Author: Julie Campbell

The brand will be releasing its first Android powered smartphones and tablets at the beginning of 2017.

The very first Nokia mobile devices that have seen store shelves in two years will start being sold in 2017. They will include both smartphones and tablets. Those gadgets will run on Android, said the company.

The Finnish company is now completing the last stages of a licensing agreement with HMD Global.

Through this new agreement, HMD Global holds exclusive rights to use the brand for Nokia mobile devices for the next 10 years. That company is also based in Finland. It will manufacture phones under the Nokia brand and will also continue the production of the company’s existing feature phone lineup.

Both HMD Global and Foxconn, a Chinese company, acquired Nokia from Microsoft. Foxconn was contracted for the mobile device manufacturing. The next devices released under the brand’s name will run on Android and will be available for purchase before mid-2017.

The Nokia mobile devices will be marketed on the brand’s reputation for simple, quality products.

According to Arto Nummela, HMD Global CEO, “We will be extremely true to the Nokia brand. The brand is known for simplicity, ease of use, reliability, and quality. These are the elements that we will deliver together with amazing industrial design.” That company will be making an investment of more than $500 million into marketing smartphones and tablets under the Nokia name.

Two years ago, Nokia sold its mobile hardware division to Microsoft. The acquisition was for $7.2 billion and required Nokia to stop branding its handsets until the close of this year. The company had been struggling and had already slashed its workforce from 24,000 at its highest to less than 1,000.

Microsoft didn’t do much better with the hardware division. It proceeded to sell the Nokia mobile devices brand to Foxconn and HMD Global for $350 million. This was in response to a massive 46 percent phone revenue nosedive it experienced last quarter. The companies are going ahead with new smartphones and tablets boasting the Nokia brand’s name as well as the Android operating system.

The largest social network is now bringing these games back to its Messenger and mobile app.

Facebook mobile games are on their way, says the company. The goal is to help to replicate the type of success they have seen on Facebook.com. According to the social network, 15% of the time spent on the website is from users playing games.

However, until now, those mobile games were not available on the Facebook mobile app.

Despite the fact that the majority of its users spend most of their time on the app, it didn’t include Facebook mobile games. Instead, the social network encouraged people to use Google Play or the App Store to download the games. They could not be played within Facebook’s mobile app itself.

It is precisely that limitation that will soon be changing. The company announced that it is rolling out Instant Games. This feature makes it possible for Facebook users to play some of their favorite mobile games inside Facebook Messenger and the main Facebook app.

Some of the Facebook mobile games that will be available include Words with Friends and Pac-Man.

This isn’t the first time the king of social media platforms has chosen to host content within itself. Previous efforts have included advertising and web articles among other things. The goal of this strategy is to ensure that users remain within the Facebook mobile apps for as long as possible. Hosting the content instead of sending users elsewhere is an important step in keeping them on the platform.

After all, if users can play mobile games while still in Facebook – where they already were – then why would they leave that app in order to use a different one?

This also presents a considerable mobile marketing opportunity for game app developers. The reason is that Facebook has a massive reach. Therefore, it can place a mobile game in front of a larger number of potential players. Moreover, because users can simply start playing as they don’t need to leave Facebook to download it. Eliminating that additional step can make it far easier to encourage users to give the game a try.

With 1.8 billion users, it is more than likely that Facebook mobile games will have quite the draw for developers and users alike.