Nokia’s smartphone camera division will move to Microsoft, along with the Finnish manufacturer’s entire core phone business, if Microsoft’s acquisition is approved by shareholders. Microsoft had announced recently it has agreed to acquire Nokia’s phone business for more than $7 billion, pending shareholder approval. If it goes through, the deal will be closed by the first quarter of 2014. The PureView brand has been selectively used with several Nokia Lumia devices, but a VP from the company hints that after the acquisition, the PureView brand might cease to exist.
Vice President of software program management at Nokia, Samuli Hänninen, was asked today during a Q&A session on Nokia’s blog about the future of PureView. He said that PureView stands for “the best imaging experiences in our devices,” and that the team will continue to work in the area. He says that “the most important thing is what we do, not what it is called, although we like PureView a lot.” This is believed to be a subtle hint towards the possibility of Microsoft ditching the brand name once it has total control over it. Sure, the possibility exists, one can’t predict what Microsoft might do or might not do once it has control of Nokia’s phone business. The company has already said that it would like to see shorter names for Lumia devices. One can expect Redmond to shake things up a little bit, but how exactly it intends to do that, that remains to be seen.