Nokia took a huge axe to its first-quarter devices and services guidance and issued a gloomy outlook for the new quarter on Wednesday, wiping out 18% of the Finnish handset maker's market cap.

Nokia will cut about 4,000 jobs at its smartphone manufacturing bases in Europe and the Americas after announcing plans to shift production to Asia.

Nokia has posted an operating loss of US$1.25 billion in the fourth quarter as unexpectedly high Windows Phone sales and a US$250 million payment from Microsoft weren't enough to compensate for worse than anticipated declines in the company's legacy smartphone lines.

For years, Nokia has led all handset vendors in unit shipments. But this year (2012), Samsung believes it can change that.

The Finnish handset giant scooped up Smarterphone, a small Norwegian company that has an operating system designed for more basic cell phones known in the industry as feature phones. The acquisition was disclosed by Smarterphone's Nordic investor parent, Ferd Capital. A Nokia representative confirmed the acquisition but declined to comment further on what it means for the company.

Charging a mobile phone by simply using a solar charging panel on the back cover is possible but challenging, Nokia has concluded after ending a research project on the subject.

"Nokia does not have an exact plan, but we are studying the markets carefully. Perhaps we will come [to market] one day," Chief Executive Stephen Elop said in a televised interview on Finnish public broadcaster YLE.

Stephen Elop, the first non-Finn to run Nokia, on Sunday quashed rumors the cellphone maker could move its headquarters to the United States from Espoo, a suburb of the Finnish capital Helsinki.

Subject to approval, the final day of trading of Nokia shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange is estimated to be during the first half of 2012.

Nokia is to move its head office to London as part of the turnaround of the struggling Finnish firm.

Nokia is planning to launch a Windows-running tablet during the summer of 2012, the head of Nokia France said in an interview with a French newspaper.

The semiconductor market likely is bottoming, the chief executive of STMicroelectronics said, with conditions expected to improve in the coming weeks and months.

Qualcomm has announced that its Snapdragon mobile processors power the first Nokia Lumia smartphones, the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 710.

The Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710 mark the begin of Nokia's fightback against Apple's iPhone and rivals using Google's Android software.

Nokia has reported better-than-expected sales in its market-leading lower priced "feature phone" business, where it shipped 18m of a new dual SIM phone range in the third quarter, although revenues still decreased as it lost more ground in the smartphone market.

Nokia plans to launch "new devices running Windows Phone" next week at Nokia World, marking the debut of the first Windows Phone 7 handsets produced by Nokia under its partnership with Microsoft, said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

Nokia and Siemens have announced the appointment of Jesper Ovesen as Executive Chairman of the Board of Nokia Siemens Networks, effective today. The pair also announced that they are each providing capital of EUR500 million to Nokia Siemens Networks.

Nokia, having abandoned its ambition to develop a high-end operating system, is shifting its programming efforts toward creating software for its low-end phones, according to people familiar with the matter. The project is a Linux-based operating system code-named Meltemi.

Previously, Tirri was Head of Nokia Research Centre, Nokia's forward looking research facility. He joined Nokia in 2004 as a Research Fellow before leading NRC Systems Research laboratory in 2007.

The database tapped by hackers includes member e-mail addresses and, in some cases, personally identifiable information such as birthdates, homepage URLs and screen names from messaging services such as AIM, Skype and Yahoo.

Focusing on Bada may not be the answer, though. It seems as if the trend in the industry is to move from in-house proprietary platforms to more open models - look at Nokia's switch to the Windows Phone platform. With the struggles Nokia had in making Symbian a global success, I can't see how Samsung could do any better.

STMicroelectronics fell the most in a decade in Paris trading after CEO Carlo Bozotti said there will be a "correction" in sales and gross margin in the third quarter because of difficulties at customer Nokia.

Samsung Electronics, maker of the Galaxy mobile phone, may have surpassed Nokia and Apple in smartphone sales for the first time on demand for devices that run on Android software, a research company said.

"While our Q2 results were clearly disappointing, we are executing well on the initiatives that are most important to our longer term competitiveness," CEO Stephen Elop said. "Some progress is already evident, and thus we are targeting to end this year with more net cash and liquid assets than at the end of Q2 2011."

Nokia Siemens Networks will remain under the full ownership of Nokia and Siemens after buyout firms failed to come up with a compelling offer.

Shares of Taiwan's HTC are up more than 15% this year as the company cashes in on Android. Investors might be wise to seek out international funds that own the stock.

Nokia said the staff reductions will happen in phases until the end of 2012 and all the employees concerned can remain with the company until the end of 2011. Nokia previously said it plans to reduce its Finnish workforce by 1,400 people.

Nokia has completed a deal to outsource Symbian software development to Accenture, including the transfer of 2,800 workers to the global management-consulting firm.

Apple agreed to pay the mobile phone maker a one-time sum, which was not disclosed, to settle a long-standing patent disputes.

After holding the top spot in the global smartphone market for years, Nokia may soon lose its dominance to Samsung and Apple, according to an investors' note from Nomura Securities.

An official Nokia statement said he had left to resolve a "personal matter" and gave no date for his return. However, a Finnish newspaper quoted sources inside Nokia saying he had left because of differences over strategy and would not return.

The speculation comes a week after Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop described as "baseless" a blog report that Microsoft wanted to buy the Finnish company, which has been rocked by a recent profit warning and downgrades from ratings agencies.

Texas Instruments has lowered its revenue forecast for the second fiscal quarter due to lower demand for its products from Nokia.

Some observers think the company would be better off focusing all its resources on a successful smartphone portfolio first, then worry about a tablet down the road.

The fact that Nokia's new chief had to deal with a long-shot of a rumor regarding a supposed buyout deal from Microsoft - at a big discount to its current valuation - shows how far the world's largest mobile phone company has fallen.

Nokia's Windows Phones will start coming out at a relatively rapid clip after the first one appears later in 2011, said Jo Harlow, Nokia's executive vice president of smart devices.

Microsoft will buy Nokia's mobile division for US$30bn, and the deal will be completed this year because "both companies are very much in a hurry."

CEO Paul Otellini called the MeeGo tie-in a mistake, and that the company would have been better-off choosing a different partner.