Nokia, making a comeback in the handset market, made many big ticket announcements that included the relaunch of its iconic handset 3310 and a range of Android-based smartphones.
The announcements, including the resurrection of its popular snake game, would be available by the second quarter of this calendar year.
HMD Global, the company that has the rights to the Nokia brand of mobile phones, made the announcements a day prior to the official kick-start of Mobile World Congress 2017 (MWC). The global industry event, MWC starts on Monday and runs till Thursday, March 2.
“It’s a new era for the Nokia brand, but it’s a category for which Nokia has been known across the world,” said Nokia chief executive officer Rajeev Suri, referring to the handsets the company had announced.
“Nokia today is mostly a business-to-business company, with revenues mostly coming from networks business,” he said, adding that the company now has a number of customer-facing products such as watches, cameras, smartphones and digital including Virtual Reality (VR), among others.
The new Nokia 3310 is a slimmer version of the original GSM handset announced in 2000, and now comes in a range of colours of glossy red and yellow and mat blue and grey. The gadget, which was one of the most sold during the early 2000, now comes with a 2.4-inch colour screen, an FM radio, a 2MP camera and 2.5G connection.
Nokia also launched a series of smartphones, including the Nokia 6, which was made available in China in January, for €229 and a limited-edition gloss black model priced at €299. The company also introduced Nokia 5 (€189) and Nokia 3 (€139), both running on Android.
“HMD is working with Nokia, Foxconn and Google’s Android team to bring out the new Nokia handsets. We are aiming to be one of the top handset-makers globally,” HMD Global Chief Executive Officer Arto Nummela said.
In 2013, Nokia had sold its mobile device unit to Microsoft for $7.2 billion, a deal that was completed in April 2014. Later, the IT major sold off the feature phone assets to Foxconn subsidiary FIH Mobile, and design rights and rights to use Nokia brand to Finnish company HMD Global Oy. HMD had acquired a 10-year licence to use Nokia’s brand name in May 2016.
Earlier in the day, Nokia had announced a series of contracts with telecom operators that included a three-year deal with Telefonica to build networks in London, a deal with US operator Verizon and chip-maker Intel.