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Nokia is up to something, and we all know this because the Finnish company teased a photo yesterday, flashing a new product before our eyes. It also made a lot of noise via its Twitter and Facebook accounts, using hashtags and subtle references to “thinking ahead”. While the photo showed just some mysterious Nokia black box, the teaser also spoke about a product’s launch later today.
What lies inside the Nokia black box? Is it a new smartphone? Some computing device? A new wearable gadget? The answers may be many, but tech specialists swear it is not a phone we will see today, and for good reason: Microsoft made Nokia phones a thing of the past.
What happened to Nokia phones anyway? As you know, Nokia sold its cell phones division to Microsoft. The tech behemoth dropped the Nokia brand name, however, launching its products under the Microsoft name, just as it happened with the first ever Microsoft Lumia 535 phone released last week.
Why can’t be there a smartphone inside the Nokia black box? The agreement between Microsoft and Nokia upon the purchase of the cell phone division says that Nokia isn’t allowed to build (and not even design) any kind of smartphone by the end of 2016. It isn’t allowed to feature any types of phones for a decade, either.
Keep in mind that the takeover took place very recently, so Nokia is facing a “no – smartphone” policy for a very long time. Once the biggest cell phone manufacturer in the world, in an era when Microsoft was tweaking and patching its operating systems, now Nokia is completely banned to work on the cell phones that made it famous.
So we are back to square one: what is inside the mysterious Nokia black box? Some specialists assume the rather small and compact case is a set-top box device running Android TV. It can also be a smartwatch or a GPS device inside a black elegant container for all we know.
Comments on Nokia’s teaser photo revolve around the notions of a tiny PC, a streaming box, a Nexus Play and so on. However, given the fact that Android TV is the new cool kid on the block, Nokia may follow the footsteps of Amazon and Google and come up with its own set – top box.
The Finnish company announced the big product launch later this evening during the Slush conference. This is an event which gathers Eurasian tech start – up companies and interested parties, including investors, in Helsinki, Finland. Let’s just all wait and see what’s in the Nokia black box and what predictions turn out to be right!
