Tell HN: HMD Global might not be the exclusive licensee of Nokia phones anymore | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: HMD Global might not be the exclusive licensee of Nokia phones anymore

35 pointsZeik0s9 comments

I monitored the Nokia Website for security advisories and noticed, that they changed their footer on the website from before HMD Global as "exclusive Licensee for Phones and Tablets" to "a Licensee for Phones and Tablets".

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2023-10-03: "HMD Global Oy is the exclusive licensee of the Nokia brand for phones & tablets."

https://web.archive.org/web/20231003100506/https://www.hmdgl...

2023-10-05: "HMD Global Oy is a licensee of the Nokia brand for phones & tablets."

https://web.archive.org/web/20231005080707/https://www.hmdgl...

interesting, i didn't check other sites to kudos to showing this. So seems they didn't refresh every page at once.

Nokia is a brand name and a rapidly disappearing one at that.

The worst thing Microsoft did with their acquisition of the handset business was to maintain an exclusive license to the name for 5 years, up to 2016, well past the point where Windows Phone OS was discontinued.

That's when HMD Global started making phones, when it was too late for any OEM to somehow revive the name. They made mid-range models that were completely forgettable and worse in quality than Samsung and LG.

> They made mid-range models that were completely forgettable and worse in quality than Samsung and LG.

And why this is MS fault?

Because Microsoft abandoned the Nokia brand in 2014. Their last globally released MS-Nokia phone was in 2013. But the branding rights were locked up until Dec 2016.

The mobile industry was much more competitive in 2013, someone from Sony, OnePlus, HTC or LG could have snapped up the brand name and started making some nice phones.

Whatever they came up with would have been better than MS, who had no clue about how people use phones. See the Surface Duo and Duo 2 for examples.

The XR20 is anything but forgettable and worse in quality.

Maybe this has something to do with HMD's rebranding? They stopped operating exclusively under the Nokia brand a few months back: https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23869656/nokia-hmd-smartp...

Can someone expand on the significance of this?

This could theoretically mean we are going to see phones with Nokia as Brand from a different company.

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