Nokia smartphones are poised for a comeback after former managers at the Finnish company licensed the handset brand from Microsoft and struck up partnerships with Google and phone manufacturer Foxconn.
I agree that Nokia had a strong brand at one time, but this will be a tough sell.
The article buries what should be paragraphs four and five too near the end of the piece. Who exactly is HMD and how did they get the rights to the Nokia handset business? Oh, I see.
Private equity. It’ll be interesting to see if one of those entities can build a business as effectively as they generally take them apart.
Regarding operating systems for feature phones, may I suggest Symbian? :/
I think Nokia had lost a lot of its shine before the iPhone was released, to be honest. Trying to trade on nostalgia from over ten years ago in the CELL PHONE market doesn’t seem that wise to me.
But, hey, retro NES did well enough.
I think 80% of people really don’t care what brand they use. Nokia has a very strong name outside of USA. If they had some decent phones at a good price, they’ll sell heaps.
The real trick is to see if they have worked out how to make money out of smartphones this time.
One word: “burners.”
The problem they face is that feature phones are low price point and low margin. Nokia at one time (late 90s) had a rep for great hardware. Reliable, tough, well built. Now? Apple, Samung (Note aside), HTC etc all have that stuff to a high enough degree that it won’t matter.