HMD Global (Nokia Mobile) inaugurated its European production line with a 5G smartphone, manufactured in small quantities. But the Finnish firm could do more in the future.
This is undoubtedly good news for Europe, even if at this stage it looks more like a coup than a real revolution. Still, HMD Global, the company which has been marketing phones under the Nokia brand since 2016, has announced European production which could give ideas to other players in the sector.
A very limited number of smartphones manufactured in Europe at the moment
HMD becomes the first major global smartphone manufacturer to set up production in Europe, that’s a fact. The Finnish company inaugurates its new production line with the Nokia XR21.
For the moment, only 30 Nokia XR21 smartphones, marketed in limited edition at a price of 699 euros, notably in France, have been manufactured on European soil. In the process, the Nokia XR21 European Edition should be available soon.
The Finnish teams decided to carry out this manufacturing in Hungary. And it seems like this is just the beginning. “ In the future, HMD intends to transfer more of the manufacturing and assembly process to other locations in Europe », Explains the group to Clubic. The company wants to move forward step by step.
HMD (Nokia) promises to increase production “ At gradually »
For the moment, this is only the first phase, here applied to a small number of 5G phones. The company tells us that during this period, the volume of device manufacturing in Europe will remain low compared to the overall volume produced by HMD, but “ it will increase gradually “.
In the interest of transparency, we also asked HMD where the rest of the process was done outside Europe. It is in China that the company’s current partner collects materials and carries out initial assembly, ” before shipping to HMD’s manufacturing partner in the European Union », she explains to us.
Once the materials arrive in Europe, HMD’s partner must finish assembling the device, calibrate it and test all aspects of the smartphone as well as software and security, ” as is currently the case for all Nokia smartphones », Reminds us the manufacturer. A small step for the return of mobile in Europe, but a big step for Nokia, certainly.
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