MWC 2016: Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri confirms plan to return to smartphones

Nokia CEO planning cautious re-entry into smartphones

Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri has formally confirmed that the network equipment firm will return to smartphones, some two years after completing the sale of the company's Devices and Services division to Microsoft.

Under the terms of that deal, Nokia was barred from offering competing devices until the fourth quarter of 2016 - but Nokia is already busy making plans, he told MWC 2016.

However, the company won't make the devices itself - as it used to do - but will license its brand to a manufacturer in a similar manner to Google with its Nexus phones. "We want to be in a position to design the devices in question with appropriate control measures in case they don't meet expectations," Suri told reporters at the Mobile World Congress 2016.

He added that Nokia isn't in a hurry to get back into smartphones, either. "There's no timeline, there's no rush. It could happen in 2016, it could happen later."

Nokia sold off its mobile phone-making division to Microsoft in September 2013 as sales of Nokia smartphones crashed due to competition from Apple and Google Android. A botched shift from Symbian to Microsoft Windows Phone as its main smartphone operating system failed to reinvigorate sales and, indeed, probably contributed to the decline.

Microsoft's $7.2bn acquisition of Nokia smartphones was announced in September 2013 and completed by April 2014. It was also one of the final major acts of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who had announced his resignation just a month earlier.

Microsoft was allowed to use the Nokia brand name for smartphones for no more than 18 months after the completion of the deal, but for up to 10 years for feature phones. It re-branded its Windows Phones from Nokia to Microsoft Lumia.

For Suri, the release of Nokia-branded smartphones is part of his own 10-year plan to return Nokia to greatness. Suri had been instrumental in the growth and general success of Nokia Siemens Networks and appointed CEO of Nokia after the sale of Devices and Services to Microsoft.

Since taking over as CEO of Nokia, he has overseen the acquisition of rival network equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent, which was completed in January.