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A company set up by former Nokia employees called HMD Global has licensed the Nokia brand name from Microsoft, struck partnerships with device manufacturer Foxconn and intends to launch an Android smartphone in the early part of 2017.
The head of HMD Global, Arto Nummela, said: "Consumers may be carrying different smartphones now, but are they really in love and loyal to those brands?"
HMD Global will be looking to stir nostalgia in an effort to challenge the big and small players of the highly competitive smartphone market, dominated by Samsung and Apple, as well as Chinese brands such as Huawei.
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Nokia Smartphones to Return in 2017
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:34PM
You're in the US, so of course that's what you think.
Nokia was making smartphones before the iPhone, and was in fact the leading smartphone vendor everywhere except the US well after the iPhone. Some of their smartphones never had variants for US networks, but even if you knew about the ones that did, you'd have a hard time finding them in the US; the networks that actually had them didn't advertise them, and didn't often have them in stock at your local storefront. The US phone companies did sell a ton of low-end Nokias, so while everyone knows about their indestructible candy-bar phones, in the US that's all people know them for.
It's not clear why this disconnect happened, and whether the poor availability and zero advertising was a cause or an effect of their unpopularity, but there is an incredible difference in how the Nokia brand is perceived in the US vs. everywhere else. Given that this is being started by former Nokia employees, I'd guess they're more interested in capitalizing on European perceptions of the brand.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:11PM
It's not clear why this disconnect happened, and whether the poor availability and zero advertising was a cause or an effect of their unpopularity,
It was an accident of timing for the most part.
In the US at that time Nokia (my first cell phone) was a victim of all US Carrier's strangle hold on allowable handsets. You really did have to buy from them for the most part, and they were only selling what they felt they could handle.
History:
The US got into cell phones in a big way earlier than most countries, and as a result they were stuck with analog systems widely deployed while the EU was standardizing on early GSM.
The US had to rebuild their entire tower network in place as a penalty for being an early adopter. Not once, but twice.
During this time, handsets were tightly controlled by cellular providers, who then had to foot (some portion of) the bill for forced handset replacement due to technology conversions.
Then the carriers saw what the iPhone did to data consumption, and realized their move to GSM was far far too lightweight, and had to massively build out backhaul capability, on top of just completing a analog to GSM rollout nationwide.
They practically GAVE away Nokias and Razrs (dumbphones) to keep people interested, and these phones never died, and lasted well through the iPhone onslaught.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:29PM
smartphones before the iPhone
Imposibru!