Company / division: Nokia
HMD Global Launches First High-End Android, Nokia 8 (Aug 16, 2017)
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Nokia Says it Received $2 Billion From A Recent Apple Patent Settlement (Jul 28, 2017)
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Nokia and Xiaomi Agree to Share Patents, Collaborate on Technology (Jul 5, 2017)
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Apple and Nokia Settle Patent Litigation (May 23, 2017)
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Americans Don’t Care About Nokia (or Huawei) – PCMag (Mar 7, 2017)
This is good from Sascha Segan, explaining why “Nokia” (really HMD Global) and its new 3310 are irrelevant in the US, but also in some ways more interestingly why Huawei (and other Chinese manufacturers) have long struggled here. With Nokia/HMD, it’s a long-standing lack of investment in the unique requirements of the US market including CDMA networking technology, whereas with Huawei it’s a more complex geopolitical issue involving Huawei’s networking gear. It’s easy to dismiss the US government’s objections to Huawei equipment in networks covering US network traffic as scaremongering or protectionism, but in a previous job I heard from very reliable sources about Chinese gear (not Huawei’s) in telecoms networks which had backdoors installed – these concerns can’t just be dismissed out of hand. But even beyond that, there are significant other reasons why the Chinese brands don’t succeed here, including notably the fact that those brands simply aren’t known, and in many cases the companies aren’t doing enough to change that. The one place where some of the Chinese brands do reasonably well in the US wireless market is the prepaid segment, were several have made a decent business. But that’s much less brand- and much more price-sensitive than the much larger postpaid market.
via PCMag
Nokia Making Big Move Into Digital Health, Relaunching Withings As Nokia This Summer – Forbes (Feb 27, 2017)
This is where things are going to get interesting – on the one hand, you now have HMD Global launching Nokia phones, and on the other you have the entirely separate company called Nokia launching its own consumer gadgets under its own brand. So there will be both smartphones and fitness devices in the market carrying the same brand, which have nothing to do with each other. It looks like Nokia is going to kill off the Withings brand it acquired and make a big push into health and fitness. As a non-consumer brand since its sale of the phone business to Microsoft, this is going to be an uphill battle for Nokia, and especially in a crowded and somewhat stagnant wearables market. Withings produced some interesting devices over the last several years, but it’s never had significant market share, and I’m not convinced Nokia will change that. Health (as opposed to pure fitness) is certainly one of the more promising aspects of this broader space, and it looks like Nokia is investing there, with a HIPAA-compliant Patient Care Platform among other elements. That may be its one opportunity to succeed where others have failed.
via Forbes
HMD Launches New Nokia Phones – Wired (Feb 27, 2017)
Quick explainer for those that haven’t followed the saga of Nokia over recent years: Microsoft bought Nokia’s Devices and Services business, including the smartphone and feature phone businesses, a few years back, along with exclusive use of the Nokia brand in these markets for several years. That exclusivity has now expired, and Microsoft last year sold the rump of the feature phone business to a new Finnish entity called HMD Global, which now has the rights to manufacture phones under the Nokia brand. The original owner of the Nokia brand and devices business, which now mostly makes telecoms network gear, has essentially nothing to do with these new phones. The MWC announcement actually covered three smartphones, the Nokia 3, 5, and 6, but almost all the attention has been on its resurrection of the extremely popular candy bar feature phone from 17 years ago, the Nokia 3110. It’s fascinating to see both the BlackBerry and Nokia brands get reboots at MWC from new companies – both were once key players in the global industry but have fallen enormously from those heights, and are probably past the point where a meaningful resurrection is possible, considerable nostalgia notwithstanding.
Apple Pulls All Withings Accessories From Apple Online Store Following Nokia Lawsuit – Mac Rumors (Dec 23, 2016)
Apple clearly doesn’t appreciate Nokia’s recent lawsuit over patents, and is choosing to let Nokia know by dropping its Withings products from its stores. This will have a minimal impact on Apple’s retail operation, but Apple retail is a great premium channel for Withings, so this is a nice way to put some minor pressure on while the lawsuit is underway.
via Apple Pulls All Withings Accessories From Apple Online Store Following Nokia Lawsuit – Mac Rumors
Nokia sues Apple for infringing patents, industry back on war footing | Reuters (Dec 22, 2016)
Apple and Nokia have a long history as competitors in the smartphone market, but since Nokia’s sale of its phone business to Microsoft, the relationship has changed. It appears Apple now wants to renegotiate terms, and Nokia doesn’t. This will probably end in a settlement of some kind, perhaps court-facilitated.
via Nokia sues Apple for infringing patents, industry back on war footing | Reuters