The tech company is seeking partnerships and is hiring talent as it prepares to make its way back into the market.
Nokia has announced that it is now testing products, hiring experts in software, and is looking to make new sales partnerships as it builds its strategy to return to the consumer and mobile technology industry.
After having previously stepped out of the handset and smartphone business, it is now headed back in.
Nokia was once a leader in mobile technology and was the largest cell phone maker on the planet. That said, when smartphones took over basic cellular phones and feature phones, the Finnish firm made decisions that allowed Apple and Samsung to leap into the top spots. Eventually, Microsoft purchased Nokia’s handset business. Since that time in 2013, Nokia has placed all of its energies on creating equipment for telecom networks.
While Nokia can’t fully return to the mobile technology industry until the end of 2016, it plans to be ready.
The company has a non-competition deal with Microsoft that is blocking Nokia from being able to make it back into the handset business at the moment, but when that expires in 2016, Rajeev Suri, the CEO of the company, plans to be ready. The preparations are now heavily underway with the business in order to ensure that once it is free to jump back into the smartphone and consumer handset business, it will be ready to leap with both feet.
Nokia has already taken a tiny step back into the consumer marketplace after having launched a tablet based on the Android operating system. This device hit the market shelves in China in January, and is called the N1. Much more recently, it unveiled a type of “virtual-reality camera” which it has referred to as the “rebirth of Nokia”.
Other tech that the company has set out to the market includes an Android app entitled the Z Launcher, which is designed to provide smartphones with more effective content organization.
That said, a major focus of the business is now to prepare for reentry into mobile technology in a big way. It is hoping to create handsets in the future that will provide stiff competition in that market.
