Last week was filled with rumors implying that former mobile phone making giant Nokia will make a come back in the smartphone making business. But, today the company has made it clear in a new statement saying that it has no plans to return to making and selling consumer cell phones. The closest Nokia gets to the mobile industry right now is through licensing of their large portfolio of patents, as well as licensing their own name for the N1 tablet sold in Asia.
Nokia’s statement is very brief and straightforward however if your read between the lines, they possibly trying to leave themselves some wiggle room?
Nokia notes recent news reports claiming the company communicated an intention to manufacture consumer handsets out of a R&D facility in China. These reports are false, and include comments incorrectly attributed to a Nokia Networks executive.
Nokia reiterates it currently has no plans to manufacture or sell consumer handsets.
Well, whatever wiggle room they may be hoping to achieve, they’re unlikely to get it anytime in the near future. Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s phone business has been completed for a year now, and among the agreements to the deal are that Nokia won’t sell any phones through the end of the current year, and it can’t license its name to appear on any phones until the end of 2016.
Recently the company purchased Alcatel-Lucent for over $16 billion, getting into the cloud computing and Internet of Things markets. This clearly shows a different direction for Nokia depicting less interest in returning to the phone making phones soon.
