HMD has marked as «discontinued» Nokia-branded smartphones and has moved them to a separate web page from its own developments. Everything points to goodbye to Nokia as a phone brand.
HMD Global is the Finnish company responsible for continuing the legacy of the Nokia brand. Formed in 2016 after purchasing part of Microsoft’s basic phone business, it reached a licensing agreement with parent company Nokia to use the brand on its mobile phones.
HMD says goodbye to Nokia
After launching a series of phones with decent specifications and affordable prices under the Nokia brand, in recent years it began selling phones under its own brand. If HMD used the Nokia brand to help build a reputation in the telecom hardware space, the discontinuation of the handsets may signal the definitive end of a mythical brand. And HMD has not managed to reinvent Nokia after “to shake off the weight of Microsoft”, as promised.
It wasn’t simple revive one of the brands that have marked global telecommunications since it marketed its first mobile phones in the mid-90s. The beginning of the century confirmed Nokia as the world’s leading mobile phone producer, a title it held for fifteen years in competition with Motorola and BlackBerry in the professional segment. The launch of Apple’s first iPhone, a terminal that completely revolutionized the telecommunications industry and also the computing industry, opening the era of mobility, caught the big players in the sector with a changed step.
The arrival of successive iPhones and the rise of Android as the second major platform once acquired by Google, ended the dominance of RIM, Motorola and Nokia. The first practically disappeared, the second was sold to Lenovo and the third was acquired by Microsoft to promote Windows Phone as the third mobile platform after Android and iOS. The experiment did not work and the sale of the rights to HDM seemed to guarantee its continuity.
Finally, it has not been possible either and the strategy of the Finnish group, discontinuing terminals and promoting the sale of its own, seems destined to goodbye to Nokia, definitively closing another era. The Nokia brand is maintained through the parent company and its Nokia Networks division dedicated to telecommunications networks, and also in telephones, with a line of basic (‘dumb’) terminals and special functions. But the rest of the series of terminals seem to have their days numbered, at least under the responsibility of HDM.
The entry Goodbye Nokia! HMD closes another chapter appears first on MuyComputerPRO.
