Sales of Nokia’s Lumia series have helped the market share of Windows Phones in the global smartphone market climb to 3.3 percent, according to consultancy Gartner, overtaking ailing BlackBerry Ltd for the first time this year. Still, Google Inc’s Android and Apple’s iOS system make up 90 percent of the market.
Nokia said in a statement it expected that, apart from Elop, senior executives Jo Harlow, Juha Putkiranta, Timo Toikkanen, and Chris Weber would transfer to Microsoft when the deal is concluded, probably in the first quarter of 2014.
($1 = 0.7582 euros)
(Additional reporting by Terhi Kinnunen, Jussi Rosendahl and Niklas Pollard; Editing by Peter Graff and Will Waterman)
Article Appeared @http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/03/us-microsoft-nokia-idUSBRE98202V20130903