Nokia buys Smarterphone to give basic phones smart features
updated 01:00 pm EST, Fri January 6, 2012
Nokia takes on Smartphone to upgrade core lineup
Nokia and Ferd Capital revealed late Thursday that Nokia had quietly bought Ferd company Smarterphone. The deal, which had been wrapped up in November but only just made public this week, was intended to give Nokia's basic feature phones a "user experience similar to smart phones" using Smartphone's software. The terms of the deal hadn't been given out.
The updates will most likely see an upgrade to Symbian S40, which powers every non-smartphone Nokia makes.
Although Nokia is switching more and more of its effort to smartphones, it still depends on basic phones for the majority of its business. The gap between simple and advanced phones at Nokia has seen cheap Android smartphones take up some of the share that would have gone to S40 hardware in the past.
