But the Nokia brand, brought back to life through a partnership with HMD Global, may soon be on its last legs.
Nokia is finally heading towards its final resting place. HMD Global, the exclusive owner of phones with the iconic name for the past eight years, announced on Thursday that it will no longer use the iconic name in future releases, signaling that it's time to move on. This marks the end of an experimental effort that began in Finnish startup in 2016 to reintroduce the beloved phone brand to a new audience.
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With HMD going it alone, Nokia is once again returning to the past, joining BlackBerry and Palm, the brands that once ruled the phone sector but failed to compete with Apple and Google, leading to their early exit from the market.
"While we were known as the makers of Nokia phones, we envisioned beyond that legacy. We are moving from being a sister company to a multi-level manufacturer with our own distinct HMD brand product range, complemented by several licensing agreements and major brand partnerships," wrote Lars Silberbauer, CMO of Nokia Phones/HMD on LinkedIn.
Things to check
The destruction of phones with the Nokia name was not a surprise. Last year, the company had already signaled that it would release its own line of mobile devices. However, this does not mean that HMD will immediately drop the Nokia name from its phones, but will focus mainly on its own brand in the future. While Nokia, which is a giant in the telecom infrastructure space after selling its mobile unit, has licensed the Nokia brand to HMD Global for 10 years as per the licensing agreement. With two more years left, HMD Global will be required to release phones under the Nokia name, which is why the brand's website still states that the Finnish company is the "Manufacturer of Nokia phones".
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However, HMD Global is already looking to the future and laying the groundwork needed to move from producing phones under the Nokia name to creating an independent brand. The change has already begun, with the website Nokia.com/phones and social media accounts to be inactive and moved to a new HMD Global website. The company, based in Helsinki, has marked the return of the old look and colour scheme of Nokia Lumia in its new range of phones, which will be unveiled for the first time at Mobile World Congress between 26 and 29 February in Barcelona. It also teased an upcoming feature phone with 5G connectivity, as well as upcoming tablets and wireless headsets.
Nokia's journey through the years
At one point, Nokia was the largest technology company in Europe and a force in the mobile market. At the end of 2007, Nokia's mobile phones matched the 50% of all mobile phones sold worldwide, dominating the largest market share and making it a global telephony powerhouse. The brand served all market segments with a range of products ranging from basic devices to high-end photographic devices and business commons. Occasional fact: Nokia still had sales programs of luxury phones made of exotic materials, costing thousands of dollars under the "Vertu" brand.
Through the years, Nokia has had many successes, such as being the first mobile company to introduce a GSM handset, the Nokia 1011, in 1992. In 1996, it released the first smartphone, the Nokia 9000, which featured a leaflet, software tailored for business, a Qwerty keyboard, and the ability to send and receive faxes and emails. The company also credited for the release of the first mobile phone with a built-in camera, the Nokia 7650, in 2001.
However, with the release of the iPhone in 2007 and the release of the mobile operating system Android By Google, Nokia's decline came slowly and gradually as a mobile handheld device. While the market was moving towards smartphones and the app-store model, Nokia could not adapt to the change and when it released the anyway-named "iPhone disaster" in the person of the Nokia N97, the device lagged behind the competition. Many attribute Nokia's downfall to the arrogance of senior management who did not understand the iPhone as an imminent threat, resulting in the company's inability to create a modern mobile operating system that could compete with iOS and Android.
Downhill
In 2010, Nokia started to feel the pressure when sales began to fall. That year, Stephen Elop took over as the new CEO, replacing Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. A year later, in 2011, Nokia partnered with Microsoft for the manufacture of mobile phones with Windows operating system. In the next two or three years, Nokia produced phones with top-of-the-line cameras such as the Nokia 808 PureView and Lumia 1020, but by that time, Windows Mobile was already in decline due to a lack of applications and support for deployed programs. Even today, many in the tech industry characterize this move as an accident, which negatively affected Nokia's mobile phone sales, but benefited Android-powered smartphones, giving Google the superpower to dominate the phone market.
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In September 2013, Microsoft announced that it would buy Nokia's mobile business for $7.2 billion. However, two years later, the Redmond giant announced that it would write off its investment that went into buying Nokia, resulting in the cutting of more than 7,800 jobs. By that time, Microsoft had already realized that it couldn't compete with both Apple and Google in the smartphone market, so abandoning the mobile business would have been a logical move. The brand name - Nokia - was sold to a new company called HMD Global, which took over the design and launch of the phones. At the same time, Foxconn took over manufacturing.
The Nokia name rose from the ashes and was given new life when HMD Global started selling smartphones with Google's Android mobile operating system. In the early years, phones with the Nokia name held out hope, and critics liked what HMD Global was preparing. However, the failure of the Nokia 9 PureView had dented its confidence to compete with the major mobile manufacturers. It came with five cameras on the back, a first for any smartphone, and the company partnered with Light (makers of the 16-camera L16) to make those cameras possible in a mobile device.
Unfortunately, the device was faulty, and the Nokia 9 PureView camera phone remained an experimental strand. After the failure of the Nokia 9 PureView, HMD Global focused on budget to mid-range phones, while aggressively promoting feature phones. Its decision not to offer a "top-end" Nokia phone disappointed fans who eventually moved on to other brands, especially from China, which aggressively promoted advanced phones at a lower cost. All this, plus Google's lack of decision to promote budget phones under the Android One program, negatively affected Nokia-branded smartphones. In recent months, HMD Global has been promoting smartphones that can be repaired, which have been well received.
The Nokia brand, which was once worth 300 billion dollars in its heights, is far from the glory of its past. The lack of enthusiasm for Nokia among new-age consumers is testament to why HMD is making the independent entry with its own brand. Nostalgia has brought some consumers to classic brands like Nokia, which has a history and benchmark value, but not to the level of the iPhone, and perhaps that is the biggest lesson to be learned from Nokia's history.
Source :: indianexpress
