Nokia to return to smartphone market by 2016

According to a new report, Nokia is secretly working on a project that will see Nokia jump back into the smartphone market by announcing a smartphone in 2016. The report also states that the people who know about the Finland based company coming back to the smartphone business have knowledge about Nokia’s plans.

The return to smartphone market will not be a straightforward act; instead Nokia Technologies will be coming back in an unorthodox way. According to the report, Nokia will launch a device but will license its design and name to any other company responsible for handling its sales and production. Nokia has to service a 1 year ban on releasing any Nokia smartphone which will be lifted at the end of this year.

Microsoft bought Nokia’s phone business for $7.2 billion last year and also claimed the rights to use Nokia brand name on smartphones. But after sometime, Microsoft announced that its smartphones will carry the Lumia brand in place of Nokia, thus naming the devices as Microsoft Lumia products.

Currently, Nokia Technologies division has released two products after the Microsoft acquisition – the Android Zlauncher and an Android based N1 tablet design which was, as discussed earlier, licensed to another manufacturer which is using Nokia brand name to sell the device in China. According to former Nokia executive Richard Kerris, “They [Nokia] have a lot of great stuff in development.  It gave me complete confidence that Nokia is a company that is not going away.”

Nokia was once like a giant whale in the smartphone industry but it failed to adopt the changing trends of the market. But now, a fresh start is all what Nokia need. This time, they must push towards manufacturing Android based smartphones and stop looking anywhere else.