Singapore-based Newkia wants to bring Nokia back

http://asia.cnet.com/singapore-based-newkia-wants-to-bring-nokia-back-62222296.htm

by wiradikusuma • 13 years ago

21 21 13 years ago

asia.cnet.com

calinet6• 13 years ago

Sounds great, but that name is a lawsuit waiting to happen. It'll never fly.

Metrop02182• 13 years ago

Yup. Microsoft would sue in about a week.

devx• 13 years ago

Microsoft? Microsoft doesn't own the Nokia brand. If anything it will be Nokia suing them.

iamshs• 13 years ago

This is pure desperation and raking nationalistic fire by the CEO of newkia. The name sounds like a generic Chinese knockoff of Nokia, and they started the company in hopes of Nokia guys jumping ship to them. In reality, it looks like they will package cheap Chinese vendor phones with their own skin, that's it. Also, good luck with MS lawyers to able to legitimize the name Newkia.

guizzy• 13 years ago

Nokia wasn't an idea. It was a group of people, it was factories, carrier relationships and a whole lot of patents.

It can't just be remade.

_ea1k2• 13 years ago

If they had done this a year ago, with Nokia quality cameras and design, it could have been successful. Right now, I have a lot of doubts. The name will obviously have to change, and I have a lot of doubts in their ability to create quality hardware with meaningful differentiation from what is already out there.

Without a lot of funding, this will just end up being a rebadged version of something already available in China, IMO.

pmelendez• 13 years ago

"If they had done this a year ago"

I guess we would never know but I disagree with you. Part of Nokia's charm had been always the ability to differentiate from the rest. And that would be really hard to do in an Android environment where the war is about high-end hardware at a cheap price.

Right now, Lumia 920 was supposedly in the same league than the Galaxy S4 and the iPhone 5 (performance wise speaking). But the S4 have a quadcore CPU and 2Gb of RAM while the Lumia "survives" with a dual core and 1Gb of RAM, roughly the half of hardware.

WP8 is fast enough to mask that hardware difference but without that advantage, I can't see how they would be competitive enough either with the price or with the spects

_ea1k2• 13 years ago

The Moto X (and it's Verizon brethren) are selling pretty well so far, and they are US only at the moment. They also have dual-core CPUs and relatively modest specs by modern standards. No OS magic is required to make this run acceptably, Android does just fine on its own (as it does on my 2 year old Tegra 2 tablet running 4.3).

There is a meme floating around that only Samsung makes money on Android, and that only high-end devices are profitable. Neither aspect of this has much evidence behind it.

GrinningFool• 13 years ago

Even a year ago, not so much. Likely not even two years ago.

The market is jammed full of Android phones. Some of them even have differentiating features. Adding another one to the mix - whether now or a year ago - is not a way to make a sustainable business. As nearly every vendor other than Samsung is learning.

JonFish85• 13 years ago

Not to mention, they're going to be playing Samsung's game, and will likely lose that. Sure they have good hardware, but Samsung has a huge head start and owns so much of the Android market (95% of all profits according to [1]) that I think Nokia will be another HTC or Sony that might have a good phone or two, but with nothing to really differentiate themselves, they'll fold.

Not to mention, I think Samsung has such tight vertical integration (they manufacture a lot of the parts themselves) that anyone looking to get into Android is going to have a tough time really competing with Samsung.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/samsung-undisputed-android-king-takes-9...

Fuxy• 13 years ago

Name will have to change. Will have to see about the hardware though. If they can pull off somethind like the Lumia but with Android I'll buy it.

speeder• 13 years ago

Beside the terrible name, if they pull this off, I would be very happy.

If they propose crowdfunding this for example, I would happily throw on it lots of money =D

Zigurd• 13 years ago

The real new Nokia is called Jolla. They are just down the road from the old one, and they have been at it for a couple years now, and will soon ship their first products.

Jolla makes hardware and software. The software is called Sailfish and is based(?) on Mer, which claims to be a fork of Meego.

The old Nokia owns part of Jolla.

TsiCClawOfLight• 13 years ago

True this. Jolla is amazing, and very short of it's initial release. Yes, Sailfish is basically the successor of Meego :)

bhauer• 13 years ago

Meh. For me, the appeal of a Nokia phone is Windows Phone.

Take that away, and make a Nokia-like phone with Android? That would be fairly meaningless to me. There are already scores of Android phones with slick hardware. I prefer the industrial design of several compared to my Nokia phone. But they all run Android, and I've become bored with Android.

I'm not sure why Android fans are so evangelistic that they want to convert the scarce few stalwarts of alternatives.

eksith2• 13 years ago

  I'm not sure why Android fans are so evangelistic that they want to convert the scarce few stalwarts of alternatives.

I can build an app for Android and have it live with the least amount of hassle, pain and blind rage that is no where near the comparison to what accompanies launching on the Windows Phone or on the iPhone.

I'd order the ease of deployment for new apps by platform as so :

  * BlackBerry
  * Android
  * Windows Phone
  * The third circle of hell
  * Jimmy's app store
  * iPhone

Metrop02182• 13 years ago

"least amount of hassle, pain and blind rage" - I find that comical. My short experience doing android development has been nothing short of a headache which I eventually rage quit, but more power to you if you find it easy.

jister• 13 years ago

This is like Diaspora* with all the publicity a while ago. A nice attempt, maybe, to bring back "Nokia" but without a clear direction of where they are heading. A "Nokia" phone with android is going against Samsung not with Microsoft WP phones.

Singapore-based Newkia wants to bring Nokia back

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