It was bound to happen, ever since the news about Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's smartphone division broke several months ago, but it is now official. Future Nokia smartphones will bear the Microsoft Lumia name, as the company looks to re-brand itself.

The change in brand name is also set to spark a vast ripple effect, as far as Nokia's smartphone experience and consumer interaction goes, according to the company's senior vice president of marketing, Tuula Rytilä. She went on to add that the media and public alike can expect to see new devices bearing the Microsoft Lumia name in coming months, although she could not go into greater detail.

Apart from a superficial change on the exterior devices, Rytilä explained that this change will have a far greater effect on the Microsoft device ecosystem, as the company strives to bring a greater degree of cross platform experience, regardless of form factor. It is also expected to increase the device experience from an application and OS perspective, something that we've already started seeing in some of Nokia's newer devices like the Lumia 930 (review).

The upshot of all this means that users can hopefully get a better interaction between the Lumia devices and Microsoft's other hardware, like the Xbox 360 and Xbox One for example, not to mention notebooks, PCs and tablets touting their yet-to-be-released Windows 10 OS.

It's still the early stages as far as this new partnership goes, but it should prove interesting to see how Microsoft best takes advantage of it, creating devices to take on the likes of Apple and Samsung's flagships.