Nokia and Xiaomi Team Up for VR and More

It may seem a little weird that two companies who both make phones and should be in competition with each other have teamed up, but that’s just what Nokia and Xiaomi have done in a surprising bit of news.

The two companies have signed a cross-licensing patent deal and say they will be looking at developing things in areas such as IoT, AI, AR and VR.

Not So Strange Bedfellows

For many years Nokia enjoyed the sort of status in the mobile phone business that Apple and Samsung do today, but somehow the Finnish company has simply not done a great job of entering the smartphone market.

Stubbornly sticking to its own operating system, Nokia has only recently seen the light and released its own line of Android phones.

As old and stodgy as Nokia appears to be, Xiaomi is the hip new kid with a disruptive business model and products that you actually want to buy. Often referred to as the “Apple of China”, the company makes quality, well-specified products, but sell them at a fraction of the price thanks to their smart cost-saving strategy.

Full disclosure: the writer of this article owns a Xiaomi Mi 5 phone and is pretty happy with it.

In a sense these two companies are not really in competition with each other, but both have something the other needs. In the case of Xiaomi, they are still fighting for market share in the West. For Nokia’s part, the company needs fresh ideas. Likely they can help each other out with their mutual issues.

Moving On Up

Obviously there are no specific products or projects for public scrutiny at this point and no one knows if this partnership will last or bear fruit. Xiaomi has however been crystal clear about the fact that the international patents Nokia has licenced to it will help with global expansion and finally move it out of the Asian market and into the global market proper.

Xiaomi is no slouch in the R&D game either, with almost 2000 global patents and about 4000 patents in total. Nokia gets access to these too in the deal. Or at least some subset of them, but the exact details of the deal are likely confidential.

For us as consumers it can only be a good thing. While Xiaomi hasn’t released any VR products that are too impressive, they certainly have the knowhow to make something great.

Nokia has always been a great hardware maker and their OZO camera is a very impressive product. So essentially everyone is waiting to see what this marriage of convenience will mean for us, the masses.

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