Nokia brand fading away as HMD smartphones take baby steps

The once popular Nokia smartphones are dying a slow death with brand licensee HMD Global now focused on promoting its own brand alongside exploring partnerships and white-label manufacturing with established brand names like Mattel’s Barbie and Dutch beverages company, Heineken.

HMD chief executive Jean-Francois Baril told ET that the company signed an agreement last August with Finland-based Nokia to ramp down the smartphone business with which it entered the global market in 2016. It however continues to leverage Nokia’s large patent pool and now has its own bank of intellectual property in smartphone technology.