Like any revered gladiator which falls in the battlefield but doesn’t die in its followers’ hearts, Nokia is a story which doesn’t seem to die. Except this time, the end is not really the end as the company will live on under its new ownership.
HMD Global Oy is now finally the owner of the once-gargantuan Finnish company, as a part of the licensing agreement which lasts 10 years.
It must be noted that although the Nokia name is being used, there is little co-operation from the actual company. There is, after all, only one Nokia representative on the board, while the brand is not a backer of HMD in any sort.
And HMD itself will not even produce the phones; that will be done by FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Chinese manufacturing behemoth, Foxconn. That work will commence once Microsoft ends its production of a few Nokia-branded phones.
The operating system used by HMD will be Android, an OS Nokia tried so hard to resist but had to accept in the final months before its demise.
The first batch of phones will be unveiled in February, 2017 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
HMD is headed by Florian Seiche, its President who is a former co-founder of HTC’s smartphone business, and Arto Nummela, the CEO who used to be the VP of Mobile Devices Sales who also worked for Nokia. Its Chief Product Officer is Juho Sarvikas, who was in charge of connecting Nokia’s Windows Phones with carriers.
Let’s just hope this time the fallen guardian will get the long-awaited reverence that it deserves, if not a proper farewell.
