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The Return Of The Nokia Phone

The Return Of The Nokia Phone

Nokia phones are coming back to the shelves in early 2017.

Early next near, the first Nokia branded smartphones and tablets are hitting the market after a two-year hiatus. Right now, they are in the process to formalize a licensing agreement with HMD Global, who owns exclusive rights to use the brand over the next decade.

HMD Global, which is also located in Finland, will start producing Nokia branded phones alongside their existing range of phones.

Contracts for rights to start manufacturing the devices was earlier acquired from Microsoft by HMD Global and China’s Foxconn.

The new handsets will be running on Google’s Android operating system, and will be available for purchase as of first half of 2017.

HMD Global CEO, Arto Nummela, was quoted by Bloomberg saying that they “will be extremely true to the Nokia brand”, and will design them to be just what people love Nokias for, simplicity, ease of use, reliability, and quality.

“These are the elements that we will deliver together with amazing industrial design”, he said.

The company has announced that they will be spending over half a billion US dollars over the next three years to market Nokia phones and tablets worldwide.

It was over two years ago that the Finish company sold their mobile phones division to Microsoft for a $7.2 billion deal that forbade Nokia from putting its name on handsets until the end of 2016.

Once the company had a workforce more than 24,000 workers in Finland, but was cut to less than 1,000. However, after Microsoft saw a 46% drop in revenue, they sold the Nokia brand to HMD Global and Foxconn for $350 million.

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