In a statement made by Nokia spokesperson Robert Morlino today, its been confirmed that Nokia is back in the smartphone game, but adds that “it’s complicated”. For anyone not up to date on the status of the once great mobile phone maker, Nokia sold its Devices & Services to Microsoft last year, which took all of Nokia’s formidable “manufacturing, marketing and channel distribution capabilities” away. While Nokia still has services running under its brand name, and intends to “guide the design and technology differentiation” of its future smartphones, it’s not quite enough to be entering the smartphone market again, at least, not alone.
To this, Nokia says that the best way to re-enter the market is through brand-licencing i.e. working with someone who will take care of all the things that were sold to Microsoft, though its specified that this partner must be “world-class”, and gives the Nokia N1 as a prime example of this. Of course, the overarching context to this return to the smartphone market is that Nokia signed an agreement with Microsoft not to re-enter the market before Q4 2016, so we have some time before we see anything Nokia branded again – conversely, that gives Nokia quite some time to secure the partner that it deems suitable to work with, and we have to say we’re quite interested to see who that partner will be – and we’re hoping they’ll be using Android.
What do you think about Nokia getting back into smartphones? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Nokia via Phone Arena
