New smartphones under the Nokia brand will be launched early next year. The company confirmed “Nokia brand’s return to smartphones” in a presentation at its Capital Markets Day event on November 15 in Barcelona, Spain.
The Finnish firm’s handsets, however, will be manufactured by HMD Global – a new entity formed in May solely to revive the Nokia name in the smartphone industry. It will manufacture Nokia-branded Android mobile phones and tablets for 10 years. While the Helsinki-based company will develop, market and sell the devices and their accessories, Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn will handle the research and development segment of the process.
Nokia’s Chief Executive Officer Rajeev Suri is likely to unveil the first phone in February 2017. Although a few websites have published details of a number of Nokia-branded Android phones, such as the Nokia D1C, Nokia 5320 and Nokia 1490, the Nokia D1C will probably be the first to be launched, reported NDTV. The device reportedly has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor and 3GB of RAM and also comes with a 13-megapixel rear camera and an 8-megapixel front camera.
In 2014, Microsoft had taken over Nokia, but it failed to boost its dwindling smartphone business. In May 2016, Foxconn was offloaded its feature phone business.
This slide in the presentation showcased at Nokia’s meet in Spain provides a summary of the company’s plans for 2016 to 2018:
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