Once again,, see Nokia smartphones in the wild. The not-so-surprising news comes from the Finnish company itself, through a slide featured in its investor-focused presentation at the Capital Markets Day event. You can see the relevant slide in the image below, and in it the confirmation of Nokia’s return to the smartphone world.
That is, at least as a brand. Nokia, the company, isn’t really going to produce any of the future Nokia-branded devices; it will just act as the owner of the brand and patents, and it will oversee the creation of the new phones. Actually making those will be HMD, a new entity created earlier this year, which will pair Nokia’s brand, patents, and oversight with Foxconn’s R&D and manufacturing prowess.
HMD has a ten-year exclusive agreement for using the Nokia brand on mobile phones, and it will invest a minimum of €500 million in marketing in the first three years in which it’s going to sell those handsets.
According to past information, Nokia’s first new Android smartphones should be released in the second quarter of next year. That means they could very well be unveiled at MWC in February, during Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri’s keynote address. Then again, other rumors have said the unveiling would happen before the end of 2016, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens. Anyway, it looks like 2017 will be the year of Nokia’s comeback in the smartphone space.
