Nokia may shut its Helsinki headquarters

Nokia may sell its headquarters located on the outskirts of Helsinki, Finland. In his statement to Finnish daily, Helsingin Sanomat, the company’s financial director Timo Ihamuotila was quoted as saying, “We are exploring different options for our property assets. This includes a possible sale of our headquarters.” Ihamuotila, however added that the company had no plans to move their head office. 

Reports go on to state that, “the sale of property by a company which then rents the same assets from the buyer is a well-established strategy used by companies needing to raise cash.” Nokia, reportedly posted a net loss of 1.4 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in the second quarter of this year, but had a cash pile of more than 4.0 billion euros. 

No plans to move their head office, though

As stated in the Finnish daily Ilta-Sanomat, the building is worth between 200 million and 300 million euros. 

Nokia, as reports have been steadily bringing forth, has been losing ground as more and more consumers moved to smartphones powered by Apple's iOS or Google's Android operating system. 

Nokia was in the news recently, when reports emerged stating that the Finnish company might be preparing to file a lawsuit against HTC because of the similarities in design between the HTC Windows Phone 8X and the Nokia Lumia 820.

The original report by PC-Tablet.com says, “The reports are saying Nokia is preparing to get HTC 8X banned in various parts of the world from going on sale when it will launch in November. Nokia has said in reports that the front-face of HTC 8X looks identically same as of the Lumia 820 followed by side-curves of the phone body.”

This could be problematic for all parties involved, as Microsoft probably won’t let the launch of its new entrant into the smartphone operating system market get marred because of in-fighting between brands selling the same OS on different hardware.

Nokia launched the Lumia 900 in India recently. We were expecting the smartphone to make it here a lot sooner, around the time Nokia fooled everybody by launching the limited edition Dark Knight Rises special edition Lumia 800 in India after teasing the Lumia 900 special edition -- but it’s finally here. Nokia’s online store lists it up for grabs at Rs 32,999.

It is interesting to note that Nokia has barely announced the Lumia 900’s launch in India. The company has always treated India as one of its key markets, and has so far launched its mobile phones with much fanfare in the country. 

The Rs 32,999 price tag seems a bit heavy for a Windows Phone 7 device, especially one that’s never going to get Windows Phone 8. We also think the Lumia 900 is a bit out of date, especially with the Lumia 820 and Lumia 920 being unveiled.

The Lumia 900 runs on Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango), features a 4.3-inch AMOLED screen with ClearBlack technology, has a polycarbonate body, and is powered by a 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm processor. It has a 1,830mAh battery that offers a maximum of 300 hours of stand-by time, and seven hours of talk time. It has an 8-megapixel camera with dual LED flash with an aperture of f/2.2. The camera can capture 720p HD videos at 30 frames per second (fps). The Lumia 900 will be updated to Windows Phone 7.8 when the operating system is launched.

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