What's left of Nokia Corp.?

The Finnish company's proposed $7 billion deal to sell its unprofitable cellphone business to Microsoft Corp. will leave behind 56,000 employees and a collection of businesses focused mainly on making networkequipment for cellphone operators.

But Nokia will also hold on to a lucrative patent portfolio and a mobile-mapping business that competes with Google Inc. and Apple Inc. If a deal is sealed, Nokia would emerge about half the size it is today, by revenue, but profitable.

'Clearly, Nokia looks very different,' said Nokia Chairman Risto Siilasmaa at a news conference Tuesday. Mr. Siilasmaa will serve as interim chief executive after the planned departure of current CEO Stephen Elop to Microsoft.

The deal could also leave Nokia with a war chest of cash, which it could return to shareholders or deploy through acquisitions. Investors cheered the move, pushing Nokia stock up more than 40% Tuesday.

If Nokia opts to pursue acquisitions one possible target could be the wireless assets of unprofitable Franco-American telecom-gear maker Alcatel-Lucent SA, which could be combined with Nokia's main network-gear unit. One person close to Nokia said such a deal could eventually make sense, but it isn't something the board is ready to consider. An Alcatel representative declined to comment.

Nokia's network-gear unit, dubbed Nokia Solutions & Networks, or NSN, is a former joint venture with Siemens AG that Nokia agreed to buy out for 1.7 billion euros ($2.24 billion) over the summer-sealing the deal at the same time it was in intense negotiations with Microsoft. NSN represented more than 90% of Nokia's revenue in 2012, excluding its cellphone division.

NSN is in the midst of a turnaround, after years of losses partly as a result of heavy competition in the telecommunications-equipment sector. It and other players have been squeezed between the rapid growth of Chinese giant Huawei Technologies Co. and the heft of leading incumbent Ericsson .

But the business is now profitable, after strong sales to U.S. cellphone operators and a turnaround plan that slashed costs at the once-bloated former joint venture.

Nokia will also retain its Here mapping service, built into cars and mobile devices, and is hanging on to much of the company's intellectual-property portfolio. Mr. Siilasmaa said Tuesday its patents bring in revenue of roughly half a billion euros a year. Microsoft, as part of the deal, has agreed to license both mapping services and other patents from Nokia.

Moving away from mobile phones is just the latest change for a company that started as a paper mill in 1865, and has had past lives producing rubber boots and electronics. In the 1980s, it moved into mobile phones, with models that initially weighed nearly two pounds and looked like bricks.