Following a rumor from earlier this year that claimed that Nokia is planning to return to the smartphone market, the company’s CEO has confirmed those plans.
Speaking to German publication Manager Magazin, Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri says that his firm is planning to get back into the mobile phone market. "We will look for suitable partners," Suri said. "Microsoft makes mobile phones. We would simply design them and then make the brand name available to license."
This strategy of designing a product and then licensing its name to another company the way that the Nokia N1 tablet came to be. Nokia designed the N1 and then licensed that design and the Nokia name to Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, who then actually produced the hardware.
As part of Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia’s Devices and Services division, Nokia is barred from making smartphones until the second half of 2016, so it’ll likely be a while before we actually see any new Nokia-branded phones hit the market. Still, it’s kind of exciting to hear that Nokia plans to make phones again. The company is still one of the best-known mobile firms in the world, and the Nokia N1 is a nice-looking tablet, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of smartphone hardware Nokia can create.
