MWC: Is a Nokia smart speaker coming this year?

Google Home Mini

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.

More

News

Sign up to our newsletter to get the latest in digital insights. sign up

Welcome to Memeburn

Sign up to our newsletter to get the latest in digital insights.