Each and every year, the world’s media descends upon Mobile World Congress, a big trade show held across roughly a week’s worth of time in Barcelona, Spain. For a lot of big names in the industry, this is a chance for them to make a big splash with new product releases, or reassure shareholders and investors that the future of their company is still very much on track. One of these big names now appears to be Nokia, which has recently confirmed their presence during the show, which is to be held during February of next year. For Nokia, this could be their return to form, but new hardware will have to be launched in order for them to become a household once again in the future.
Nokia’s President and CEO, Rajeev Suri, has been confirmed by the Finnish brand to speak during a keynote at Mobile World Congress 2017, but other than that, the firm isn’t sharing any other details. The history of Nokia’s demise in the mobile world has been well documented, and their deals with Microsoft, including selling off the Lumia brand and much of their smartphone division, hasn’t helped matters over the past few years. Now that Nokia can start to sell smartphones under their own brand again, they’ve decided to have someone else do the hard work for them, selling the rights to the Nokia brand to HMD Global, which is rumored to have devices ready fairly soon. A new Nokia Android tablet has also been spotted in benchmarks, but we’ve seen or heard little where Nokia smartphones are concerned.
Could Nokia be announcing new hardware during the February 27th – March 2nd window that is MWC 2017? It certainly wouldn’t be too much of a surprise, and it’d be the perfect place for them to announce their re-entry to the world of smartphones, as the world’s media will definitely be watching. The Nokia D1C may or may not be released before the end of 2016, but with big things seemingly on the horizon for Nokia in 2017, waiting for Mobile World Congress to launch the new device might be the best bet for the Nokia brand overall.