Brace yourself, planet Earth, says Nokia CEO – our phones ARE coming back from mid-2016 Nokia's chief exec says he wants to resurrect the Nokia smartmobe brand by licensing the name to cellphone hardware makers next year. CEO Rajeev Suri told Germany's Manager Magazin that Nokia Networks will seek out manufacturers to build Nokia phones from mid-2016, when Microsoft gives up control of the brand name. "We are …
>USians can pretend they are buying local with their iPhones?
That shipped sailed long ago for Americans. We assume we are buying Chinese and are then surprised if we are not. Nobody in the US buys iThings because they are American in any way. They buy them because Apple's marketing is the best in the world.
Nokia designed some wonderful kit and can do so again.
Yes, they lost their way, but that was due to mismanagement not a lack of skilled research and design staff.
It kind of makes sense to design in house and outsource the manufacture.
As Apple also use Foxconn You could also have asked:
What's the point of buying an Apple if it isn't an Apple?
@Keef
If the article correctly represents the original report they're just licensing the name. It says nothing about the design or anything else. If Foxconn build a phone to Apple's design branded as Apple on contract to Apple it's an Apple. If Whoever just license the Nokia name & build their own design of phone branded as Nokia it wouldn't be a Nokia as you & I think of it, it would be a Whoever.
I don't see the point for Nokia in letting some manufacturer use the brand without any significant say in the design; their design prowess is what gives the brand any value. In any case a translation of the linked German article indicates they would be designing the phones;
"After running out of the clause will point, however, challenge his former partner in the business: 'Microsoft produces mobile phones, we would merely design them and make available the trade name by license. But of course we would be able to attack, otherwise we could let it be the same [...]'".
Of course, treat automated translations with caution, but the word "design" seems unambiguous. My reading of that paragraph is that Suri is saying that while Nokia will not be competing with Microsoft as a manufacturer, as they will only be designing the phones and providing the brand name, they are going to compete, otherwise there would be no point.
Not a native german speaker but for me the german is a bit ambiguous. It seems to state: We will only design them and license the brand name. From my understanding of the german that doesn't imply the 2 are linked (IE they might design phones for one brand and let another manufacturer use the Nokia brand for something they didn't design).
Personally I'm still waiting for some enterprising chinese manufacturer to just license the original Nokia 3310 and just start making those again. I wan't a new one dangnamit!
My 3120 is still going strong with 5 day battery life. I use it as an emergency phone.
Having said that, what will happen with the current range of Nokia branded s30/s40 phones, e.g. the Nokia 108 &c? Will they carry on under the Microsoft brand? Will Nokia continue to use the s30/s40 OS at all?
>Yes, they lost their way, but that was due to mismanagement not a lack of skilled research and design staff.
Except after the blood letting and massive layoffs you have to assume their is now a lack of R&D staff at least in mobile and a loss of a whole lot of tribal knowledge.
Nokia have a long history of producing phones, many of which were good or even great, and many of which had good build quality. So a person in the shops who sees a Nokia branded phone is much more likely to buy it than if the exact same phone was branded "My Crappy Chinese Phone Co".
So it's good for "My Crappy Chinese Phone Co" to pay Nokia money to license the trademark from Nokia. And since Nokia has no long-term interest in it's mobile phone brand, it's good for Nokia to take the money while it can.
The only person who loses out is the consumer - they think they're getting Nokia design and quality, but in reality the people & organisation that did Nokia phone design & quality no longer exists.
(Nokia will, I'm sure, haver some basic requirements that the quality is OK, because failure to do that would (a) legally invalidate their trademark (Google "naked licensing" (it is SFW)), and (b) cause the brand to become less valuable. But the Nokia people setting the quality level are going to be lawyers and senior managers, not techies who actually understand the product).
You'll be waiting a long time then. Nokia won't be designing a thing, "high quality" or otherwise. The report implies they're just going to pimp the brand name and let other companies stick it on their own stuff.
Seems fair enough to me: the "Nokia" brand name still has some value; why not milk it for all it's worth?
Suppose Nokia does design a phone which they control the patents on.
Manufacturing in China means that you'll lose that IP and the same factory building your phones will build knock-offs out the back... Or they'll take your IP and add something like a second SIM card.
I can understand contract manufacturing, but really... you need to drop the Microsoft OS.
(When you start up the phone, you have to sync it to a Microsoft Hotmail account, or create one if you don't already have one. )
And of course Nokia put out the Lumina 1020 which is a great pocket camera that happens to be a phone. Would have been a killer phone if they actually created a good OS and got app developers to write to their phone.
Erm, remind me what you have to do when setting up an Android or Apple phone?
Nope, never had to register an email address on my Android phone. Then again, I've never felt the need to use whatever passes for an App Store on Android either - any additional apps I've installed have all been from .apk files downloaded in the conventional way from conventional websites.
Oh, and the couple of OS updates that have been available for the phone have appeared as expected too.
M.
so whats the future of the cheapo Nokia feature phones that Microsoft currently sell? I got one a couple of months ago, branded Nokia, but with MS paperwork in the box. Are they being killed off? Seems to me a nice simple item to sell with little risk. Theres no way MS would brand them as "Microsoft" or "Lumia", but they're typical of the cheapo phones Nokia sold
Frankly I'd be happy if Nokia produced a couple of cracking "feature" phones and a few solid "dumb"(ish) phones, like updated models of some of their past truimphs. Things with keyboards (real buttons for answering and hanging up!), decent cameras, easy UI, not stupidly-huge screens, a fortnight on standby, sensible SIM-free price and good call quality above all else. Tethering and/or mobile hotspot to a laptop/tablet can take care of the things smartphones can do on the rare occasions I need to do them.
I miss, terribly, mid-range feature phones...
M.
I have no answers to that but while Nokia is now back to networks and phones are such a great part of that why should they not keep those guys educated, at work, happy and up to date in that respect. Nokia's problems where never a engineering problem, the rot hit the head of the company.
@Martin an gof: "Things with..." well integrated phone, contact list, and calendar that I miss so much in what is called "smartphones" today. You know, when adding a birthday to a contact (no, I don't use FB for that) makes the calendar remind you, audibly and visibly, on the day, and where marking a meeting in the calendar automatically (without copy/paste!) adds a phone contact to the calendar entry, so when the 15 minute reminder sounds in traffic you can hit a single button to dial and apologize for the delay... And profiles - changing a whole bunch of settings with a single operation.
Simple stuff that Nokia were so smart about in their small screen phones and that the latest and shiniest iPhones and Galaxies co-workers let me fondle still lack...
I think I'd switch even if reading email became much worse as a tradeoff (though I don't really see why this would be necessary).
I actually had a second thought (thanks everyone for all the upvotes, by the way, I knew I wasn't the only one thinking like this). What would really get a revitalised Nokia noticed would be a phone in a similar form-factor to the Psion Series 5 with all the great applications the S3 and S5 had - updated of course. Stick a smallish screen on the outer case with phone buttons, make it fractionally smaller all around so it can be held one-handed when closed, and inside stick a larger colour touchscreen with proper keyboard (there has been nothing to touch the Series 5 keyboard since).
Hmm... sounds a bit like the Communicator in some ways, but the S5 form factor was much nicer, particularly the keyboard.
M.
Hey, less of the Android OS nonsense on a Nokia. And it would be a nonsense for Nokia as well unless they just licensed the Nokia name to the highest bidder and let the licensee do whatever they wanted with the innards. There's plenty of kit out there you can choose from running Android, why would Nokia (as an independent Nokia) even go there?
And even though I'm a Nokia die hard user - my only phone is a Nokia 808 because I wanted the best camera (still unsurpassed) and the best sat nav (now licensed out) I'm still looking forward to MS bringing out Windows 10 on some 808 type hardware. In the meantime, I'm extremely happy with the 808 and as a previous poster said, on the odd occasion I do need real access to an internet app, I simply tether my laptop to my phone. The vast majority of the time it simply isn't that urgent or important.
And if the reports are true that Nokia will be designing and not just licensing, I'm really looking forward to whatever they come up with, particularly if they're talking to the ex-Nokia guys at Sailfish. Hardware designed by Nokia running an OS which should have been on their phones had the management not f*cked up the company should be fantastic, particularly with the Android app running capabilities of Sailfish / Meego.
Whatever else they do can they please include the user dependant voice calling that was such an excellent feature on the 6230i which I still use. One touch to the headphone, one word and call out hands free with the phone hidden in an inside pocket. The other stuff might be of interest to others, that's fine for them, but with another hand operation set for Thursday, hand free and voice calling is a prime driver for me for what should be obvious reasons.
The Asha 300 I was stiffed with, left out the one touch voice calling in favour of supposed web access 'featuring' 'favourites' comprising nothing I had ever heard of, which could not be removed. I removed the SIM in stead and went back to my old phone!
I do not care about the operating system though a camera is optional but if there it should be improved quality compared to the old phone.
>... and by that logic, I guess you also believe that the world has decided what desktop operating system is likes best, and it's called Windows???
Pretty much ... yes. Then again Red Hat is desperately trying to turn Linux into Windows lite so who knows long term (if there is one).
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It wasn't so much the hardware but the operating system that was really where Nokia lost its way. All the hardware has become so me-too that in order to really stand out, they're going to have to do something spectacular.
Personally, I maintain my belief that they'll take Sailfish on board and put some serious money behind its development. But time will tell. I mean, what do I know ... I've been using the trollface instead of the joke icon for a number of posts this last week!
The article says they would design the phone and license the brandname.
I don't know. Could be interesting if they came up with useful designs, not generic landfill phones. I guess it would be some Android crap but maybe one could put Sailfish on it. Sailfish on a Nokia design is something I would pay good money for. Especially if it had some buttons or – heavens – a real QWERTY. Because, honestly: Sailfish is the cool part about Jolla devices. Their phone all by itself is a bit lackluster.
As is, my E6-00 is doing a stellar job and the battery lasts for days at a time. Improve on that and we have a deal.
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