Here’s One Possible Reason Why Microsoft Paid $7B for Nokia’s Devices and Services Business

Since Microsoft agreed with Nokia to a $1 billion per year deal back in 2011 for Nokia to exclusively develop Windows Phone devices, many were expecting the American giants to someday buy the Finnish company out entirely. However, not many expected a deal to be concluded as quickly as it did in September, where Microsoft bought out Nokia’s Devices and Services divisions.

What may have accelerated this deal could have been the rapid rise of the Lumia brand compared to the Windows Phone platform itself. TechCrunch’s Alex Wilhelm did a Google Trends search for both “Lumia” and “Windows Phone”, and the results were apparent: more people were interested (and hence, searched on Google) of Nokia’s Windows Phone family brand than Windows Phone itself. And, given that Nokia’s Lumia smartphones make up about 90% of all Windows Phone devices sold, the Lumia name could possibly be even more valuable to Microsoft than Nokia.

Of course, the Google Trends query applies for worldwide searches for both terms, and will be slightly different in other regions in the world. Nevertheless, for a third-party brand to be more synonymous than the platform it is running on does put Microsoft in quite a situation…but not one that $7 billion cannot handle.

(Source: TechCrunch)