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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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Don't relax! It's only your tension that's holding you together.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 03 2016, @06:43PM
When people think "Nokia" they think of ruggedized phones that could take a beating. If they were smart then they would make a significant effort to making ruggedized phones, maybe even with 3-letter agency-approved security options, for construction and battlefield use. They could be the "Toughbook" of phones, if you will.
Every other manufacturer and their moms make the same boring ol' flat rectangular nonsense. Nokia should use the brand name to re-establish a niche for ruggedized phones but with more modern features.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @06:53PM
throw out the smartpwn, get a flip phone
drug deals 4eva
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:12PM
If they were smart then they would make a significant effort to making ruggedized phones,
Except those rugged-ized phones are invariably ugly and the market for them is vanishingly small, and I rather suspect the warranty repair risk is high.
Apparently there is still a substantial dumb-phone market in Asia, India and eastern Europe.
However, since the new Nokia is said to be Android, I rather suspect they are not going the dumb phone route.
Maybe they should make a phone with no camera. It would keep a lot of embarrassing shit off the web.
I have a friend that works at a military facility where cameras are not allowed. The only way to have a cell phone on base is to fined one of the very few models built without a camera. Disabling or removing the camera is not sufficient because guard shack gate monkeys can't be relied upon to be able to tell if it is really disabled.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:45PM
They're taking over all the Nokia dumbphone models that already exist, of course, and will undoubtedly continue to update those with new models. But you're not going to cure the Nokia brand's slide into oblivion by inventing a shiny new dumbphone to go with all the current dumbphones -- Nokia at its prime was known as much or more for their Communicators, and their N-series multimedia devices, as for their high-volume dumbphones. Nokia sold out to MS, hitching their whole high-end product line to the incredible flop that was Windows Phone, and the only way to recover is to add high-end devices with some successful OS. Even this, I suspect, won't accomplish much this late, but it's the only thing that has a chance.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:48PM
Is that where they keep the flying saucers?
Racist!
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Saturday December 03 2016, @11:38PM
No. Area 51 is a cover for the real location:
Area 52.
The reason no one has ever seen Area 52 is because it is carefully concealed by a Somebody Else's Problem field. Though, if you work in IT long enough, you can develop your own SEP, and it might be possible to detect Area 52.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(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!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @08:48PM
Wow. First time I actually rated a post from you "Insightful", as far as I remember.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:27PM
Why "ruggedized," what's wrong with "rugged"?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:56PM
They actually have subtly different meanings.
rugged - tough, strong, able to take a beating, etc
ruggedized - made into something that is rugged.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 03 2016, @11:30PM
Oh, like Crackberries. That went so well for them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @12:34PM
When I think Nokia, I think Maemo/Symbian. When I think Nokia's got new phones coming out, I at least think Sailfish. If these things are running Android, I really can't say I see the point.