Microsoft and Nokia have been fairly reliant on each other in the smartphone market for a while now with Microsoft trying to make a dent with their Windows Phone OS and Nokia trying to differentiate itself from the scads of Android running competition. It only made sense that their alliance was made a bit more formal.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it is buying most of Nokia, including the devices and services division of the company and a licensing deal for the company’s patents and mapping service, for just under $7.2 billion.

The deal breaks down to Microsoft paying $4.99 billion for the devices component of Nokia which produces the smartphone hardware that Microsoft needs to make a splash in the smartphone OS market. The remaining $2.18 billion will be spent on licensing Nokia patents. The deal is expected to receive regulatory approval in early 2014.

In a release, Microsoft said, “through faster innovation, increased synergies and unified branding and marketing.” In other words, it makes sense for both companies as they’re in it together against the world in the smartphone market.

The synergies between smartphone software and hardware under one corporate entity is something that we see from both Apple and BlackBerry (formerly known as RIM). For Apple, it works brilliantly. BlackBerry hasn’t done that well since Apple took control of the smartphone market with the iPhone and has been struggling to regain ground. Right now, Microsoft and Nokia are closer to BlackBerry than Apple in market share and general popularity.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this deal is that Microsoft might have bought back the employment of their future CEO. Many experts think that now-former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop will take over for Steve Ballmer when he retires as CEO of Microsoft. In the interim, Microsoft has moved Elop from the Nokia CEO job to Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Devices and Services.