Mike Wuerthele
After Microsoft's throwing away the Nokia brand name, a company has licensed the brand and is planning on tackling Samsung and Apple's on the smartphone field of battle after an initial wave of feature phones.
After a May announcement that the Nokia brand was returning, a formal licensing agreement has been finalized with Finnish company HMD Global which is mostly staffed by Nokia executives. The deal, lasting for at least 10 years, has already led to a new phone section on the Nokia site.
The first Android-based smartphones from the partnership will be manufactured by Apple partner Foxconn, and show up in the first half of 2017.
"Consumers may be carrying different smartphones now, but are they really in love and loyal to those brands?" said HMD Global CEO and ex-Nokia executive Arto Nummela about offerings from Apple and Samsung. "We want to be one of the key competitive players in the smartphone business."
HMD Global will pay royalties for the Nokia brand and patents, but Nokia as a corporate entity has no investment in the firm.
"The market is fatigued and flooded with undifferentiated products," claims HMD Global President Florian Seiche. "We believe we are perfectly placed to forge a new way in mobile."
HMD global was formed in May 2016 after purchasing part of the feature phone business of Microsoft Mobile, the company founded after Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone business in 2014.
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21 Comments
While not impossible to take on Apple and samsung....no wait, it might be impossible
As much as many Nokia phone users had heart stopping events when they forced to have their phones pried from them hands, I do not think it will make a come back. Nokia lost on many front, they could not innovate as quickly as apple especially on the software front, they also got caught in the death race to the bottom in the Indian market. This will be no better than Blackberry who too had hard core fans and died without their crackberry phone. But they too tied the Andriod route and found out unless your cheaper than anyone else's android phone you only going to sell to the people could not move beyond the past.
If its just gonna have Android on it, it will simply be another Android phone in the end. Their brand was completely ruined and I seriously doubt these so called loyalists will swing back to them. Nokia will never be what it once was. Blackberry tried doing the same thing with their loyal users and it failed miserably.
Putting "Android" and "undifferentiated " in the same PR release?
Face/palm fail at the first hurdle.
If these are the same executives in charge when Nokia missed the boat on smartphones, they have a mountain to climb.