covering industry insider Eldar Murtazin’s claim that Microsoft has struck a deal to purchase Nokia’s cell phone business for $19 billion. Murtazin has a long track record of solid Nokia scoops, and he was the first person to report that the Finnish phone maker would adopt Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform for its smartphones starting later this year. While his new claim is anything but confirmed, it’s not as far fetched as some might think. In fact, a deal to dump Nokia’s phone business could actually be considered a continuation of former Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo vision. The ex-Nokia chief lead a major reorganization that began several years ago in an effort to transition the company away from being a devices company. Instead, Kallasvuo believed Nokia’s future was in software and services. Subsequent acquisitions of companies like Navteq and the eventual launch of Nokia’s Ovi suite would set the phone maker on this new course, but the transition came at a time when the company’s smartphones were leapfrogged by Android and iOS devices, and revenue began to sink along with the firm’s market share. But perhaps Nokia was on the right track. Perhaps Kallasvuo’s vision of Nokia as a software company is shared by new CEO Stephen Elop, who some pundits believe was brought on board solely to preside over a union with Microsoft, his former employer. Those pundits were painted as conspiracy theorists until Nokia announced this past February that it would adopt Windows Phone as its smartphone platform of the future. Was that deal just the beginning? It’s not so crazy to imagine a role reversal of sorts, where Microsoft could orchestrate the bigger picture while Nokia supplies the software and services that power the Windows Phone platform. Plenty of companies have built monstrous businesses by supplying software to hardware makers — one such company, of course, is Microsoft. But Microsoft is a different story right now. It is a PC OS company at its core, and therein lies the problem: the PC OS business isn’t what it used to be. As such, Microsoft has spent a considerable amount of time and resources fanning out its software and service portfolio in order to spread out its net. It’s doing a good job, all things considered, but one company found a better path to take not long ago. That company is Apple, and that path is mobile. It would certainly b