Microsoft ditching the Nokia name on smartphones

The Nokia Lumia name will soon become Microsoft Lumia

Microsoft is ditching the Nokia brand name from new smartphones, less than a year after acquiring the Finnish firm's mobile devices division.

New Nokia Lumia phones will instead be known as Microsoft Lumia, the company said.

The parts of Nokia that were not bought by Microsoft will continue to use the name.

The mobile operation was bought by Microsoft in April in a deal worth $7.2bn (£4.6bn).

Since then, Microsoft has quietly shifted away from the Nokia brand.

A post on a French Facebook page for Nokia-branded devices confirmed the shift. The renaming will roll out globally in due course, Microsoft has said.

The announcement does not prevent Microsoft from continuing to use the Nokia brand on its less powerful "feature phones", which it has the right to do for about 10 years.

Microsoft is currently having a big shake-up. In July, chief executive Satya Nadella announced the cutting of 18,000 jobs.

The bulk of the cuts, around 12,500, will be from staff taken on after the Nokia acquisition.