Nokia announces its plan of selling new range of smartphones at the recent Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016.
The mobiles phones range from 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), and security. The plan to produce new phones gained $350 million investment fund from of Nokia Growth Ventures, according to Venture Beat. It will be distributed into new IoT projects, a new 5G-ready radio access product to replace its existing Flexi base station, and the acquisition of Canadian network security company Nakina Systems.
The company’s announcement is part of attributable to the company’s recent $16.6 billion acquisition of France’s Alcatel-Lucent, a company specializing in telecoms and networking equipment technology. Nokia had previously said that the acquisition would help it accelerate development of future technologies such as 5G and the Internet of Things.
The company has a history of radical reinventions. Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said that returning to a market where it excelled for so long is something it views as an opportunity given the residual brand recognition of Nokia and handsets.
In July, Nokia confirmed its plans to re-enter the mobile phone business once it found a viable manufacturing, sales, marketing and customer support partner to replace Foxconn. A Nokia spokesman said that if they have found a world-class partner who can take on those responsibilities, the company would go on full force to guide the design and technology differentiation as they did with the Nokia N1 Android tablet.
The company, whose phones were once a favorite with consumers, sold its devices business to Microsoft in 2014 for $7.2 billion. It has since regained the rights to sell smartphones under the Nokia brand. Nokia's reign in the mobile world began in the early 1990s and lasted almost 20 years, peaking with consumer favorites like the 3210 and 3310.
Around the dawn of the iPhone in 2007, feature phones made by the likes of Nokia started to lose their luster. The company's popularity waned as the smartphone revolution took hold and Nokia failed to keep up.
As part of its comeback plan, Nokia launched its Ozo virtual reality camera last year in what it described as the first in a planned portfolio of digital media solutions, Telegraph reported. Before then it had been focused on developing its networking, mapping and patent licensing businesses.