Nokia brand fading away as HMD smartphones take baby steps
Nokia smartphones are dying a slow death with brand licensee HMD Global now focused on promoting its own brand alongside exploring partnerships and white-label manufacturing with established brand names like Mattel's Barbie and Dutch beverages company, Heineken.
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HMD chief executive Jean-Francois Baril told ET that the company signed an agreement last August with Finland-based Nokia to ramp down the smartphone business with which it entered the global market in 2016. It however continues to leverage Nokia's large patent pool and now has its own bank of intellectual property in smartphone technology.
«HMD is now like a teenager becoming an young adult. They want to prove themselves...This is one direction from our side. From Nokia, they were moving very much into the business and services direction, far away from the consumer,» Baril said.
«We signed an agreement last year in August to find a way to ramp down Nokia for smartphone. Of course, we continue on feature phones,» the top executive told ET.
Baril said Nokia is now another has-been brand in the smartphone space outlining its failure to establish itself in the Android space since its acquisition by Microsoft to push Windows Phone.
«We said let's be brave, and understand and free up our capability to full express ourselves, which you can see in the new devices we are introducing today...We can
