Nokia phones to be renamed Microsoft Mobile

Wow, the comments here are just, well not very hacker new&#x27;sish.<p>Lots of glib one liners about mistakes with no actual commentary as to why its a bad idea. Or jokes about how Microsoft is a negative brand, or the devil.<p>Here&#x27;s the thing.<p>1) Microsoft didn&#x27;t buy permanent use of the Nokia brand so they need to brand as something.<p>2) the Microsoft brand is very strong and positive with most demographics. Heck most people in tech that I respect now admit that Microsoft is a pretty good company now, both to work for and for their products.<p>If you have a problem with the brand, then layout your point but putting out a single sentence isn&#x27;t very helpful.

It was Nokia&#x27;s branding that managed to keep Windows Phone alive all this time, and the fact that thanks to inertia most people still recalled Nokia as being the #1 phone brand before the iPhone came around, so they kept buying &quot;Nokias&quot; regardless of what OS they had. If it wasn&#x27;t for that, WP would&#x27;ve never passed the 2 percent mark, and it would&#x27;ve probably started to die off 2 years ago.<p>It will be interesting to see how Microsoft manages to go from selling &quot;Nokia phones&quot; that everyone immediately recognizes, to &quot;Microsoft phones&quot; - which isn&#x27;t a strong consumer brand <i>at all</i>. I have to mention everytime that Microsoft is the company that makes that Windows thing on their PC when I tell normal people about it.

Although this may seem like a massive mistake, that&#x27;s because <i>we</i> all associate Microsoft as a negative brand, I think you&#x27;re forgetting that it&#x27;s associated with negativity in tech circles only. 95%+ of consumers see Microsoft as a huge corporation they can trust. If you asked your parent whether they think Microsoft is a good brand, the answer would likely be &quot;Yes&quot;.

I wonder if that means that other vendors like samsung&#x2F;lg&#x2F;huawei&#x2F;... will not manufacture windows phones anymore as the name &quot;Microsoft Mobile&quot; sounds to me like there are no other vendors that can install MS WP systems on their devices. Any idea?

I figure this is just the name for the legal entity and does not necessarily mean a change in branding?

Nokia is one of the most valuable brand names in the world. Microsoft would know better than to change that.

That title, does not need a comma.

What?! If I say Nokia people say &quot;ah yes! The company which made the best phones in the world! <i>some 3310 reference</i> Lately they even make smartphones!&quot;<p>If I say Microsoft people uncomfortably say &quot;ah yes... The company which operates my computer. It works, but I wish there were better alternatives.&quot;<p>They just destroyed a organic grown massive brand appreciation.

If they really wanted to compete with Apple Inc in terms of branding. They should rather have renamed Microsoft to Nokia. It&#x27;s not only catchy, but also Nokia is essentially a hardware vendor brand much like the Apple Inc.

Surface phone or something else but Microsoft Mobile? It&#x27;s horrible from a marketing point of view. It would only work if Microsoft had beaten Apple and Android to the market.

Nokia is dead, long live Nokia<p>-signed, a Nokia employee

Microsoft Mobile or Phone may still fare better than &quot;Windows&quot; Mobile&#x2F;Phone.

big mistake

I feel sorry for my neighbor finland.

Look &quot;How the mighty have fallen&quot;

The end of one era.

Biggest. Mistake. Ever.<p>But then again, memories of Nokia being actually any good will not be tainted by Microsoft Phone, and if Microsoft Phone fails it can be resurrected as NeoNokia..