Production issues and tax regulations delayed launch of #Nokia phones

If you were following the HMD/Nokia story from the beginning, you know that the first lineup of Nokia smartphones made by HMD, the Nokia 3, 5 and 6, is breaking the promised deadline by which the phones should be available on the market.

In interviews before the devices were announced, HMD’s CEO Arto Nummela said that they will bring the phones to market in weeks after the announcement. At MWC2017, during the announcement of Nokia 3, 5 and 6, HMD officially unveiled that the phones will hit the shelves by the end of Q2 (30th June) this year.

Last few weeks we found out a lot of release dates for the new Nokia phones. In a lot of markets Nokia 3 is or will be available by the end of this month, that is June. The 5 and 6 should come in July, with the beautiful color options like Copper or Tempered Blue “later this summer”.

There are numerous reasons for such delays, and some of them have nothing to do with HMD. It’s fair to say that HMD is a young company that’s first time entering the smartphone market and doing so on a global scale, even though they have an experienced team.

IndiaToday received information from sources at Nokia that Foxconn, or better to say its company FIH Mobile faced production issues. FIH started the manufacturing process in India right in time of a new tax law implementation. IndiaToday says: “Sources within Nokia now say that all the teething problems are behind them now. The manufacturing processes have been set and infrastructure is ready and churning out phones.”

But as noted earlier, GST is not the only reason behind the delay in Nokia 6 and Nokia 5 in India. All the new Nokia phones — Nokia 3, Nokia 6 and the Nokia 5 — are made in India phones. However, ramping up the production for the new Nokia phones also took its own time, especially considering the fact that HMD Global and its manufacturing partner Foxconn were doing it even as new tax regime was rolling out. For the production processes, HMD Global first aimed at setting up the supply lines for Nokia 3. The Nokia 6 and the Nokia 5 followed then.

We can conclude that FIH established its production line and started mass producing the announced Nokia phones. In India, there is still that tax problem. India’s government announced a new kind of tax called GST that will be enforced from July 1st. Retailers decided to wait for the new tax rules, before starting the sales of Nokia 5 and Nokia 6.

The prices of Nokia phones in India already include GST and the new tax rule won’t affect them.

I dare to say in the name of all Nokia fans that we are quite tired of waiting, but I understand that HMD faces different struggles as a new player in the smartphone market. We hope they will soon be available globally, as promised back in February.

Thanks Marty for the tip. 🙂