A purported confidential document has surfaced online
hinting at Microsoft's plans to remove the Nokia branding from its
upcoming devices this holiday season, alongside reports of plans to drop the
'Phone' from the Windows Phone name and logo as part of the transition to the
unifying 'Threshold' Windows 9 update.
"As part of our phased transition, we will drop the
manufacturer name [Nokia] from product references during the Holiday
campaign," stated one of the slides (Seen Below) from the leaked document,
titled 'Product Naming'.
The leaked internal document suggests that Microsoft will
be removing the Nokia branding altogether, leaving Lumia as the only brand name
for its upcoming smartphones. In addition, the recently launched Nokia Lumia
730 Dual SIM, Lumia 830 and Lumia 735 are also said to be
the final devices carrying the 'Nokia' brand name.
Contradicting what the newly leaked document suggests, a report
from June hinted Microsoft would rebrand the Nokia Lumia smartphones to
'Nokia by Microsoft'.
Geek On Gadgets, the website that procured the purported confidential
document, added that Microsoft is also planning to gradually remove the 'Phone'
from its 'Windows Phone' brand name until it fades away completely. This fits
in well with the company's announced plans for its upcoming 'Threshold' update
(expected to be called Windows 9) that will merge the phone, tablet and desktop
platforms into a unified operating system.
On a related note, last month Nokia was spotted hiring
engineers, designers and camera specialists for upcoming devices, on LinkedIn
job-listings. Nokia's Senior Vice President of Strategy, Sebastian Nystrom,
later confirmed it was hiring for "new products
businesses."
Microsoft in July announced the biggest job cuts in
its 39-year old history - with some 18,000 jobs being axed, of which 12,500
were from the Nokia acquisition. The Redmond
giant further dumped its Android experiment and also announced that the Nokia X
series of phones would be making the transition to Windows Phone as
Lumia devices.
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