During the “Nokia Capital Markets Day 2014″ event today, Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri has revealed Nokia’s strategy to en-cash the Nokia brand in future.
While he confirmed that Nokia will return to “Consumer world”, he added, Nokia is not looking at direct manufacturing of handsets in future. It is possible to license Nokia brand name for handsets in long term. As the Nokia Technologies presentation slides confirm, Nokia can’t license its brand name for handsets till Q4 2016. Though, the same slide confirms that Nokia can already license its brand name for other devices.
Under brand licensing, Nokia considers “industrial and software design and ODM management” as key investment areas, which means Nokia will not only license the brand name to ODMs like Compal, but will also control software and design part of handset manufacturing. This may be a good proposition, as it will allow Nokia to keep costs low and also ensure quality of licensed handsets, if it ever happens.
This is not very surprising though, as in our POV article we already told you,
Nokia may return to smartphones, but not anytime soon. Expect more apps & lifestyle products in near-future
With 3rd-party manufacturers like Compal and Foxconn, it is not a very difficult task to get the hardware out, if design and material are finalized by Nokia. Coming to after sales services, again, there are number of 3rd party vendors catering for many big firms.
So, what CEO Suri told today and what Nokia Technologies slide tell us is not different from what we expected. So, Nokia design and software will come with a Nokia branded phone in future, but you need to wait till Q4 2016.
