Nokia shareholders have now approved the Nokia and Microsoft deal, the shareholders voted today in favor of Microsoft buying Nokia’s mobile phone and smartphone business in a deal worth $7.2 billion.
99.7 percent of the Nokia shareholders voted in favor of the deal, and these shareholders own around four fifths of Nokia shares, the deal will see former Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop return to Microsoft, where he will be in the running for the Microsoft CEO job.
Nokia will keep the Nokia brand, and Microsoft will acquire Nokia’s Lumia Windows Phone brand as part of the deal, sales of Nokia’s Lumia smartphones have been improving, with 8.8 million sold in the last quarter.
The two companies originally formed a partnership back in 2011, when Nokia agreed to produced Windows Phone smartphones, unfortunately the devices did not sell as well as the two companies had hoped.
It will be interesting to see what happens when Stephen Elop returns to Microsoft, he has been rumored to be considering killing off Bing and selling off Microsoft’s Xbox unit if he gets the CEO job.
