Nokia Wants To Make Phones Again

An anonymous reader writes: Nokia has indicated that it's interested in returning to the phone-making business. In a post on the company's website, spokesman Robert Morlino explains that although they sold their devices business to Microsoft last year, they're still interested in the phone industry. They're not capable of building their own devices, and it looks unlikely that they'll be able to build a new hardware section in a reasonable time frame. Instead, they're looking for a partner to build the actual phones (and support them). Nokia would contribute design and branding. All that said, their deal with Microsoft prevents them from getting back into the phone business until Q4 2016, so we won't be seeing Nokia phones soon either way.

Comments

It wouldn't.

[sjbe]

Would the Nokia "design and branding" actually still be viewed as a net contributor to product value?

No. Nobody thought Nokia designs were all that amazing even when they were the top dog in the market. They were solid but never anything earth shaking. And they completely missed the boat when it came to smart phones. Today pretty much nobody cares about Nokia any more and whatever value their brand once had is just a fraction of a shadow of its previous glory.

I've never had a Nokia phone myself, but I always had the perception that they haven't been any good for a while

I owned several. I used Nokia's exclusively from 1999-2010 or so. They were fine but never great. Generally pretty durable though their reputation for durability exceeds the reality of it. The hardware design was decent if unspectacular. The software however SUCKED big time. I actually got to meet their CEO about 10 years ago during a speech he gave. He admitted during the Q&A the criticality of software to their business. But from my own experience with Nokia software they never really quite figured it out. They thought their customer was the phone companies and tailored their software efforts accordingly. They were wrong and Apple showed them just how wrong they were.

Nokia phones would have what I call checkbox features - great on paper but not in actual use. I bought one of their smartphones around the same time as the first iPhone. Both on paper had roughly the same capabilities but the Nokia's were basically unusable in the real world. The Nokia could technically email or surf the web and it could but even a geek like me couldn't really use it productively because the software and the interface were just horrid. Syncing with a PC was an exercise in futility. Updates to the phones were uncommon if they happened at all and sometimes involved sending the phone to Nokia.

Re:It wouldn't.

[dwater]

I thought the N95 was amazing, and the N90 was pretty awesome too....and the N9 was spectacular. I loved my E9 too....I remember using it with a bluetooth keyboard to send/receive email and surf/etc at an airport and it turned a few heads, and that was in Finland where they were much more common than anywhere else.

Miss the boat when it came to smart phones...they were *years* ahead of the current crop.

Actually, I find myself disagreeing with almost everything you say...not much point in continuing.

But, yeah, I'm nobody, so you're right.

Re:It wouldn't.

[iisan7]

Unlike Apple, Nokia made a variety of phones with different specs. They're mostly known for their low end phones, unfortunately sounds like that is what you were using too. I also used Nokia exclusively during the 2000s and had a completely different experience than you. IMO, the only area that the iPhone stomped the Nokias was web browsing and third party apps. Because yeah, I hate how, for example, my Nokia N8 had so many features that the first... and second... and third... and some of these even fourth-gen iPhones were missing:

* Bluetooth (I mean, other than headsets for voice calls...)
* OLED screen
* Gorilla glass
* Haptic feedback
* Video calling
* Swype keyboard (actually, not sure when iPhone got this)
* USB OTG
* Offline GPS (very important back before cheap mobile data)

I'm astonished that a self proclaimed "geek" found these features worthless because of the interface. Nokia PC suite was excellent also-- tethering, offline app installation, local or remote backup...

Re:What a Mess

[Stormwatch]

The way forward was clear when the iPhone and then Android came about - either improve Symbian or move to Android.

I must disagree. The way forward was to move to their own new system, Linux-based MeeGo. They actually released one phone with it, the N9. Despite extremely positive reviews, the Microsoft-planted CEO fucked it sideways. If it wasn't for that subhuman scumbag, Nokia would probably still be a major smartphone maker now, with MeeGo ahead of iOS.