Microsoft set to retire Nokia and Windows Phone brands

We’ve known for some time that Microsoft was planning to ditch the Nokia brand for its future smartphones, following its acquisition of the company earlier this year, but a new leaked report suggests that could be happening sooner rather than later.

GeeksOnGadgets has posted what it claims is an internal Microsoft memo, which also indicated the company is planning to rebrand Windows Phone in the process. According to the report the Lumia 830 and Lumia 730 could be the final two devices to launch as Nokia-branded, with all future handsets being referred to as Microsoft Lumia instead.

Abandoning the Nokia name shouldn’t come as much of a surprise; Nokia’s former CEO Stephen Elop said in April he didn’t expect the Nokia name to be around for long at Microsoft. Writing on the Nokia Conversations blog at the end of April, Elop suggested work was already underway to “select the go-forward smartphone brand.”

When Microsoft acquired Nokia’s devices business earlier in the year for $7.2 billion and Elop became head of Microsoft’s devices group, he said “It will not be ‘Nokia Lumia 1020 with Windows Phone on the AT&T LTE network. Too many words! That somehow doesn’t roll off the tongue.”

The more interesting rumour is that Microsoft will drop the “phone” part from Windows Phone, replacing the existing Windows Phone logo with the regular Windows logo on all future devices and branding. There would then be parity between mobile and desktop versions of the operating system in terms of naming and branding.

Microsoft isn’t yet ready to discuss the report in public, but based on the leaked details we could be seeing the first rebranded Windows smartphones alongside the public release of Windows 9 early next year.