It’s almost official! Microsoft is in the process of replacing the Nokia brand name with Microsoft Lumia.
The rebranding exercise will start with France with the company’s regional social network accounts set to being renamed from Nokia to Microsoft Lumia. It communicated the same via a Facebook post. Nokia France’s Twitter account also posted a link to the post. Following the post, the Redmond giant confirmed the move to The Verge it would start the rebranding exercise in other countries in the coming weeks.
The move comes shortly after Microsoft rebranding Nokia’s native apps to Lumia and launched new Microsoft Mobile Devices site redirecting users from the Nokia.com mobile website.
Although Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s handsets division was completed in April for $7.2 billion, we’ve still seen devices released under the Finnish brand over the past several months. The company’s recently launched Lumia 730 and 830 phones sport Nokia branding but it’s believed the two devices are the last ones to carry that name.
It’s also expected that Microsoft will soon do away with the ‘Phone’ in the name of its mobile operating system Windows Phone. During the unveiling of Windows 10, Microsoft had announced that it will merge all platforms under a single Windows product.
It’s worth pointing out that Nokia still exists as a brand and a separate company based in Finland that focuses on location based services including Here maps, and network equipment. Nokia had agreed to not make a smartphone or phone carrying the Nokia brand till the end of 2015.
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