selling the handset division of Nokia to Microsoft for 5.440 million, approved on Tuesday at a special meeting of shareholders, ends an era in the telecommunications market because it implies fall of the last major industry pioneer .
Some 5,000 shareholders of Finnish telecommunications company Nokia attended an assembly that had to be held in a stadium in Helsinki ice hockey, instead of in the usual congress center, before the massive influx of partners not want to miss this historic event.
After four hours of meeting, in which no lack of criticism of the former CEO of Nokia, Stephen Elop Canadian , who many accuse of having worked at all times to Microsoft , 99.5% of shareholders finally gave the green light to the transaction.
promise of acting CEO, Risto Siilasmaa, that part of the proceeds from the sale will be distributed among the shareholders helped small Finnish investors to spend the bitter pill of seeing disappear one of their national symbols.
transaction announced on September 3, includes the sale of all the assets of Nokia related to design and manufacture of basic mobile intelligent terminal by 3,790 million euros, including factories, R & D and the transfer of some 32,000 employees.
Nokia also granted Microsoft a nonexclusive license to use their mobile patent for ten years for another 1,650 million euros, with the possibility of extending the agreement indefinitely.
transaction is expected to be formalized during the first quarter of 2014, once the competition authorities of the European Union and the United States have given final approval.
Thus, Nokia follows in the footsteps of the mobile affiliates other pioneers of mobile telephony as Motorola, Ericsson and Siemens , who spent just two decades of market sharing, along with Nokia, end tech giants engulfed by more financial muscle.
German manufacturer Siemens Mobile was acquired by the Taiwanese company BenQ in 2005, Sweden’s Ericsson sold its mobile business to the Japanese multinational Sony in 2011 and a year later the Internet giant Google bought Motorola.
For Nokia, the deal with Microsoft is seen by many analysts as the best solution for a company clearly in decline due to strong competition in the sector and by their own inability to evolve at the same rate as the market.
Since Apple started to sell its first model of iPhone in June 2007 until it announced the sale of Nokia’s mobile business to Microsoft, the Finnish company lost 85% of its market value.
Following the announcement, the price of Nokia shares on the Helsinki Stock Exchange has doubled in just two months and a half, from 2.96 euros per share to 5.82 euros which closed today trading day.
Although the Finnish company, former undisputed industry leader, has been steadily losing market share in recent years, it remains the second largest mobile manufacturer in the world after South Korean giant Samsung.
In the third quarter, Nokia had a market share of 13.8%, well below the 25.7% of Samsung, but more than double that of his next rival, Apple American (6.7%) , according to Gartner.
However, in the segment of smart devices, the most lucrative and fastest growing, Nokia has gone from making one in three “smartphones” in 2010 to fall to eighth place, behind manufacturers such as Samsung, Apple, Lenovo, LG and Huawei.
In the future, Nokia will be devoted to exclusively to its most profitable businesses today: the manufacture and maintenance of telecommunication networks and development of digital maps and geolocation services through its divisions Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) and HERE, respectively.
also called Advanced Technologies department manage its extensive portfolio of mobile patents, a business with which the company enters 500 million per year.
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