NOKIA sells its devices unit to microsoft @ "$ 7.2 billion"

.Nokia will grant the US software giant a 10-year non-exclusive licence to its patents and will itself focus on network infrastructure and services, which it called "the best path forward for Nokia and its shareholders."

Nokia's Canadian boss Stephen Elop, who ran Microsoft's business software division before jumping to Nokia in 2010, will now return to the U.S. firm as head of its mobile devices business.

He is being discussed as a possible replacement for Microsoft's retiring CEO Steve Ballmer, who is trying to remake the U.S. firm into a gadget and services company like Apple before he departs, after disastrous attempts so far to compete in mobile devices.

In three years under Elop, Nokia saw its market share collapse and its share price shrivel as investors bet heavily that his strategy would fail.

In 2011, after writing a memo that said Nokia was falling behind and lacked the in-house technology to catch up, Elop made the controversial decision to use his former firm Microsoft's Windows Phone for smartphones, rather than Nokia's own software or Google's  ubiquitous Android operating system.

Nokia, which had a 40 percent share of the handset market in 2007, now has a mere 15 percent market share, with an even smaller 3 percent share in smartphones.

The company also announced the immediate departure of chief executive Stephen Elop, who was hired from Microsoft in 2010 to turn the company around.

He will be replaced in the interim by Risto Siilasmaa, Nokia's chairman of the board.

Nokia dominated the mobile phone market for 14 years, until it was overtaken by Samsung in 2012 as the top-selling brand, as it struggled to establish winning business models and mobile devices.

Rumours of a Nokia sale have swirled in recent months.

Amid increasing competition from Apple and Samsung, Nokia dramatically changed its strategy in February 2011 when Elop warned the company was "standing on a burning platform" and needed to shift course immediately.

The total price of the deal is EUR 5.44 billion in cash, which is currently worth $7.17 billion in U.S. dollars. The Devices and Services business acquisition accounts for EUR 3.79 billion of that, with the patent licensing deal making up the remaining EUR 1.65 billion.

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