Nokia will be returning to the mobile phone business, the company's spokesperson, Roberto Morlino has confirmed. The Finnish mobile phone brand is looking for a partner that will provide it with hardware to produce future phone models with.
On a July 13 blog post, Morlino wrote that re-entering the mobile industry is "complicated". The company has released tablets and some smartphones for the Windows Phone brand, following Nokia's sale to Microsoft in April 2014.
Morlino has this to say about the mobile comeback, "We also aim to continue bringing our iconic design capabilities and technology innovation to the mobile space, and in the form of amazing products people can someday hold in their hands. However, we'll do it in a completely different way from before."
Nokia has been a leading brand for mobile devices. It has paved the way for innovations in the mobile industry, with its development and sale of the first cellular phone units in the late 1990's until the first few years of the 2000's. The sales of its products, however, have been dwindling over the years.
Nokia's newer models have not been able to compete with big names in the smartphone industry, like Apple and Samsung. The company has an overall customer share of 3 percent worldwide as of last year. It has reportedly suffered a 0.5 percent decrease this year.
The mobile company has been sold to software giant Microsoft early last year. The merger has turned out to be less than successful. It ended with Microsoft eventually writing off close to $8 billion from the deal with Nokia.
Recent news, however, pointed to the Redmond software company releasing six new Lumia phones for its Windows Phone line. Lumia is Nokia's flagship device. So apart from the comeback to selling phones under the Nokia name, it seems that Nokia will still have some involvement in the Windows Phone business.
With regards to when the comeback will happen, Nokia spokesman Morlino stated that for now, the mobile brand is looking for "right partner who can take on the heavy lifting and work closely with us to deliver a great product." And he later added that the soonest it can happen is in 2016.
