Microsoft Lumia turns blue, what happened to purple?

About a year ago this time, Microsoft completed the acquisition of Nokia's Mobile division and fresh out of the waters, the branch of Microsoft was called Microsoft Mobile or Microsoft Devices. Accordingly, the upcoming months featured new device launches which still bear the Nokia name like the Nokia Lumia 830 and Nokia Lumia 730. That didn't last long as Microsoft officially announced in October that they will be rebranding Nokia to Microsoft Lumia and the change is set to spread out onto social media accounts in the coming months ahead.

Seemingly enough, today we're quite familiar with the Microsoft Lumia branding and it does sound a little catchy but saying Microsoft Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM is a mouthful.

When Microsoft Lumia was first introduced, the brand's color theme was purple and it felt unique and special. Nokia was well known for their durable phones and also the colorful nature of their devices is a deep part of the Lumia brand. Ironically, there is not yet a purple Lumia and when the branding was initially unveiled late last year i was already speculating that some time in the future, Microsoft will release a purple Lumia.

Now to the actual point of this article, last night, as usual i was keeping an eye on my twitter timeline and somehow the @Lumia twitter handle caught my eye. Apparently the twitcon has changed to blue. Then i checked on with other regional Lumia accounts but they were still purple on white font.

But today it is clear that the Microsoft Lumia branding will soon change to the light blue color. All the official Microsoft Lumia pages on Twitter, Facebook and even Youtube has changed their profile picture as the new blue themed Microsoft Lumia logo. A quick check on Facebook and a few other regional Microsoft Lumia facebook pages have also switched on to the new Microsoft Lumia logo.

It's not long before all the existing purple logo previously implemented gets replaced with this newer one.

credit: microsoft lumia (facebook)

But why the sudden change to blue? Why did they even choose blue in the first place then? I don't have a definitive answer at the moment but i do have a explanation behind the shift in color for the Microsoft Lumia branding.

Microsoft Devices group also known as Microsoft Mobile (rebranded Nokia) is responsible of all the physical hardware Microsoft offers. That includes desktop peripherals, Lumia smartphones, Surface tablets, XBOX hardware, Microsoft Band and even HoloLens. This means that in order to be synonymous, these separate brand names will need to share a similar identity.

Previously only the Microsoft Surface branding was blue and with the logo rebranding today, we'll soon see these brand names under Microsoft Devices group adopt a new logo. At this point, everything except the Microsoft Band branding has received a blue logo tint. We can exclude the speculation that the XBOX branding will become blue, the XBOX is already known for the color green and it would be a total mistake to change that.

Now the question is why did they choose blue to represent several Microsoft brands. Purple was definitely fine as it contrast with the Microsoft logo pretty well. I think the reason why is that Windows as an operating system has long been related to the color blue (well, maybe Windows XP is more towards green) and the fact that the flagship Lumia color back in the days was cyan.

This is about it for my short explanation of the color change for the Microsoft Lumia branding, i have reached out to Microsoft for comments on this and i'll update the article subsequently.

As for my opinion on the new blue logo theme, i guess that blue/cyan is here to stay as recent Lumia devices like the Lumia 540 came with a cyan color option. Just for a reference, when Windows Phone 8.1 came out Nokia stopped making dem' cyan colored Lumias which have apparently been replaced with the equally striking yellow color.

In addition to that, earlier this month, Microsoft started rebranding Nokia stores and i was at the launch of the Microsoft Authorized Reseller here in Malaysia and the store featured a strong sense of purple which represented the Microsoft Lumia brand and i think that eventually, these purple brandings throughout the store will be converted into the cyan/blue color of the new Microsoft Lumia branding.