Comment on “We cannot support it:” Polestar follows Tesla out of car lobby over Toyota led campaign

• ajsadauskas@aus.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  @moitoi @unionagainstdhmo It's a bit more complicated than that.

  So Nokia sold its mobile phone business to Microsoft for around US$7.5 billion in 2013.

  Microsoft licensed the rights to use the Nokia brand for 10 years (but eventually rebranded the phones to Microsoft Lumia).

  The old Nokia continues to make commercial communications equipment: https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2014/04/25/nokia-completes-sale-of-substantially-all-of-its-devices-services-business-to-microsoft/

  By 2015, Microsoft realised it screwed up and wrote down the entire value of the former Nokia/Lumia mobile phone business: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2945371/microsoft-writes-off-76b-admits-failure-of-nokia-acquisition.html

  Meanwhile, a group of former Nokia employees, with financial backing from Nokia, set up a new company called HMD Global.

  Then HMD Global bought most of the former Nokia/Lumia mobile phone business off Microsoft for $350 million (including the licence to use the Nokia brand).

  Foxconn bought the manufacturing, distribution and sales divisions. Foxconn then signed an agreement with HMD to build phones for HMD using those assets: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/18/nokia-returns-phone-market-microsoft-sells-brand-hmd-foxconn

  So when you buy a HMD phone, you're buying from a company that's partly owned by Nokia, managed by ex-Nokia people, designed by the former Nokia/Lumia mobile phone division, and built by the former Nokia/Lumia mobile phone division (through Foxconn).

  It's pretty much a Nokia phone.

  source