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.

Comments

What does it all mean?

[thegarbz]

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?

Re:What does it all mean?

[Howitzer86]

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.

Re:What does it all mean?

[bazorg]

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.

Reminiscent of Commodore

[blind biker]

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.

Re:Reminiscent of Commodore

[null etc.]

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

GENIUS!

Wanted: N900

[KiloByte]

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.

Biggest failure in IT since...

[lorinc]

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....

Differentiate

[ThatsNotPudding]

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.