Microsoft engulf Nokia's phone business for $7.2 billion

Microsoft Corp  buys Nokia's phone business and license its patents for 5.44 billion euros ($7.2 billion), a bold foray into mobile devices that also brings potential chief executive contender Stephen Elop back into the fold.

Two years after hitching its fate to Microsoft's Windows Phone software, the Finnish phone maker that once dominated the global market collapsed into the arms of the U.S. software giant, its mobile business ravaged by nimbler rivals Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.

 

Shares in Microsoft slid as much as 6 percent in the afternoon, lopping more than $15 billion off the company's market value, as investors protested the acquisition of an underperforming and marginalized corporation that lost more than $4 billion in 2012.