Nokia’s Path to Smartphone Glory Relies on Dumb Phones and Love
- Finnish company with Nokia brand rights seeks leading position
- Android smartphones to be announced in first half of 2017
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Nokia smartphones will make a comeback next year, and the current owners of the Finnish brand are betting that the connection it built with billions of consumers during a decade of dominance hasn’t been broken.
HMD Global has secured exclusive rights to use the brand for smartphones from Nokia Oyj for the coming 10 years, and will announce new devices running Google’s Android operating system in the first half of 2017, Chief Executive Officer Arto Nummela said in a phone interview. The former Nokia executive is hoping that consumers will remember the qualities that made the company the leading handset maker of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.