unanimously approved (99.7 percent) by a majority of shareholders voting ahead of an extraordinary meeting in Helsinki.

The "yes" vote was expected and analysts have judged the deal as positive for the ailing Finnish firm.

Nokia's share price has doubled since the plan was announced in early September with Microsoft agreeing to pay 5.44 billion euro ($7.35 billion) for the loss-making company's mobile phone division.

"It's an excellent deal. It's hard to imagine a better price for a division experiencing structural losses," Pierre Ferragu, an analyst at the brokers Sanford Bernstein, told AFP.

The sale of the assets, which include the Lumia smartphone trademark and technology, must take place in early 2014.

Once the world leader in mobile phones, Nokia lost its top place to South Korea's Samsung in 2012.

Although still number two in the overall mobile phone market with a 13.8 percent market share in the third quarter of the year -- ahead of US giant Apple (6.7 percent) -- Nokia is still far behind Samsung (25.7 percent) and ranks eighth in the fast growing smartphone (internet enabled) market, according to technology consultancy Gartner.

The deal spells the end of the once iconic Nokia branded mobile handsets, which have experienced a spectacular fall in sales since the arrival of Apple's touchscreen iPhone in 2007.

Nokia shareholders who voted for the sale hope for a return to profits and a new start in the fast-changing technology sector following a series of losses: 1.2 billion euros in 2011, 3.1 billion euros in 2012 and 590 million euros in the first nine months of 2013.

Microsoft will be left with the challenge of making the Lumia smartphone profitable but with $80 billion (59 billion euros) in reserves to fall back on it has some scope to invest.