Arriving late to the smartphone party was a disaster for Nokia, but the once-buoyant Finnish phone brand has, like its phones of old, somehow survived a battering. Nokia’s market share in mobile phones slumped from 50% in 2007 to less than 5% in 2013, as iPhones captured global consumer interest.

Microsoft bought Nokia’s mobile phone business in 2013 but failed to resurrect the brand and offloaded it three years later to Finnish company HMD Global.

HMD has developed an extensive range of Nokia models using the Android operating system. The devices are manufacutured by Foxconn, which also manufactures devices for Apple and other phone brands.

Majoring on affordability and long battery life, HMD's Nokia phone range includes a retro model with no internet connectivity and chunky keypad. Higher-end models include the recently launched Nokia 9 Pureview, which costs around €700.

Lisa Higgins (pictured), HMD’s business manager for Ireland, joined the firm in 2017 after working with HTC. “Our strategic partnerships with Google, Qualcomm and Zeiss lenses are crucial,” she says. “They are helping us to future-proof our phones and we can also build on the legacy of quality and trust that was a linchpin of the Nokia brand.”

In Association with

Higgins explains that all new Nokia devices come with a guarantee that they will get at least two years of Google OS updates when they are released. The phones also get 36 months of security patch updates. Higgins says that the software updates are a differentiator for Nokia in the crowded mobile device field.

Higgins points to HMD research last year among corporate decision makers across Europe. This found that the supply of regular and fast security updates is the most important decision criterion when purchasing new business smartphones, followed by guaranteed OS upgrades and the supplier’s ability to provide a broad range of business smartphones.

Corporate buyers have a preference for more affordable mobile devices to high-priced models, and when comparing smartphone security features, regular and fast security patches are the most trusted, followed by built-in mobile threat detection, antivirus software and fingerprint sensors.

HMD’s survey also found that support of deployment tools and compatibility with Enterprise Mobility Management solutions is still underestimated.

The Google partnership will see HMD shortly release a Nokia phone with a dedicated Google button, which when pressed will enable voice search on the Google browser. Higgins says the hope is that it will catch the attentions of millennials, because there’s only so far that nostalgia can take the Nokia brand.

“When we launched in the Irish market two years ago, the low-hanging fruit for us was the over-35 demographic. To really grow market share, we need to be tapping into the millennial and younger demographics,” Higgins explains.

For value buyers looking for a pay-as-you go disposable, the new Nokia 1 Plus (pictured above) is now available to buy from Vodafone for €89. One of the first Android 9 (Go edition) smartphones, Nokia 1 Plus brings solid imaging in a high-quality Nokia design with a big screen.

The Nokia 1 Plus has a textured nano-pattern at the back that cups the Nokia 1 Plus all the way to the display. Its polycarbonate shell is inherently coloured rather than painted.

According to Higgins, Nokia 1 Plus’s 5.45-inch 18:9 full screen display means better viewing quality for browsing the web, streaming content and playing games. And the 5MP front selfie camera has a novel ‘beautify feature’ that facilitates smoothing appearance.