News of Nokia’s return to smartphone manufacturing has been going round for a while but the company didn’t confirm when that would happen, not until a few days ago during an event.
The former tech giant has an annual event called Capital Markets Day (CMD) where they review the company’s strategy, operations, and financial targets. This year’s edition was held in Barcelona and a slide shown at the event states that 2017 will be the year of (the) ”Nokia brand’s return to smartphones”.
Like previous rumors have already stated, Nokia would not be making the smartphones itself but it will be working in collaboration with Finnish company, HMD Global, and Taiwanese company; Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, which we all know as Foxconn.
Nokia will provide patents which HMD will use to develop, market, and sell Nokia-branded phones and accessories. Foxconn on the other hand will handle manufacturing and research and development (R&D). The agreement will run for a period of ten years after which they might decide to renew it or end it.
The first Nokia branded smartphone expected to be released next year is the Nokia D1C which showed up on Antutu and Geekbench a few months ago. The D1C is expected to launch with Android Nougat, an unconfirmed screen size with a 1080p resolution, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and a Snapdragon 430 SoC.
READ MORE: Nokia CEO Says Company Will Make New Foray into Consumer Market
The company already announced that its CEO will be one of the keynote speakers at next year’s Mobile World Congress event and we expect to learn more about the company’s plan then.
