Microsoft has already started removing "redundancies" when it comes to the Nokia employees that it took on when it completed its acqusition of Nokia's Devices and Service's division earlier this year, and not the company is showing “Nokia” the door when it comes to smartphone branding. We first learned of this news in early September when a leaked internal Microsoft slide denoted:
As part of our phased transition, we will drop the manufacturer name [Nokia] from product references during the Holiday campaign.
That transition is well under way outside of the U.S., as first reported by Nokiapoweruser. In France, the official Facebook page for Nokia France will soon be renamed to Microsoft Lumia.
Ireland’s Technology Blog offered more confirmation, stating that Microsoft will switch many of social accounts from Nokia Lumia branding to Microsoft Lumia later today. The Verge was able to further confirm with Microsoft that, “other countries will follow the rebranding steps in the coming weeks.”
All of Microsoft’s existing Windows Phone devices — the Windows Phone name is also going to be ditched in the near future — still carry the Nokia branding. How Microsoft plans to take things from here with smartphone branding remains to be seen.
