Nokia and Microsoft deal brings Windows Phone 7 to smartphones

Nokia and Microsoft are to partner up to bring the Windows Phone 7 operating system to Nokia smartphone handsets.

Dubbing the move a "broad strategic partnership", the companies said it will see Windows Phone 7 become the operating system on future Nokia handsets.

"Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward," said Stephen Elop, Nokia's president and CEO.

"Today, we are accelerating that change through a new path, aimed at regaining our smartphone leadership."

Mr Elop said the move was necessary to enable the company to regain its leadership in the smartphone industry and that the partnership would result in Nokia "reinforcing" its mobile devices platform.

"I am excited about this partnership with Nokia," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "The partnership announced today provides incredible scale, vast expertise in hardware and software innovation and a proven ability to execute."

The specific details of the partnerhsip are yet to be announced, but some information has been released.

The two companies revealed that Nokia Maps will become a "core part" of Microsoft's mapping service with the Bing search engine also being included as standard.

Content from Nokia's current smartphone app store will be moved over to Microsoft Marketplace.

Nokia also said it would continue to make phones running its Symbian operating system as it looks to use "previous investments to harvest additional value".

Recently, Google's Android operating system became the world's leading operating system for smartphones, toppling Nokia's Symbian software from its perch.

Figures released by industry analysts Canalys revealed that in the last quarter of 2010 shipments of Android phones reached 32.9 million while Symbian trailed slightly at 31 million worldwide with Apple's iPhone on 16.2 million.