Trusty ol' Nokia

How many of you had the old Nokia “candybar”-style phone in your pocket a few years back?

Very likely, a lot of us did. Nokia has been the leading mobile phone manufacturer since 1998 and in 2008 they held 40 percent of the global market share for handsets.

Since then, their market share has been steadily declining, as their operating system has failed to keep pace with the more popular iOS, Android, and Blackberry operating systems.

Today Nokia announced they’re cutting 4,000 jobs at their manufacturing plants in Finland, Hungary, and Mexico. This brings their total job cuts to over 30,000 since September 2010.

In an attempt to salvage their market share, Nokia announced a partnership with Microsoft and launched its new Windows Phone 7 model in October of last year. Unfortunately for Nokia, this last-ditch effort may not be enough.

Nokia Lumia 710 running Windows Phone 7 OS

According to Engadget, Nokia has put all it’s eggs into the Windows Phone 7 basket:

The handset maker’s European Manager told Swedish financial daily Dagens Industri that the company has no contingency plan in the event that Windows Phone loses out to Android and iOS saying that “Plan B is that Plan A is to succeed.”

What do you think? 

Can Nokia hold on with a Windows Phone 7 operating system? Are they positioning themselves for a Microsoft buyout in the future?