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Nokia Dials Back Time To Sell Mobile Phones Again (bbc.com)
Nokia said Thursday mobile phones carrying its brand will make a comeback via a new venture that will reunite the Nokia brand with veteran Nokia execs who aim to move into smartphones capitalizing on an existing operation that sells low-cost basic phones. From a report on BBC: It's thanks to a deal with a small team based at a business park on the fringes of Helsinki, who are engaged in what will seem to many a foolhardy mission. They call themselves HMD Global -- and they believe they can make Nokia a big name in mobile phones once again. I met Arto Nummela, Pekka Rantala and Florian Seiche in a cafe on what is still the Nokia campus. That very day Arto and Pekka had stopped working for the Nokia Windows mobile phone business owned by Microsoft -- because they had acquired both it and the Nokia brand to start their new business. Yes, it is complicated, but so is the recent history of what was just a few years back Europe's technology superpower and the biggest force in mobile phones. After the launch of the iPhone in 2007, Nokia faltered and by 2011 was on what its first American chief executive, Stephen Elop, called a burning platform. Then, the phone business was sold to Microsoft, which soon found it had made a disastrous purchase as the Nokia Windows combination failed to claim a significant slice of a market dominated by Apple's iOS and Android. Now, the Finnish business -- which remained a big force in telecoms infrastructure after the sale of the mobile unit -- has licensed the Nokia brand to HMD Global, which aims to take it back to the future.
Nokia used to make terrific handsets. It was only when Elop, the worst CEO in history, took the reins that things went south precipitously. If Nokia starts designing handsets again, this time with Android, I'll be in principle interested.
There are a lot of people who don't want smartphones. Nokia is legendary for its cellphones. Does this herald the return of the dumb phone?
Will he fix Nokia? More Trump news please!!!!
No. They're based in Finland. Hopefully he will follow through and eliminate nafta, cafta, and any talk of the TPP in order to level the playing field for American companies, though.
Build phones with a replaceable battery, with actual keys to type in a phone number or to flip up/down in the phone book, with slots for SD cards and plugs for micro USB.
I know it sounds crazy, but I have that odd feeling that there just MIGHT be a market for something like this.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Firstly, Android is Linux. But in the sense meant here, no. Quote from elsewhere; "Future Nokia smartphones will utilise Google's Android operating system, currently deployed on 86% of the world's smartphones."
Bringing another OS into play in a market that is sewn up by two major players is pretty much guaranteed to fail, and I really don't see what a Linux phone would do for the average consumer. Do really think Nokia/HMD Global should waste millions of Euros in R&D to develop a Linux phone distribution just to satisfy a handful of nerds? Not a compelling business case, if you ask me.
Oh no... it's the future.
Actually American manufacturing is still tough to beat. China only beats us in quantity, but even then we're still the number two manufacturing country. Our main manufacturing exports are jumbo jets and earth movers, and both do really well.
Even in electronics, we still do quite well. We have the most advanced semiconductor fabs in the world, and we even make other parts like resistors, diodes, capacitors, etc. Sure, the final product is assembled elsewhere, but typically many of its components are made here.
"Great, which means we'll only be able to buy American-made cellphones, which means we'll be stuck with $2000 iPhones and their shitty walled gardens."
Walled? Didn't you hear, it will be a fenced garden.
or it's going to be a slider, which have proven to have mechanical problems
3rd party have successfully designed keyboard which are magnetic slide.
(No mechanical parts. Just carefully aligned magnet that accept 2 stable positions. Either the keyboard stuck to the back of the smartphone, or stuck in "slide out position" with the keys available for typing and the pogo-pins aligned with the contacts).
I you don't want the keyboard, you just remove it (un stick it).
This of course requires the availability of pogo-pins.
Jolla's phone and Fairphone's phone 2 were both designed with extra pins so that 3rd parties could invent such gadgets.
Android OS and access to the Google Play store.
Technically, only the "access Google Play store" part is important.
It just happens that Android OS is the most straight-forward solution to run Android Apps, but...
Going with a non-Android OS is doomed to failure, because of the apps;
...unless this non-Android OS also runs android apps.
Like the Alien-Dalvik engine available inside the Sailfish OS - for whose development Nokia already paid, until Elop decided to drop that R&D team (who subsequently formed Jolla)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They screwed up the Grand Cherokee when they put that silly computer mode that shuts off the engine at stoplights and starts it again when you take your foot off the brake. Mopar starter motors are scary enough when you only use them once per trip.