Washington - The
2017 smartphone cycle is about to kick off in earnest, and there are some
familiar names fighting to come back into the fold.
BlackBerry
Mobile announced this week that a new phone - complete with a physical keyboard
and dubbed the "Mercury" - will debut Febuary 25 at the annual Mobile
World Congress trade show. That follows hard on the heels of an announcement
from Nokia, which teased the Chinese launch of its new Nokia 6 phone ahead of a
larger Febuary 26 launch event.
Nokia?
BlackBerry? What's next, the return of Baby-G watches? It may all feel a bit
2002 seeing these phone brands come back into the spotlight, but here's the
thing: These are not the phone brands that you think they are. Both of the new
smartphones are made by different companies than the ones we knew and loved, as
a result of complicated licensing agreements.
Read also: BlackBerry's keyboard is back for one last dance
The company you
know as BlackBerry - Canadian, security-conscious - is focusing its efforts on
software to augment smartphones and its auto efforts via QNX - a part of the
firm that makes smart dashboard software and has its own self-driving car
prototype. While BlackBerry designed the Mercury in-house, it and all other
BlackBerry phones will be made and sold by Chinese tech giant TCL.
A different company
And Nokia is no
longer the company that rose to prominence with its old feature phones, though
it still makes telecom equipment and other consumer gadgets. But since
Microsoft sold Nokia off, the rights to make Nokia-branded phones belong to
HMD, another Chinese tech company.
Both firms are
trying to make a bigger mark in a global smartphone market that's still largely
dominated by Apple and Samsung. Picking up a well-known- if slightly dusty -
brand from the earlier days of mobile phones is one way to do that.
But don't expect
exactly the same experience that you had before. Both phones also represent a
capitulation of sorts to Google. BlackBerry and Nokia held out for a while
using non-Android operating systems for years. (Nokia and BlackBerry each had
their own systems for a while. Nokia also moved to Windows Phone while it was
owned by Microsoft.) Both failed, in part because they couldn't keep up with
the app selection from Apple and Google, as most developers were only
interested in making programs for those two platforms. With both phones now
using Android, that won't be an issue anymore.
Of course,
consumers will have to hear more details about these phones before we can judge
whether either comeback will work. The success or failure of a phone depends
more on its features, price and value than on whether it gives you warm fuzzies
by reminding you of tech days gone by. But if you're looking to rock a little
retro this year, this could be one way to do it.