MWC: Is a Nokia smart speaker coming this year?

This week saw HMD reveal its latest range of Nokia phones, in the form of the new Nokia 8110, Nokia 1, Nokia 7 Plus and Nokia 8 Sirocco.

But smart speakers are quickly becoming a big money sector too, so will we see a Nokia speaker soon?

“Stay tuned,” PR representative Ben Wilsker told us during an interview at Mobile World Congress.

In an attempt to get a definite answer, we asked HMD CEO Florian Seiche whether he had any information to share on a Nokia smart home speaker.

Seiche chuckled before answering: “I can’t comment (on that).”

Could we see a Nokia smart speaker, powered by Google, in the coming months?

A “stay tuned” isn’t 100% confirmation then, and we might be reading into this too much, but my gut feeling is that we’ll see a speaker at IFA for the latest.

Given the close relationship with Google, we’d expect a Nokia smart speaker to be powered by Google Assistant, especially with Assistant’s growing availability. And with HMD’s extensive distribution footprint, a Nokia speaker would likely be available in far more countries than Google’s Home gadgets.

Featured image: Google Home Mini

Disclosure: Hadlee Simons was a guest of Huawei at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Check out our MWC section over here for all our stories from the expo.