Nokia Finally Return with Android: Four Suggestions For Its New Android Smartphones
Yesterday saw the moment that many smartphone watchers had been dreaming of - the announcement by Nokia that it was to return to the world of smartphones. The Finnish company was under no illusions what was wanted, and its post yesterday made that clear. ‘The answer to the question you’ve all been asking’ detailed how the world’s first smartphone manufacturer will return to the market.
Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri during a press conference on the eve of Mobile World Congress 2016. (Photo: JOSEP LAGO/AFP/Getty Images)
As expected this is not a direct return, but a global license issued by Nokia Technologies to HMD global Oy to create “a full range of Nokia branded smartphones, tablets, and feature phones for the next decade.” HMD is a new Finnish-founded company which, along with the licensing deal from Nokia, has also “agreed to acquire from Microsoft the rights to use the Nokia brand on feature phones, and certain related design rights.”
Another domino in this little family is FIH Mobile Limited, a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industries (better known as Foxconn). FIH will acquire “the remainder of Microsoft’s feature phone business assets, including manufacturing, sales and distribution”. Nokia Technologies, HMD and FIH have signed an agreement to collaborate on a global business partnership to sell Nokia-branded mobile phones, smartphones, and tablets.
Read Also: Here's Proof Apple Pay Is Useful For Stealing People's Money
This is the licensing model that Nokia Technologies has previously suggested that it would use to return to the market, and it will see royalty payments for the use of its brand and intellectual property. For Foxconn, the reward could be far greater. Foxconn works with many partners and knows modern smartphone design. This partnership offers it the chance to be more than a white-box manufacturer and allows it to step up into the retail chain with handsets that offer the company more opportunities to profit.
What should we be be expecting from this new company?
Nokia’s Android powered tablet, the Nokia N1 (image: Nokia.com)
Aiming For A New BRIC
Foxconn has built handsets across all price points in a variety of smartphone portfolios. For this new project a solid mid- to high-end smartphone might not reach the heights of a Galaxy S7 or iPhone 7 Pro, but it would certainly be the equal of other manufacturers such as HTC and Xiaomi. It can bring to bear a huge economy of scale from the supply chain that could be used if it stays within a similar performance envelope to the competition. Couple that with the still strong Nokia brand name in the BRIC markets and Foxconn could challenge to be one of the Top Ten handsets in the market by this time next year.
While it wouldn’t be the impressive flagship that some companies strive for, it would certainly offer Foxconn a larger margin per handset than it will have seen ‘whiteboxing’ devices for others.
A Triple Play Portfolio
While a return to the market with a single handset allows for a focused marketing campaign and a concentration around a single product, it’s more likely that a high watermark $300 smartphone as described above would be supplemented by two more handsets – a true mid-range device coming in around the $200 mark and a budget $100 handset, both sharing the branding and the styling of the $300 handset.That gives a portfolio that many mobile carriers would be happy to take on board if it had a name that customers would ask for and be comfortable with purchasing
A name like Nokia.
Foxconn likely has designs for a range of phones ready to go. Nokia provides the branding muscle in return for royalties. Carriers then have a hardware package that they can use to push back against Apple and Samsung in negotiations.
That takes care of the volume market, but there’s a few more directions that might be worth exploring.
Plant The Flagship In The Ground
In its previous life, Nokia’s skill was as a volume seller of smartphones, but it was the hero handsets that helped it stand out. From launching the first genuine smartphone in the Nokia 9000 Communicator, to the final Symbian-powered Nokia 808 handset that sported the PureView 41 megapixel camera that has still to be equalled in the current market, the Nokia name really does mean something. There will be an expectation that any Nokia smartphone will follow that same historical lineage and not only max out every specification possible, but also include every feature that can be found across a full portfolio of devices.
Much like the Surface Phone is expected to showcase Microsoft’s mastery of hardware and software with the best device possible, there will be an expectation that Nokia can deliver a smartphone that is ‘the best’ in every single area. That’s more difficult now than it was at the turn of the 21st century with the commoditization of the smartphone industry (especially as Nokia will be using the ubiquitous Android OS as the base operating system), but if the new manufacturing team wanted to get the geekerati on-side, a boutique style short run of handsets with every feature possible (and at a crazy-high price) should be considered.
A Return Of A Classic
Much of Nokia’s value is in the nostalgia for the name, when phones would run for months on a single charge, the best game in the world was Snake, and you could hammer in nails with the screen. That’s the sort of phone that the new Nokia needs to bring back to the market. Forget your iPhones, put aside the Galaxy handsets, the new dream team can bring back the Nokia 3310. The original sold over 126 million so there’s clearly a demand. A super small handset, rugged construction, that runs Android, could be the ‘typical Nokia handset’ the market is in need of.
No doubt the parties involved have a clear plan of what they want to do. The amalgamation of feature phone, smartphone, and tablet rights, along with the ability to (once more) use the Nokia brand across all of those mobile device types, suggests a carefully thought out mix of handsets. The questions now are how long until the first device reaches the market, how long for the rest of the portfolio to follow, and when will Nokia overtake Microsoft in the smartphone sales charts?
Source: Forbes Tech
As expected this is not a direct return, but a global license issued by Nokia Technologies to HMD global Oy to create “a full range of Nokia branded smartphones, tablets, and feature phones for the next decade.” HMD is a new Finnish-founded company which, along with the licensing deal from Nokia, has also “agreed to acquire from Microsoft the rights to use the Nokia brand on feature phones, and certain related design rights.”
Another domino in this little family is FIH Mobile Limited, a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industries (better known as Foxconn). FIH will acquire “the remainder of Microsoft’s feature phone business assets, including manufacturing, sales and distribution”. Nokia Technologies, HMD and FIH have signed an agreement to collaborate on a global business partnership to sell Nokia-branded mobile phones, smartphones, and tablets.
Read Also: Here's Proof Apple Pay Is Useful For Stealing People's Money
This is the licensing model that Nokia Technologies has previously suggested that it would use to return to the market, and it will see royalty payments for the use of its brand and intellectual property. For Foxconn, the reward could be far greater. Foxconn works with many partners and knows modern smartphone design. This partnership offers it the chance to be more than a white-box manufacturer and allows it to step up into the retail chain with handsets that offer the company more opportunities to profit.
What should we be be expecting from this new company?
Aiming For A New BRIC
Foxconn has built handsets across all price points in a variety of smartphone portfolios. For this new project a solid mid- to high-end smartphone might not reach the heights of a Galaxy S7 or iPhone 7 Pro, but it would certainly be the equal of other manufacturers such as HTC and Xiaomi. It can bring to bear a huge economy of scale from the supply chain that could be used if it stays within a similar performance envelope to the competition. Couple that with the still strong Nokia brand name in the BRIC markets and Foxconn could challenge to be one of the Top Ten handsets in the market by this time next year.
While it wouldn’t be the impressive flagship that some companies strive for, it would certainly offer Foxconn a larger margin per handset than it will have seen ‘whiteboxing’ devices for others.
A Triple Play Portfolio
While a return to the market with a single handset allows for a focused marketing campaign and a concentration around a single product, it’s more likely that a high watermark $300 smartphone as described above would be supplemented by two more handsets – a true mid-range device coming in around the $200 mark and a budget $100 handset, both sharing the branding and the styling of the $300 handset.That gives a portfolio that many mobile carriers would be happy to take on board if it had a name that customers would ask for and be comfortable with purchasing
A name like Nokia.
Foxconn likely has designs for a range of phones ready to go. Nokia provides the branding muscle in return for royalties. Carriers then have a hardware package that they can use to push back against Apple and Samsung in negotiations.
That takes care of the volume market, but there’s a few more directions that might be worth exploring.
Plant The Flagship In The Ground
In its previous life, Nokia’s skill was as a volume seller of smartphones, but it was the hero handsets that helped it stand out. From launching the first genuine smartphone in the Nokia 9000 Communicator, to the final Symbian-powered Nokia 808 handset that sported the PureView 41 megapixel camera that has still to be equalled in the current market, the Nokia name really does mean something. There will be an expectation that any Nokia smartphone will follow that same historical lineage and not only max out every specification possible, but also include every feature that can be found across a full portfolio of devices.
Much like the Surface Phone is expected to showcase Microsoft’s mastery of hardware and software with the best device possible, there will be an expectation that Nokia can deliver a smartphone that is ‘the best’ in every single area. That’s more difficult now than it was at the turn of the 21st century with the commoditization of the smartphone industry (especially as Nokia will be using the ubiquitous Android OS as the base operating system), but if the new manufacturing team wanted to get the geekerati on-side, a boutique style short run of handsets with every feature possible (and at a crazy-high price) should be considered.
A Return Of A Classic
Much of Nokia’s value is in the nostalgia for the name, when phones would run for months on a single charge, the best game in the world was Snake, and you could hammer in nails with the screen. That’s the sort of phone that the new Nokia needs to bring back to the market. Forget your iPhones, put aside the Galaxy handsets, the new dream team can bring back the Nokia 3310. The original sold over 126 million so there’s clearly a demand. A super small handset, rugged construction, that runs Android, could be the ‘typical Nokia handset’ the market is in need of.
No doubt the parties involved have a clear plan of what they want to do. The amalgamation of feature phone, smartphone, and tablet rights, along with the ability to (once more) use the Nokia brand across all of those mobile device types, suggests a carefully thought out mix of handsets. The questions now are how long until the first device reaches the market, how long for the rest of the portfolio to follow, and when will Nokia overtake Microsoft in the smartphone sales charts?
Source: Forbes Tech
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