Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri Says ‘Not In A Hurry’ To Sell Nokia-Branded Smartphones

It’s a known fact that Finland’s one of the biggest companies Nokia will be making a comeback very soon. After staying under the shadow of Microsoft for a couple of years, CEO Rajeev Suri acknowledged last year that Nokia will be selling smartphones under its brand name, once again, in the near future.

Once the partnership with Microsoft came to an end, Nokia reportedly sold the prominent HERE Maps to German auto makers BMW, Audi and Daimler for a whopping 2.8 billion euros (nearly $3 billion). After this, the tech giant purchased networking products manufacturer Alcatel-Lucent, Re/Code reported.

Thanks to this deal, Nokia is now one of the trailblazers in the nascent LTE network 5G technology. Not to forget, the humongous patent library that comes with this acquisition.

Nokia is apparently not planning to restart the smartphone unit, which was once sold to Microsoft. Alternatively, the company wants to outsource the manufacturing and marketing of devices to a third party vendor.

In Suri’s own words: “We don’t want to just put logos on somebody’s devices. It needs to feel like Nokia, what Nokia was known for.”

Nokia initially planned to find a partner to build devices by the end of 2015. However, this plan did not materialize. But then, it looks like, Nokia is taking it easy. Suri apparently said “We’re not in a hurry. There doesn’t need to be a rush.”

Although, Suri did not talk about a definitive date of launch, Phone Arena said that it's safe to assume that there will be no Nokia-branded device until 2017.

But then, not long ago, a promo video was uploaded by Nokia itself showing an unnamed Nokia-branded smartphone and tablet in tow. However, the tech giant did not give out any more information.