People sparking baseless Microsoft buyout rumours are running out of fresh material reckons Nokia CEO Elop

Nothing generates hits like a rumour, which explains why, despite continued denials from both Nokia and Microsoft, talk of a possible buyout continues.

The latest speculation – kicked off by serial Nokia rumourmonger Eldar Murtazin – was different, however, suggesting Nokia was planning to sell of its smartphone business to Microsoft, holding on to its feature phone operations, amongst other ventures.

Yet, six months after Nokia CEO and former Microsoft man Stephen Elop described talk of a full buyout by Microsoft as "baseless", he used the exact same word to kick this most recent story into touch.

"As we've described it before, the rumours are baseless, and some people who seem to enjoy generating rumours are running out of fresh material, so it seems to have come up again," Elop said in an interview with PCMag.

"I have nothing else to say."

When probed as to how such a split to the business would function in the first place, Elop said it made much more sense to keep Nokia's smartphone and feature phone operations together.

"There's significant synergies between the multiple groups within Nokia," he added.

"For example, on decisions around chipsets, on memory, on different display technologies. We gain scale advantages across the entire portfolio of devices that we have.

"In a number of the services and areas where we differentiate - location-based services - we have a common team that's doing that work collectively across mobile phones and smart devices, so there's a lot of synergy that exists across the portfolio of Nokia products."

Nonetheless, as Microsoft's closest Windows Phone partner by some distance, people are expecting big things from both the recently announced Lumia 900 in North America, and the Lumia 800 around the rest of the globe.

Differentiation between Nokia and other OEMs, Elop claimed, will come from educating both consumers and retailers as to the exclusive features Lumia devices can offer - echoing statements made by Microsoft's Aaron Woodman.

"I think what you will see, and you'll see us emphasise, is the most important thing for us to do is to introduce people to the concept that defines the Lumia experience, including the Windows Phone elements," Elop concluded.

"What our work shows is that when someone has a Lumia device in their hand ... their overall willingness to recommend the device to a friend goes up very high. People really enjoy the experience. But they have to see it to experience it.

"We'll take the steps in stores to make sure that sales associates understand how the products are differentiated."

[source: PCMag]