Nokia to Return to Making Phones in 2016?

Nokia is planning a return to the consumer mobile phone market, reports Re/code. The company sold its Devices and Services division to Microsoft about a year ago for 3.79 billion euro and licensed its patents to the company for another 1.65 billion euro.

The return to the mobile phone market is said to be driven by Nokia Technologies, the smallest of the three businesses that remained after the Microsoft acquisition.

As early as next year, the company aims to rejoin the phone market, two sources briefed on Nokia’s plans told Re/code. In addition, the company has a number of other ambitious technology projects, including some in the virtual reality arena, these sources said.


Nokia Technologies has designed new products and licensed them to other companies including an Android program called Zlauncher and the N1 tablet design. That tablet designed is licensed to another manufacturer but sold under the Nokia name in China.

Insiders say that those products are just the beginning:

“They have a lot of great stuff in development,” said Richard Kerris, a former Nokia executive who also consulted for the company until last year as part of his last startup. “It gave me complete confidence that Nokia is a company that is not going away.” Kerris could get into specifics but said that people will be blown away if some of the technology comes to market.

Due to agreements with Microsoft, Nokia has to wait until the end of this year to sell phones under the Nokia brand and until the end of the third quarter of this year to license the Nokia name to other phone manufacturers.


Nokia has promised that it is "expanding into exciting new areas … with a focus on enabling the human possibilities of the connected world." We'll let you know if this means a return to making smartphones. Please follow iClarified on Twitter, Facebook, or RSS for updates.

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