There have been numerous rumors and leaks of Nokia working on new smartphones for launch in the near future and now, we’re hearing that the Finnish giant is planning its big comeback for next year. The company will be designing its own handsets, but it will not be the one to sell them directly.
As you probably know, Nokia already has the N1 Android tablet which has proven to be quite successful. What the company has done here is it created the device and is licensing the design to other OEMs which are manufacturing and selling the slate with the Nokia branding on it.
This strategy will most likely be implemented in future products as well, including smartphones. The Finnish giant has already revealed that its plans to develop devices which fall in other segments and have them manufactured through third-part companies. Re/code has learned of company’s plans to re-enter the handset business through two sources.
The report notes that Nokia Technologies which is one of the three businesses not included in the Microsoft deal is the one responsible for this move. There’s no concrete information on what new phones we’ll be seeing from the company, but Android-based handsets have already popped up in the past with the giant’s branding onboard.
Also read: Microsoft has at least 4 more phones in development, 2 mid-range and 2 flagships
The 1100 was the most recent spotting and it showed up back in March running Lollipop 5.0. What we know about this device is that it will be an entry-level one powered by a 1.3GHz quad core Cortex A7 processor. Apart from the N1 tablet which has only been made available in China so far, Nokia has also launched its own Android application called Zlauncher which is a desktop replacement.
2016 is still a long way to go and while it’s great news that Nokia will be reentering the phone market, we wouldn’t really expect much from the company early on.