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| HMD receives funding from Nokia, Qualcomm and Google |
(HMD Global) HMD Global - the company that makes the new Nokia-branded mobile phones - has raised $ 230 million in new funding from investors including Nokia itself, Qualcomm and Google.
The Finnish company said on Tuesday that it will use the money to invest in developing smartphones that support 5G networks and hopes to work with local telecom companies to sell the product in the United States. This money will also be used to help HMD grow in markets such as Brazil, Africa, and India, and expand into other areas such as software, services, and hardware.
Since entering into a joint agreement with a Chinese company (Foxconn) in 2016 to buy the Finnish telecom giant's mobile division from Microsoft, HMD has the right to design and sell Nokia mobile phones. Foxconn manufactures these phones, while Nokia charges each phone HMD sells a usage fee. HMD sold about 70 million mobile phones last year and claims to have sold more than 240 million mobile phones to date.
Microsoft took over Nokia's cell phone business in 2014 due to the failure of Windows Phone phones, but the US company was unable to reverse the trend of Nokia's failure. Since HMD took over the division, the company has been trying to bring out older versions of Nokia phones to make users feel nostalgic. In addition to the flagship Nokia smartphones running the Android operating system from Google, phones such as the Nokia 8110 have also been launched.
HMD told CNBC: Last year, the company reported a net income of 1.7 billion euros ($ 2 billion), down about 30% from 2.4 billion euros in 2018, you think. Low presence in markets that require more investment. above. The company's losses increased by more than 50% in 2019 to 295 million euros.
The emerging corona virus (Covid-19) crisis has severely affected the smartphone market. Market research firm IDC expects smartphone shipments to decline 11.9% year-on-year to 1.2 billion. During the Covid-19 pandemic, HMD has focused on selling online.