Back in 2014, Microsoft announced that they would be buying the mobile division of Nokia, which we guess for the most part seemed like the majority of phones produced were smartphones, but it also included the occasional feature phone. However it looks like future feature phones under the Nokia division will no longer bear the Microsoft name.
In an announcement made by the Redmond company, they have announced that they will be selling off the feature phone business to FIH Mobile, which is actually a subsidiary of Hon Hai/Foxconn. According to Microsoft, the business will be sold off for $350 million which will also include Microsoft Mobile Vietnam, a manufacturing facility owned by Microsoft in Hanoi, Vietnam.
We suppose it is understandable that Microsoft might not be too interested in feature phones. After all with more people converting to smartphones these days, is there really a need for such devices? One could argue that developing markets continue to rely on feature phones, but as we’ve seen, efforts from the likes of local companies in India and China have resulted in very affordable smartphones.
Plus we’ve also seen efforts from Google who has created Android One devices which are typically priced around the $50 mark, making them not much more expensive than feature phones.