Microsoft's purchase of Nokia brings the company into the cut-throat world of mobile device production, but the company says it is sure it made the right decision. Finland's reputation as a global centre of technological expertise helped persuade the Americans to buy Nokia's mobile business.
“We at Microsoft made this acquisition because we believe in the people here in Finland, who have just joined us from Nokia,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel and Executive Vice-President of Legal Affairs.
“We know these are great people. That is why we spent all of this money to do this deal.
Microsoft paid more than five billion euros for the hardware unit. Bloomberg reported last month that the move was not universally popular, with some on the Microsoft board initially opposed. The company line is now, however, that sales of the flagship Lumia phone will turn a corner once Microsoft is on board.
Successful phones
“It will mean putting Microsoft behind the marketing that's needed to call attention to these successful phones,” said Smith. “It means continuing to work with developers to create more apps.”
After buying Nokia's phone unit, Microsoft said it had plans to build a data centre in Finland. The firm's bigwigs had no concrete news on that plan, but indicated no backtracking either.
“It is going forward,” said Smith. “You´ll see it in the coming months. Let me just say, we look forward to serving customers in Europe from here in Finland when it comes to datacenter operations.”