Nokia is in the news all over again, with the latest round of rumors coming straight from a Microsoft executive. The fresh speculation comes just a day after it was confirmed that the brand’s CEO Rajeev Suri will be the keynote speaker at MWC 2017.
A Vietnamese publication is now reporting that Microsoft Asia-Pacific CEO of mobile device commodities James Rutherfoord stated that HMD Global is looking to launch 2 new phones by the fourth quarter of 2016 and 2 smartphones by the early second quarter of 2017.
To recap, HMD Global is the corporation which currently owns the rights to produce Nokia products and has partnered with the company to do so. Going by Rutherfoord’s statements, the first crop of true Nokia-branded handsets will likely be feature phones and the next one will be the highly-anticipated Android smartphones.
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Previous reports had hinted that Nokia was planning on launching four Android phones and tablets by Q4 2016 or Q1 2017. The new timeline doesn’t exactly match this one. It’s too early to tell which one is more accurate at this stage.
As for the Android-powered devices, the most recent one which has come to attention is the Nokia D1C. The huge 13.8-inch tablet was initially believed to be a smartphone before details about its size emerged. It runs Android 7.0 Nougat and sports a resolution of 1080p.
Rumored specifications include a SIM card slot, 16MP rear camera, 8MP selfie snapper, Snapdragon 430 processor, 16GB of ROM, and 3GB of RAM. Stay tuned for more developments regarding Nokia’s upcoming slate of products as and when they pop up.