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Nokia Announces Return To Smartphone, Tablet Markets (nokia.com)

Posted by msmash on from the 'I'll-be-back' dept.

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.

22 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. What does it all mean? by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:What does it all mean? by Howitzer86 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I liked them for their hardware. Even as late as just before the sell of their hardware department to Microsoft, they were making tough, well designed phones. I had their short-lived Nokia 810, which I used for five years until I realized it wasn't getting any updates ever again (W10 beta program not withstanding). They also have a decent mapping application with Nokia HERE, which stayed with Nokia proper after the sell. If they can show us their hardware products are still good, they can protect their perception even as an embattled chimera.

    2. Re:What does it all mean? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 2

      Just another Android vendor? Pass. They don't even own here maps any more.

    3. Re:What does it all mean? by mrchaotica · · Score: 2

      It depends on your definition of "words." Of course, considering your username, I assume for you that definition is pretty loose...,/p>

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    4. Re:What does it all mean? by bazorg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Silly car-related questions:

      What does Seat mean to the VW Group?
      What Bugatti models did people know before the Veyron?
      Are VW Golf made in the same factory as Audi A3?
      How were things at Skoda in the 10 years before VW Group bought them?

      Aficionados will know a lot a bout their subject of choice, but the rest of us are guided by what clever brand marketers tell us and what we hear from other buyers. Nokia is a major brand worldwide and they can make a comeback in a variety of ways. I doubt they'll build from the ground up a major app ecosystem to make Apple and Google quake in fear, but it looks like there's plenty of money to be earned from building Android powered gadgets in China and selling them worldwide.

      Ask random Joe on the street next year which phone they pick between Xiaomi, Lenovo and Nokia if they all have a 5" screen, run a current version of Android and carry a USD250 price tag.

    5. Re:What does it all mean? by c · · Score: 2

      Like seriously what is the value of the Nokia brand now.

      Conservatively, I'd say at least 50% more than what it was with Elop running it into the ground.

      --
      Log in or piss off.
    6. Re:What does it all mean? by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Nokia is a major brand worldwide and they can make a comeback in a variety of ways.

      No. Nokia WERE a major brand worldwide. Aficionados now know the brand has been sold off to some non name hardware people. Common folk know that Nokia is now Microsoft and producing nothing but utter shite.

      To compare it to your Seat example, that would be like Nokia being sold to Samsung. Now if VW were sold to Chery or BYD you'd have example the same question for me, what's the value in a name that has been in bad faith destroyed and the remains salted then sold off to the lowest bidder?

    7. Re:What does it all mean? by Stormwatch · · Score: 2

      Americans tend to underestimate Nokia, because North America was the only region where Nokia was not the undisputed king of cell phones. And that's just because they would not compromise: carriers wanted to disable functions from their high-end devices to sell them separately, Nokia said no way.

      Besides, the regular guy doesn't know about the shady deals here. When he hears "Nokia", he doesn't think "Stephen Elop" or "burning platform" or "Windows Phone". He thinks "that simple but near-indestructible phone that I must still have in some drawer and will probably work if I tried to turn it on". Nokia is still a respectable name to billions. So if they play their cards right, if the quality of the products is really good, you better believe the new Nokia-branded devices will sell a lot.

      --
      Circumcision is child abuse.
    8. Re:What does it all mean? by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      I'm not American and I lived in a country where the undisputed king was Nokia. I had about 5 generations of Nokia mobiles myself.

      Now? ... Well that's my question. What is Nokia now? A brand name means nothing without the quality and the thought that goes into the underlying product. Remember Apple once was dead and a laughing stock too. I doubt they'd be the company they are today if they simply divided up and sold the brand out to some cheap Chinese group.

    9. Re:What does it all mean? by Caetel · · Score: 2

      They sold off HERE at the end of last year to Volkswagen/BMW

    10. Re:What does it all mean? by rpstrong · · Score: 2

      I didn't RTFA, but from the end of the summary:

      Nokia says it will set mandatory brand requirements and performance-related provisions for the new devices.

      And so it appears that they're concerned about the ongoing image of the brand.

      As Stormwatch points out, it is the quality of the finished (Finnished?) product that counts, not who builds it.

      I'm reminded of Google Nexus phones, which continue to satisfy a particular market by providing respectable phones (from different manufacturers) at decent prices. [I'm part of that market]. If Nokia can provide a familiar look and feel without compromising on quality (and note that their deal with MS includes

      the rights to use Nokia brand name on feature phones and also utilize some design elements)

      then they might well have a solid market.

  2. Dear Nokia... by Lumpy · · Score: 2

    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.
  3. Reminiscent of Commodore by blind+biker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Reminiscent of Commodore by null+etc. · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wa wai wait... Are you suggesting Commodore partners with Nokia to release a Commodore phone?

      GENIUS!

  4. Finally. by dinfinity · · Score: 2

    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.

  5. Bankruptcy shield, maybe. by pikine · · Score: 2

    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.
  6. Wanted: N900 by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  7. Partnership With Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Has it ever in the history of business or computing, resulted in something positive for the partner company?

  8. Biggest failure in IT since... by lorinc · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
    1. Re:Biggest failure in IT since... by shione · · Score: 2

      False. Their dumb phones were still selling quite well and there is still a market today for dumb phones. Nokia had Meego which elop canned almost as soon as he became ceo. When he canned it it was selling better than nokia's windows phone line. If he wanted to save Nokia then he should have never directed Nokia to become windows phone exclusive which no other phone company to this day is stupid enough to do. If he wanted to save Nokia then he should have canned their windows phone line instead of the N9.

      The ex-microsoft employee elop working at Nokia was the worst thing to happen to Nokia in its entire 100+ year history. If Nokia had stuck to Meego which runs on Linux they might have had a chance. Theres a good reason why no other phone manufacturer went windows phone exclusive except for Nokia because windows phone os was shit from the start and only a stupid company would make windows phones only or a company with a sus ceo.

  9. It means 7 billion reasons to kick Balmer by flyingfsck · · Score: 2

    It means Microsoft lost 7 billion dollars on their Nokia adventure.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  10. Differentiate by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.