Microsoft is selling its feature phone business to Foxconn subsidiary FIH Mobile and HMD Global, the . The deal worth $350 million is another nail in the coffin of Microsoft鈥檚 ailing mobile phone hardware business. It is also further proof that the company鈥檚 $7.9 billion acquisition of Nokia鈥檚 Devices and Services division in 2014 was nothing short of a disaster.
As the chart below illustrates, Nokia鈥檚 once hugely successful phone business had already been in decline for years when Microsoft acquired it, and things have continued to go south ever since. In the first quarter of 2016, Microsoft sold 2.3 million Lumia devices and 15.7 million feature phones, down more than 60 percent from what Nokia sold in Q1 2014, when the acquisition was about to be completed.
Today鈥檚 events also mark Nokia鈥檚 return to the mobile phone business, as the a strategic partnership with HMD Global which enables the latter to create 鈥渁 new generation of Nokia-branded mobile phones and tablets鈥.
Microsoft Spent Billions on a Sinking Ship
Description
This chart illustrates the steady decline of Nokia's and Microsoft's mobile phone business.
