Nokia Z-Launcher |
2016 is the year when Nokia the former phone giant re-enters the smartphone market, using Google's Android operating system. Now image of a phone leaked on a French website hints that the Nokia's first proper Android phone is coming soon.
Last year Nokia CEO Rajiv Suri had said that Nokia would make the mobile phones again. However, it may go for a slightly different business model compared to what it used to follow before it sold the phone division to Microsoft. Unlike making and selling phones directly, Nokia may only design and conceptualise phones. The manufacturing and selling could be done by Nokia's partners.
"We will look for suitable partners," Rajeev Suri had said last year. "Microsoft makes mobile phones. We would simply design them and then make the brand name available to license."
Though it has been over years since we have seen a Nokia-branded phone Microsoft phased out Nokia brand in favour of Lumia the name still holds a sizable mindshare in the market, specifically the developing countries like India where Nokia was once a synonym for a mobile phone. If the company comes out with an Android phone and gives it the marketing push the phone deserves, it can still move a lot of numbers.