A few hours ago, the news hit the world that Microsoft is about to acquire Nokia’s devices & services business and it’s going to license Nokia’s patents and mapping services.

Honestly, I can’t say that I’m surprised. Microsoft and Nokia have been working closely together in making, branding and marketing Nokia’s Lumia Windows Phone devices. In line of Microsoft’s “big transformation” into a devices & services company, this only seems the next logical step.

Through the acquisition (which includes brining over about 30.000 people from Nokia), Microsoft suddenly gains a vast amount of experience in making hardware.It’s first attempts at creating a tablets, the Surface RT and Surface Pro,  seemed – given the 900 million dollar write-off on a pile of devices they couldn’t sell – nothing more than a creditable attempt. Through this acquisition, however, Nokia [Microsoft] might be able to bring some change into the game. After all, recent news confirmed the existence of a Nokia tablet based on Windows RT which should hit the shelves any time soon. And by the looks of it, the device looks many times more slick than the Surface RT or Pro.

Time will tell if this was a good thing or not…