Disclaimer: This opinion piece does not necessarily represent the views of Bandwidth Blog, its employees or its affiliates, but is from a third-party and is solely those of the author.
By Keenan Jacobs
If you‘ve never owned a Nokia mobile phone in your life, you‘ve missed out on an era that started it all. Once the biggest mobile company in the world and estimated to have been worth around $250 billion at its prime, Nokia has recently hinted at a return to the market they once shaped.
That‘s right, you heard me correctly, Nokia will be returning to mobile phone world soon. We‘ve watched the rise and painful demise of this once great company, take place in front of our very eyes. The bullet“¦ the first iPhone introduced in 2007. After a slow and painful loss in market share resulting in the loss of 7800 jobs, Nokia‘s devices division was purchased by Microsoft in 2014 to the tune of $7.2 billion. Currently the bulk of their income is being generated from the sale of telecoms network equipment to operators like Vodafone and T-Mobile. As Nokia went into hiding, many Nokia fans (including myself), would say “œif Nokia came out with a phone tomorrow, I‘d buy one“.
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Nokia‘s story doesn‘t end there. The Nokia N1 was released in January 2015, manufactured and sold through Foxconn. Nokia‘s attempt at a tablet since the sale to Microsoft and it‘s surprisingly successful. The tablet boasts a 7.9 inch screen with 1536×2048 resolution, running Android 5.0 Lollipop, including an Intel Quad-core 2.3GHz, as well as 32GB storage, 2GB RAM, 8MP rear camera, 5MP front camera, WiFi, Bluetooth and a 5300mAh battery. With good overall specs, this device certainly makes sense to the market it is sold in. The N1 is only sold in China and Taiwan, where it has proved itself to be highly successful (selling out within the first few days of sales).
Then there‘s the Nokia OZO. The OZO is a device which acts as a 360 degree VR camera capturing “œstereoscopic“ 3D video. The device consists of 8 synchronized global shutter sensors and spatial audio through 8 integrated microphones..
With these devices keeping Nokia‘s toes wet in the tech market, the announcement that Nokia wants to come back comes as no surprise. Nokia are on the hunt for software experts, testing products and seeking sales partners. Looking for a job? It appears that on LinkedIn, Nokia seem to be advertising positions in California for product development, including Android engineers specializing in the operating software Nokia mobile devices will use.
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Nokia has still one of the mobile industry‘s biggest troves of intellectual property, including patents it retained after selling its handset business. Just having recently acquired Alcatel-Lucent, announced in April, in the form of Bell Labs, which is a US research center whose scientists have won eight Nobel prizes.
Nokia‘s CEO seems to be doing a lot of moving around too, especially with their company HERE Maps, which was recently sold to a consortium of German premium carmakers. The only thing stopping Nokia now seems to be the noncompeting clause preventing them from making feature phones for a decade. The company is free to start making smartphones in late 2016, but it can manufacture and license tablets, as these do not fall under this clause.
Nokia will not be following their old methodology by selling and manufacturing their handsets. They will be seeking partners for “œbrand-licensing“ deals whereby Nokia will design new phones, bearing its brand, but ““ in exchange for loyalties ““ will then allow other firms to mass-manufacture, market and sell devices. We‘ve seen them do this with the N1, through Foxconn and see this in Google‘s Nexus range.
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As a Nokia fan boy, this is music to my ears and I‘m sure some of you reading this now too. Once the highest selling mobile phone company in the world, one cannot but expect great things in the future. With the patents they have and the brain power behind their ideas, I feel that this could be the sleeping giant. Yes, they may have an eternity (in mobile phone years) before they can release a phone, but patience was once said to be a virtue. It will soon be time for the fan boys, like me, to put our literal money where our mouths are.