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Nokia is a brand name that many people are still fond of. This company was once the largest cellphone manufacturer in the world, and was an industry leader when it comes to build quality. Unfortunately for Nokia, they made some really poor decisions in the past which hurt them quite a bit, and the company’s Devices and Services business was sold to Microsoft. Having that in mind, HMD Global, a company which functions under Foxconn’s arm, actually managed to acquire the right to manufacture Nokia-branded smartphones from Microsoft a while back, and it’ll have that right for the next 10 years.
That being said, Nokia-branded smartphones will make a comeback next year, as the company plans to manufacture Android-powered devices after all. Veteran Nokia executives have joined the initiative, and it seems like they aim to manufacture affordable smartphones at first. HMD Global actually took over the Nokia phone business from Microsoft today, even though it was agreed a while back. “The barriers to entry for the Android phone space are low. What HMD has is the Nokia brand and management experience. The key to its success will be driving scale,” mobile phone analyst Ben Wood of CCS Insight said. Needless to say, Foxconn will manufacture all Nokia-branded devices for HMD Global, and the first ones will arrive in the first half of next year.
“We want to be one of the key competitive players in the smartphone business,” said Arto Nummela, Chief Executive over at HMD Global. Now, it seems like HMD Global is working closely with Google, rather that creating its own ecosystem, at least according to the source. Mr. Nummela is hoping that the Nokia name and experience dealing with carriers could help them take the market by storm, especially the entry-level market, even though the smartphone market (in general) is quite saturated at the moment. “We are not going to skip any markets, in the long term,” added Florian Seiche, HMD Global’s President and a mobile industry veteran, he actually worked over at Siemens, Orange, HTC and Nokia. It seems like HMD Global is taking things seriously, and really believes that Nokia smartphones could be a success in the entry-level market.