Nokia, once a mobile-maker giant but no longer in the reckoning now has once again given feelers about it entering the mobile market but only uncertainty prevails till now.
Nokia Promises To Make Comeback, to Release New Phone This Year
The company on Sunday confirmed at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona that it’s pressing ahead with plans to sell smartphones but the dates are yet to be confirmed.
“There’s no timeline, there’s no rush,” said Nokia Chief Executive Rajeev Suri at a press event. “It could happen in 2016, it could happen later.”
The Nokia CEO Sunday made it clear that Nokia is just waiting for the right partner and right time rather than to just rush back into the field they were once one of the best . As he has previously maintained, the company will not make the phones but will license the Nokia brand to a manufacturer.
Nokia’s reign in the mobile world had begun in the early 90’s and lasted for more than 20 years. With the launch of iPhone in 2007, feature phones made by Nokia started to lose their shine. The company’s popularity gradually decreased over time.
The smartphone market created a wave over the whole world and as they started to spread their magic, magicians aka mobile-makers like Samsung, Micromax and other choose the Android OS and on the other hand Nokia remain stuck with Windows OS. The Android OS gained popularity and with that Samsung and Micromax became favorites whereas the popularity of Nokia gradually decreased.
The company, whose phones were once a favorite with consumers, sold its devices business to Microsoft in 2014 for $7.2 billion. It has since regained the rights to sell smartphones under the Nokia brand. We’ve only seen the company release one Android tablet over the past year. In July, Nokia hinted it would re-enter the phone market in 2016, but then it went quiet, until now as quoted by the cnet.com website.
It may prove to be a controlling partner, though. “We want to be in a position to design the devices in question with appropriate control measures in case they don’t meet expectations,” said Suri. When asked whether Nokia would partner with Foxconn, which also works closely with Apple to manufacture iPhones, he said he did not know yet.
Nokia is currently out of the fray as far as the smartphone market is concerned but if it is able to recreate the same kind of magic that it has created in the past the Samsung, Micromax and others would be facing a real tough time condition to which is Nokia entering the mobile market again.
