HMD Global re-entered the phone market with the Nokia brand 4 years ago
|On the 1st December of 2016, the exclusive Nokia brand licensee for smartphones and feature phones HMD Global officially announced the start of their operations. That day a press release was issued announcing the active return of the Nokia brand to the phone market.
It’s been a bumpy ride for HMD and the Nokia-branded phones in the last 4 years. We saw a great initial market response in 2017 and 2018, but later in terms of smartphones the company chose to target the market that wants Android One devices, while the feature phone strategy remained making Nokia phones available for everyone, and we are seeing a mass transition from 2G to 4G feature phones.
With the latest fundraising HMD did this summer, when the company secured around 230 million dollars of investment, the Nokia brand licensee has resources available to deliver solid products. This year was a particularly rough one for everyone, so we hope by the time HMD turns 5 the situation in general will look better. We also saw good devices this year, from solid budget offerings like the Nokia 2.4, 3.4 and 5.3, to the higher end model Nokia 8.3, as well as attractive feature phones and some new accessories, like wireless earbuds BH-605 and BH-405.
Happy birthday HMD!