HMD emphasized to PC-WELT that it wanted to continue selling devices under the Nokia brand name. These are obviously intended to stand next to the HMD devices that are now the focus. HMD speaks in the best marketing language of a multi-brand strategy: “Our new multi-brand strategy will include the original HMD range, Nokia phones and exciting new partnerships”. This applies at least as long as HMD has licensed the trademark rights for Nokia smartphones.
In doing so, HMD wants to counteract the impression that it is letting Nokia die as a brand. HMD has only itself to blame for this impression, because the Finnish company launched a branding campaign on YouTube at the end of January 2024 in which it only focused on the abbreviation “HMD”. The “HMD” should now stand for “Human Mobile Devices”:
HMD writes about this video: “We have a new look, but some things will stay the same. We make phones that are tough, fun, secure, fast and affordable”. This involves renaming the NokiaMobile YouTube channel to HMD.
However, HMD obviously recognized that the Nokia brand was suffering from the new appearance and could give the impression that HMD was letting Nokia die as a brand. A few days later, HMD published a short video clip on its unnamed HMD YouTube channel in which it emphasized that it wanted to continue producing Nokia smartphones:
As early as fall 2023, Jean-Francois Baril, CEO and co-founder of HMD, announced via Linkedin that HMD Global would introduce the brand name “HMD”. This is associated with the introduction of new mobile devices.
The first two new HMD smartphones have already been discovered by the mobile phone news portal GSMChina.
HMD Global bought the naming rights from the Finnish company Nokia in 2016. HMD Global then sold smartphones with Android operating system and feature phones under the well-known brand name Nokia.
There are some former Nokia managers in HMD’s management team. HMD has its corporate headquarters in Espoo, Finland, where the Nokia Group is located. The HMD devices are manufactured by the Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn, which also produces for Apple. HMD says it has more than 500 employees.
Nokia G42 5G in price comparison:
That was Nokia
Nokia was the cell phone brand par excellence in the era of cell phones, i.e. before and for a long time after the year 2000. Nokia even had its own operating system for its cell phones: Symbian. Nokia cell phones stood for top quality.
But the Finnish world market leader for cell phones was completely overwhelmed by the smartphone wave. Nokia tried to avert the downfall by working closely with Microsoft: the Redmond company provided Windows Mobile as the operating system for Nokia smartphones. But neither Windows Mobile/Windows Phone nor Nokia had a chance against iPhone and Android smartphones.
You can read more about lost technology giants here: These 14 companies once dominated the computer world.
Nokia is cutting almost one in seven jobs in Germany
