Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said the company will tackle the mobile phone industry again once its non-compete clause with Microsoft expires next year.
Nokia no longer owns any manufacturing facilities and will not make its own phones. The company did something similar with an Android-based tablet it released in December.
“We will look for suitable partners,” said Suri in an interview with the German magazine Manager Magazin. “Microsoft makes mobile phones. We would simply design them and then make the brand name available to license.”
Microsoft bought Nokia’s handset business in 2014 for $7.2 billion.
Just this week, Microsoft reshuffled its executive deck and removed two former leaders from Nokia, Stephen Elop and Jo Harlow. Neither Elop nor Harlow has said what their next steps will be. Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform and Lumia-branded handsets continue to struggle in the market against Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.
The company is releasing a new mobile operating system, Windows 10 Mobile, this fall. Suri did not say if Nokia will use Android, Windows Phone, or some other platform for its future devices.
