Last week, news broke out that Nokia will return to the handset business in 2016. However, the Finnish company denied rumors that it will manufacture new phones in an R&D facility in China.
Nokia made a deal with Microsoft not to sell phones until 2016 after its mobile devices division was bought by the Redmond giant. Nevertheless, Nokia will definitely return in 2016 by licensing its phone designs and brand name to other companies.
| Heiko Straulino, Nokia Networks Head of Innovation Program |
Nokia has already done this setup with the Nokia N1 tablet that the company designed but licensed to Foxconn (the same company making iPhones) for manufacturing and distribution.
In a company statement, Nokia “…reiterates it currently has no plans to manufacture or sell consumer handsets.” These just means that we’ll have to wait for 2016 when Nokia becomes fully free from Microsoft.
There are three main divisions of Nokia right now – Maps, Networks and Nokia Technologies. The last one works on using Nokia’s thousands of patents to design new products such as the Nokia N1 tablet, future smartphones and even Virtual Reality devices.
