HMD Ditches Nokia Brand To Launch Its Own Mystery Phone, Says 2024 Will Be A Big Year

It's time to pour one out for Nokia, at least in the smartphone space. The brand, as we know it, will be joining the likes of Palm and Blackberry in the smartphone graveyard. This comes as owner HMD Global shifts focus into making devices with its own "HMD" branding, including smart and dumb phones, tablets, and possibly other wearables.

Finnish company HMD Global announced plans to drop the "Nokia" name from its phones once and for all, while promising more "Human Mobile Devices," implying plans to sell more than just smartphones. The short video above seems to hint at things like tablets, modernized dumb phones, and earphones. If you still didn't think HMD is serious, the company's previous @nokiamobiles handle on X is now @HMDglobal. Nokia's retail website has gone dark as well, and its listings are transitioning to a new HMD Global website.

Lars Silberbauer, CMO of Nokia Phones/HMD posted on LinkedIn that “while we’ve been known as the makers of Nokia phones, our vision extends beyond this legacy. We’re transitioning from being a licensee to becoming a multi-brand company with our own distinct HMD brand product line, complemented by several licensing partnerships and significant brand collaborations.” 

We're definitely bummed to see the once-dominant Nokia brand disappear into the annals of history. Along with Motorola, Nokia was a pioneer especially in the 90s and early millennium with gems like the Nokia 9000 smartphone and the Nokia 7650, which was the first phone with a built-in camera. Combined with the introduction of the iPhone and sales flops, the company made a slow, but steady decline until it was rescued in 2013 for a short time by Microsoft. That fell through, after which Nokia sold the brand to HMD Global and then in 2016, signed a 10-year deal allowing HMD to use the "Nokia" brand on its products.

With the old branding behind it, the Helsinki-based company is possibly looking to reveal at least a new Nokia Lumia-like phone at the upcoming Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. We've been holding out for a Lumia 1020 replacement for the longest time, so the implications of a new Lumia camera system to compete with the likes of Pixel 8s and S24 Ultras could be huge.