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Nokia Announces Return To Smartphone, Tablet Markets (nokia.com)
Nokia is making a return to phones and tablets. The Finnish company on Wednesday announced that it will license its brand and IP to a newly created company called HMD global. The company in question, Nokia says, will produce and sell a range of Android smartphones and tablets. The company has also inked a deal with Microsoft to acquire the rights to use Nokia brand name on feature phones and also utilize some design elements. Nokia veteran Arto Nummela will assume the CEO position when the deal is closed, which is expected to happen by the end of June.
Microsoft announced today that it has sold the remainings of Nokia's feature phone business to FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Foxconn. As part of the deal, FIH Mobile paid a sum of $350 million to Microsoft. Interestingly, HMD global and FIH Mobile already have a collaborative agreement in place to support the building of a global business for Nokia-branded mobile phones and tablets. Nokia says it will set mandatory brand requirements and performance-related provisions for the new devices.
Microsoft announced today that it has sold the remainings of Nokia's feature phone business to FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Foxconn. As part of the deal, FIH Mobile paid a sum of $350 million to Microsoft. Interestingly, HMD global and FIH Mobile already have a collaborative agreement in place to support the building of a global business for Nokia-branded mobile phones and tablets. Nokia says it will set mandatory brand requirements and performance-related provisions for the new devices.
Like seriously what is the value of the Nokia brand now. Or a better question what is a Nokia phone?
A feature phone made by one company?
A smart phone made by another?
Neither related to Nokia themselves?
Neither related to Microsoft except to give them money for the now completely and utterly butchered brand?
You had better use a PURE android. Set yourself apart by doing the following...
Make legendary Nokia quality phones and tablets.
Sell the phones with a PURE android on it and NO FUCKING LOCKED BOOTLOADER. or at least give people the option to completely unlock it by joining a developer program.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Commodore's brand is now thrown around on products that have neither the innovativeness nor the features of the original Commodore computers. In fact the brand has now been prostituted so much, it's all but worthless. I hope the same won't happen with Nokia, but it seems likely.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The thing that Nokia should have done more than a decade ago. Build their great hardware and run Android on it.
I'm hoping it won't prove to be waaaay to late, but it probably will.
This type of maneuver protects Microsoft if HMD Global becomes bankrupt. It also allows them to borrow money separately and not become a liability for Microsoft and Nokia. It says exactly how much confidence Microsoft and Nokia has on this new venture.
I once had a signature.
I so wish Nokia would bring back the N900 line. I'm not talking about N9 (which was still better than anything Android/iOS/Windows based), but about a proper pocketable micro-laptop. As far as phone capabilities go, N900 wasn't stellar even in its heyday, but as a mobile computer there's nothing new that would even approach its usability.
An on-screen keyboard is semi-adequate for writing a SMS or maybe a Fecesbook status update. On N900, especially if you replace pull-down symbols with proper key setup you can type more conveniently than on a laptop's keyboard. I've spent many a night hacking in bed without bothering to get up and get to the big computer, so did I ssh to do some postgres or network administration when at a client. And you don't even need ssh -- gcc/perl/etc work fine (within limits of 256MB RAM and one-core ARM). N900 is a full-blown computer that fits in your pocket.
You can buy attachable keyboards for modern phones, but these are hardly usable. For heavy-duty use, the keyboard needs to be engineered in rather than an afterthought.
So go Nokia, there's your chance.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Has it ever in the history of business or computing, resulted in something positive for the partner company?
I have owned 5 Nokia phones and loved all of them. Excellent design without adding too much. Always highly reliable. I currently own a Nokia 640 running Windows 10 mobile. Still great hardware.
I hope the new owners high back some of the amazing talent that designed and built those phones.
So this finally means that the Elop deal was the biggest failure in the history of IT for a long long time. Nokia lost everything, Microsoft lost a lot of money. the deal was interesting only for this guy....
Video of some good progressive thrash music
It means Microsoft lost 7 billion dollars on their Nokia adventure.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It almost makes the HP Autonomy deal look acceptable.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
...license its own name from Microsoft?
The thing that Nokia should have done more than a decade ago. Build their great hardware and run Android on it.
And profit how exactly? There are companies that make darn good hardware for the Android platform but make basically zero profit or less. Only Samsung has managed to make any meaningful profit on Android. What does Nokia bring to the party that will displace Samsung? A nice piece of hardware alone won't be enough. They either need software to differentiate their product or they need a cost advantage or a distribution advantage. I can't really see any of those being likely.
So will "HMD Global" be competing with the Rift and the Vive? Or are they just photo-bombing the search term?
They need to do what no one else is doing anymore: flip smartphones and physical keyboards.
There are millions of folks that despise touch typing on a screen, butt-dialing, not to mention sure three-figure damage when dropping that glass-faced slab 'butter side down' (which are now so large they no longer fit in anything save back pockets).
They would even be willing to learn how to say 'Shut up and take my money' in Suomi.
As an aside, I find it humorous how many TV and movie directors refuse to give up on their actors using flip phones, as pushing a virtual button on a flat plane of glass when hanging up ain't very dramatic.
It won't matter.
They will only put the "Nokia" name on someone's hardware, as if customers will be confused and think they are buying a rock-solid nearly indestructible device.
To build an app eco-system, and all the infrastructure needed to make meego or something else non-iOS or non-Android would be a fools game.
Reborn Nokia drives the last stake through the heart of zombie Winphone. Stake is made of finely worked Linux heartwood with a core of phoenix feather .
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
If they go the Android route, they're dead meat.
The Android space is already saturated with every possible permutation of price, build quality, hardware and features.
Then why is there not a single Android phone with a combination of features, quality and price that makes me want to buy it, to replace my aging Nexus 4? (Which I love except for the lack of micro-sd slot.)
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
They will only put the "Nokia" name on someone's hardware, as if customers will be confused and think they are buying a rock-solid nearly indestructible device.
They never did that in the past, why would they do that now?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Gimme a quad hd phone with microsd slot, dual 4G slot, removeable battery, infrared, radio, wireless, 3000mah+ battery and stylus support and I'll buy that in a heartbeat. That should be doable in the flagship price range but nobody makes one with this combination.
The Lumia phones are still great devices from a design and hardware point of view. Unique even.
I'm sure they are excellent devices but what unique value do they provide that people will actually preferentially pay for? What feature do they have that nobody else has, nobody can copy and that large numbers of people are going to line up to pay cash money for? Maybe they can find a niche but hardware innovations in phones aren't coming so fast these days. Minor incremental and easily copied innovations aren't going to get the job done and aren't strategically defensible.
Let's use Apple for an example. Apple's hardware is generally acknowledged to be upper tier. It might not always be the very best or latest but it's always right up there. But if you put Android on an iPhone, nobody would have any reason to pay a premium for it and customers would have a hard time justifying buying it over any number of other competing Android devices. What makes the iPhone different is the software. The only place you can get iOS is on an iPhone. THAT is why people buy them and pay a premium for them. Without iOS, Apple has to compete on price and distribution and there can really only be one winner in that game. (it's currently Samsung) Apple knows they need good hardware but they also know that they can't reliably deliver hardware that isn't available to or readily copied by their competitors. Trying to differentiate on hardware alone is doomed to failure.
The software and cost advantage could come from "Just run stock Android and focus on the fucking hardware" (tm) instead of blowing tons of cash on custom skins nobody really wants and which hugely complicate software updates.
I think you misunderstand the economics at work here. The software costs on these are comparatively minor. Even if they run bone stock Android that doesn't mean they will have a meaningful cost advantage. Android device makers (mostly) don't care much about updates anyway so it's a non-cost to them. The cost of developing a skin and a few proprietary bits is tiny compared with the cost of developing, making, distributing and selling the hardware. And if they do go stock Android, what prevents another company from copying whatever hardware innovations they might come up with? Samsung basically cloned some of Apple's devices and largely got away with it and Apple has bottomless cash to hire flesh eating lawyers.
While it's not impossible I just don't see a situation where this new Nokia is anything other than another Me Too player with Me Too products in an already crowded market. They're trying to revive a tarnished brand that nobody really cares about anymore without the authenticity that made the brand successful in the first place.
I don't believe you.
Well, I'm an accountant and an engineer and I run a manufacturing company for a living. I'm giving you facts. Believe me or not, I don't really care. But if you bother to check you'll find that I'm correct on this matter. Handset makers use Android precisely because it is cheap for them to adapt. Putting a skin on Android is trivial and cheap, especially if the company never bothers to support it post sale.
Users care. Users buy. Advantage.
Some users care but most don't give a shit. Users buy more Android phones than other type and demonstrably do not care since they continue to buy them in the face of a lack of updates by most Android device makers. There are some Android device makers that do update their devices and thus far they have realized little to no competitive advantage as a result. Go ahead and find me any example of an Android handset maker that has realized any competitive advantage from software updates. I'll wait.
I still don't believe you.
And I still don't care. Go ahead and check for yourself. You don't have to believe me to figure out that I'm right.
It's not about hardware innovations.
If you are trying to differentiate on hardware you have to have something more than a pretty shell. So yeah, it is very much about hardware innovation if you want to capture and keep market share via hardware.
It's about style, consistent quality, and fashion.
Which are fickle, easily copied or trumped and demonstrably not a sustainable source of competitive advantage. The reasons people bought Nokia phones were deeper than style or hardware quality. The reasons they stopped buying them were likewise deeper than style or quality. Style and quality matter but they aren't enough by themselves. Software, platform, distribution, brand, features, cost, and more all matter quite a lot. A lot of the reason Nokia did well 10+ years ago was because they were actually one of the lowest cost manufacturers and a good brand. They had economies of scale and competed on price across much of their product line. Nokia phones never sold for substantial premiums - they just sold a lot of them.
For a time Nokia made some of the best phones available. Unfortunately it turned out this had a lot to do with the shitty quality of the software and interfaces industry wide. Prior to the iPhone handset makers thought their customer was the carriers and the only thing the carriers cared about was moving units and plans. After the iPhone proved this wasn't the case, Nokia couldn't adapt in time. Their phones were ok but eventually customers realized that they couldn't do some really useful things (like web browsing and email) with them. I had a Nokia "smartphone" myself which on paper actually seemed to have better features than the iPhone but in reality none of them really worked worth a shit whereas the ones on the iPhone did. Technically you could surf the web but the experience was beyond painful. By the time they got devices on the market that were competitive it was already too late. Their brand, low cost manufacturing, reliable hardware and other advantages were not enough.
They just fucked up royally on the software-front. Which is the only point I was trying to make.
Yes they did screw up on software. Bad. But that wasn't the only mistake Nokia made. Some Chinese companies taking over the brand isn't going to bring Nokia back from the dead. They have no competitive advantage.
... They need to make model M keyboards for them. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The press release by Nokia and affiliated companies has it, that the new phones will be 'based on Android', which may mean, that they might again opt for the AOSP version, as they did with Nokia X. The use of AOSP automatically excludes all of the Googe cruft, but users would be wont to install some of it in order to get the YouTube app (most important) and some other Google apps (some might want Google Drive). If Nokia/HMD are smart, then they might include Here for maps and maybe some other useful stuff, but without the useless software that most smartphone makers add.
One possible reason for a relatively complicated 'four-way' arrangement (as per Tomi Ahonen) could be the licencing deals. As had been reported in the past, then as they are, the current deals are informed by Nokia's past sale of its former Devices and Services division (the one that made phones) to Microsoft.
According to reports in the public, the conditions of that sale to Microsoft had it, that Microsoft got only the design patents, but not the utility patents (the actual war chest, that is, which is still with Nokia), then in all likelihood a license to use Nokia's utility patents, and a ten-year license to use the Nokia brand on basic phones and featurephones, but not on smartphones (Microsoft could keep the Lumia brand for smartphones); while Nokia was barred from entering the smartphone business until this year (2016).
What happened, was, that Nokia had only licensed its brand to Microsoft for use on featurephones for ten years. Microsoft had used up about two years of it, and is now selling the remaining years to Foxconn's subsidiary FIH. That license is set to expire in 2024. As I understand it, then HMD appears to be a Nokia subsidiary that bought out some of Microsoft's smartphone stuff that Microsoft got from Nokia, but excluding Lumia, which Microsoft can keep.
My best guess for a play with subsidiaries could be:
* the temporary nature of how the Nokia brand was licensed to Microsoft, and
* the assumption, that if Nokia/HMD are to release an AOSP-based Android (code-compatible with Android proper, but without its branding and Google stuff), then Nokia proper and Foxconn proper might be unable to sell devices with an AOSP-based Android, given that both Nokia and Foxconn are (on assumption) members of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), which bars alternative, if code-compatible, versions of Android other than what Google mandates.
Tomi Ahonen's post about Nokia's potentially glorious return