Nokia CEO and its future head of devices at Microsoft Stephen Elop has admitted that the Redmond software giant could ditch the Nokia brand for its Lumia smartphones once the $7 billion acquisition of the Finnish firm's phone and tablet business goes through early next year.

While Microsoft has agreed to license the Nokia name for future Asha budget handsets for 10 years, it has no deal in place for the Windows Phone 8 devices and will more than likely choose to simply call them Lumia, without the Nokia prefix.

Read: Hands-on: Nokia Lumia 1520 review

Speaking to British newspaper The Daily Telegraph from Nokia World in Abu Dhabi, Elop said that a decision was yet to be reached, and it would include input from both companies.

"What we have to decide is what the brand will be," he a said. "Because we have not decided what brand will be dominant for smartphones, that's work that's still ahead. And of course the way we'll go through that process is to assess with consumers what they respond most positively to, what conveys the best message and the best hopes of success.

"Microsoft as a company, of course, has many brands: Xbox, Office, Surface and a variety of others. We have brands like Lumia. So we'll need to decide what the next step is from a branding perspective.

"There are hundreds and hundreds of millions of people who are familiar with and use Microsoft and Nokia technology, literally billions of people between the two companies. And I suspect that somewhere in there amongst all of those purchasing decisions there's something that we can tap into."

Read: Hands-on: Nokia Lumia 2520 review

Elop also admitted it is possible that the Asha handsets will ditch the Nokia licence after 10 years too.

With the launches of the Nokia Lumia 1520 and Nokia Lumia 1320 we may very well have seen the last "Nokia" smartphones. And the Nokia Lumia 2520 could become a bit of a collector's item as the first and last "Nokia" tablet.