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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/16/microsoft_nokia_buyout_rumor/

Russian rumor: Microsoft to buy Nokia for $30bn

Elop conspiracy theories thicken

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco

Posted in Mobile, 16th May 2011 21:06 GMT

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Today's unsubstantiated but intriguing rumor: Microsoft will buy Nokia's mobile division – smartphones, feature phones, plain-vanilla phones – for $30bn, and the deal will be completed this year because "обе компании очень сильно торопятся."

That last phrase is Russian for "both companies are very much in a hurry," and comes from the personal blog [1] (English translation [2]) of Eldar Murtazin, the publisher of Mobile-Review [3] and the source of the rumor.

Murtazin's blog post, by the way, doesn't mention the $30bn figure – that detail comes from SoftSailor [4], which doesn't point to their specific source.

Murtazin has had his run-ins with Nokia in the past, including one highly publicized squabble [5] in which the Finnish phonemaker sicced Russian authorities on him [6] to get back as-yet-unreleased Nokia property.

Neither has Murtazin curried favor with Nokia with such articles as "Nokia: the destruction of a great company" (in Russian [7] or English [8]), so it would be easy to brush this rumor off as an attempt to merely aggravate Nokia.

But Murtazin has a decent record of accurately predicting other moves by the company, such as that they were looking to replace former CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo [9], which they did last September [10], replacing him with Microsoftie Stephen Elop.

Last December, he also said that Nokia would offer "an entire line of Windows Phone devices [11]" – and we all know how that turned out: this February, Elop announced that Nokia would adopt Windows Phone [12] as its smartphone operating system.

Murtazin also predicted that Nokia would kill off the Ovi brand that it uses used for its online store. Guess what happened this morning [13]?

Murtazin isn't the only Nokia observer to speculate about a possible Microsoft purchase of the phonemaker after Elop's move from Redmond to Espoo, but to our knowledge he's the first to put a time stamp on it.

And speaking of time-specific predictions, Murtazin has also said that Elop would resign from Nokia [14] at the end of next year.

If, however, Murtazin's latest prediction is correct and Microsoft buys Nokia this year, perhaps Elop – mission accomplished – won't have to wait that long to be welcomed back to Redmond. ®