Nokia Is Ready for a Comeback in the Smartphone Business, but It May Take a While

For many, the Nokia brand is the most important in the world and the main reason they keep purchasing Lumia smartphones even after the Finnish company’s mobile division has been acquired by Microsoft.

Licensing the Nokia and Lumia brands was a smart move by Microsoft, but the Redmond-based company will eventually lose the right to put the Nokia brand on its products. When that happens, the Finnish company is likely to come back to what it’s been doing for about 20 years, making phones. Since Microsoft purchased Nokia’s devices and services division, the ex-handset maker focused on its other business like HERE, Nokia Mobile Solutions and Nokia Technologies. However, Nokia did not turn its face from the smartphone business even if the company is forbidden from launching any new devices under its brand for 18 months. The release of the Android launcher several weeks ago is a clear hint to Nokia’s plans for the next few years. Even if a comeback is not possible during the next year, there’s a high chance that we will see a new Nokia branded smartphone from the Finnish company arriving sometime in 2016.

The company's CFO hints to when Nokia could release a new smartphone

Forbes reports that during an earnings call following the release of its third quarter results, Nokia’s CFO Timo Ihamuotila did some interesting remarks concerning the company’s future business. Here is an excerpt of the Ihamuotila’s longer statement: “…we will of course carefully assess what would be the best way for us to maximize the value of the Nokia brand, also taking into account that we’re in the lock-up period still in the Microsoft transaction regarding our possibility to use the brand and we have recognized that Nokia brand is the most valuable from recognition perspective in the area of mobile phones and mobile devices. And there we cannot go yet at the moment.”

It will be interesting to see whether Nokia would be willing to bet on Windows Phone again, though we doubt that the Finnish company would want to compete with Microsoft. Judging by the fact that Nokia’s engineers are now looking to create easy-to-use UI for the Android ecosystem, we can safely assume that Nokia would go this route with its first smartphone after Microsoft’s acquisition of its Devices and Services division. The fact is that Nokia does seem keen on letting everyone know when exactly it can return to the smartphone market, but whether it will step into the fray or not, that is something that we’ll find out in the next months.

Nokia N9
Image credits to Nokia

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