Microsoft buys Nokia

The American Microsoft Corporation, the world's largest software manufacturer for personal computers, announced the purchase from the Finnish company Nokia of its key unit - mobile phones, until recently - the absolute leader of the world market (47% in 2007).

Microsoft will pay 3.79 billion euros for it, that is, about a quarter of the total sales of this unit in 2012, Reuters notes. In general, it brings Nokia a little more than half of all income.

The American corporation will pay Nokia an additional 1.65 billion euros for a license for the right to use a whole block of its technological patents for 10 years with the possibility of extending them for an unlimited period.

Thus, the total transaction amount- 5.44 billion euros ($ 7.18 billion)- makes it the second most in volume in the 38-year history of Microsoft Corporation after buying in 2011 for $ 8.5 billion, an audio and video service provider via the Internet.

If the transaction is completed, Nokia will leave the mobile phone market, where it has dominated for many years to focus on the production of equipment for mobile communication networks and service, Bloomberg notes. Its competitors in this market will, in particular, will become the Swedish Ericsson (also leaving the mobile phone market, having left the Japanese Sony in 2011, or Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE .

Microsoft, for its part, would like to establish itself in the mobile gadget market, which is dominated by such companies as Samsung , Apple and others using other software.

Since 2011, Nokia has been producing Lumia smartphones with Microsoft Windows operating system, however, the share of Nokia in the global smartphone market, according to the American IDC research company, has not yet exceeded 3.5%. This is almost six times less than Apple, and about eleven times less than that of Samsung. By 2018, Microsoft intends to increase its share in the smartphone market to 15%.

In the second quarter of 2013, according to the GARTner research company, global sales of smartphones (225 million pieces) increased by 46% to the level of April-June last year and first exceeded sales of ordinary mobile phones (210 million), which, on the contrary, were reduced by 21% to last year.

In turn, sales of personal computers, on the software market for which Microsoft is still dominated by the fifth quarter in a row -after the peak achieved in 2011. In April-June of this year, according to IDC and Gartner, sales were about 11% smaller than in the second quarter of last year.

At the same time, sales of tablet computers, according to IDC forecasts, will grow by 58%in 2013, amounting to 227 million pieces. And although growth rates may slow down, by 2017, these sales, according to the same forecasts, will amount to about 407 million. Almost half of this market in the world is controlled today by Apple and Samsung, the share of Microsoft barely exceeds 1%.

Microsoft plans to complete the purchase of the Nokia unit in the first quarter of 2014. In this case, notes the Associated Press , about 32 thousand Nokia employees will go to Microsoft, whose staff today contain about 99 thousand people.

In reports of the planned transaction, Nokia's quotes rose by 48%.