{"id":15318,"date":"2012-06-13T16:12:36","date_gmt":"2012-06-13T14:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=15318"},"modified":"2012-06-13T16:21:48","modified_gmt":"2012-06-13T14:21:48","slug":"nokia-to-offload-vertu-subsidiary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/15318\/nokia-to-offload-vertu-subsidiary\/","title":{"rendered":"Nokia to offload Vertu subsidiary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Finnish mobile phone maker <a title=\"Nokia\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/1650-Nokia-Corporation\">Nokia<\/a> is in talks with private equity group EQT to sell its luxury handset subsidiary Vertu for around 200 million euros ($249 million), sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>One of the sources, who declined to be named because talks were still in progress, said a deal could come as early as this week but there was still a chance it could fall through due to the difficulty of carving the unit out of Nokia.<\/p>\n<p>Vertu makes some of the world&#8217;s most expensive mobile phones, often featuring crystal displays and sapphire keys. The phones can cost more than 200,000 pounds ($310,900) due to previous metal components, although they are not the most technologically advanced phones.<\/p>\n<p>Permira, another private equity group, had previously been in talks to buy Vertu but did not make an offer, according to sources.<\/p>\n<p>Nokia, once the world&#8217;s leading mobile phone company but is now struggling with falling market share, has said it plans to sell &#8220;non-core assets&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"BusinessTech Article\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/international\/14685\/nokia-fights-back-with-cheap-touchscreen-phones\/\"><strong>Nokia fights back with cheap touchscreen phones<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"BusinessTech Article\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/14281\/nokia-hits-back-at-google-patent-comments\/\"><strong>Nokia hits back at Google patent comments<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"BusinessTech Article\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/12888\/nokia-worries-mount\/\"><strong>Nokia worries mount<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia is in talks with private equity group EQT to sell its luxury handset subsidiary Vertu for around 200 million euros ($249 million), sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":11124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[25,3140,3141,187,2560],"class_list":["post-15318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-active","tag-eqt","tag-luxury-handset","tag-nokia","tag-vertu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15318"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15330,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318\/revisions\/15330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}