HMD Global, the Finnish company that makes the Nokia branded smartphones, has announced that it has received $230 million in its Series A2 funding round. This is the company’s first tranche of external funding since it raised $100 million in 2018.
The investment comes from Google, Qualcomm, and Nokia. For those who are unaware, HMD Global has exclusively licensed the Nokia brand for making and selling mobile devices and to date, the brand has managed to sell over 240 million devices.
The company says that it would use the newly raised capital to invest in developing 5G smartphones as it hopes to sell devices in the United States in partnership with local telecom network carriers.
Further, the investment will also be used to expand the brand’s presence in Brazil, Africa, and India. It is also planning to move beyond the hardware market and plans to enter areas like software and services.
HMD Global holds rights to design and market Nokia phones after it entered into a joint deal with Foxconn to buy Nokia’s mobile unit from Microsoft in 2016. As a part of the agreements, Foxconn is manufacturing the devices while Nokia is getting royalty payments for each device that HMD sells.
The company reveals that it generated 1.7 billion euros (about $2 billion) in net revenue last year, which shows a decline of almost 30 percent compared to the revenue of 2.4 billion euros in 2018.
With anti-China sentiments rising and the United States trying to ban Chinese companies from its market, HMD Global seems to be in a good position to get a decent market share with a bit of effort in the U.S.
