One of the greats in the world of mobile devices has to be Nokia. Responsible for some of the most memorable cell phones in history, such as that used in The Matrix and breakthroughs in smartphone technology, Nokia is a name most people remember well. One thing that Nokia and their die-hard fans will not want to remember of course is what went wrong with Microsoft. Famously, Stephen Elop, a previous Microsoft employee, signed a deal with Microsoft when he was Nokia’s CEO to produce devices running Windows Phone exclusively. This gave birth to the Nokia Lumia range of devices, and once Microsoft ended up purchasing the phone part of Nokia, the Lumia line became a Microsoft phone. Now however, Microsoft have sold whatever was left of the Nokia phone business to a Foxconn subsidiary.
We covered this news earlier today, but what it means for Nokia is that the company is now free to do as they wish with the Nokia branding in the smartphone space. They had previously launched the Nokia N1 tablet running Android, but they’re now able to launch smartphones under the Nokia name again. How this is going to work is that Nokia will license their name to a newly-formed company dubbed HMD Global Oy (HMD) for ten years. HMD will, in turn, create and market Nokia-branded devices running Android while paying Nokia royalty fees for using the brand name. This is the sort of thing that has helped TCL Communication, a Chinese firm, sell devices in the United States and elsewhere using the Alcatel branding.
This move will allow consumers to purchase Nokia devices once again, but they will have little of the old Nokia DNA left in them. Using Android might not ensure that they’re similar to the likes of the Galaxy S7 Edge or HTC 10 either, as there’s no guarantee they will partner with Google for services like the Play Store. It would be a foolish move if they didn’t, but either way the Nokia brand is making a comeback, just not in the way that you might have originally expected.