Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “These Phone Companies Aren’t What You Think”.
This video is sponsored by delete me earlier this week. I woke up to a news story from Reuters that said that Blackberry was contemplating a reorganization of its business. Now, if you watched my last episode of when phones were fun, you know that Blackberry hasn’t made a smartphone since 2015, when it pivoted to Security Solutions and car software, but it’s amazing how many people haven’t noticed every other reply to this tweet is a jab at The company for a handset business, it hasn’t operated in eight years and these misunderstandings are common. They happen to many more companies than just BlackBerry.
So today, on Mr mobile, while we wait for a few new folding phones to make their way to my review desk. Let’S talk about a few companies that aren’t what you think talked about licensing on the channel before back when OnePlus announced the 150 million dollar partnership it struck with camera company Hasselblad. This is a kind of co-branding.
That’S been interrogated enough that nowadays I think most people get it. It’S still a OnePlus or an Oppo phone, but Hasselblad has contributed its expertise to the process of tuning the camera. The same deal with xiaomi and its even tighter partnership with Leica, which is said to extend even to lens selection on the hardware. And if you want to take it to the max, you can take a look at the lights phone which is actually made by sharp but of course co-designed and branded by Leica.
If you turn back the clock a few years, the mobile landscape was littered with licensing that was and is easy to spot, like Disney offered its own mobile phone service back in the day and so did ESPN. But most folks knew they weren’t buying a phone from Mickey or Boomer Esiason or whoever these companies were buying space on a bigger company’s Network, in this case Sprint and re-badging phones to deliver a specific branded experience. Sometimes The Branding even went both ways: Samsung and Warner Brothers co-designed, a cell phone for the second Matrix movie that was also sold in stores, see previous episode. Other Partnerships can be tougher to spot.
Take caterpillar the American heavy equipment manufacturer that got its start in 1886. Building combine Harvesters, you wouldn’t think a company like this would have the background to make its own mobile phones and you’d be right. This phone, the s22 flip, was actually built by a British company called the bullet group, whom Kat licensed to make phones like this. In this case, the co-branding was executed thoughtfully at the rugged durability and Industrial aesthetic dubbed hail perfectly with the Cat brand. So it’s easy to imagine this device in the tool belt of someone who really does drive a caterpillar for a living, but now watch. It gets really confusing.
That same bullet group also makes phones under the Motorola brand yeah. The Motorola Defy 2 is made by an entirely different company than the one that builds the Moto G and Razer smartphones same deal with that defy satellite link. I saw at Mobile World Congress, it brandishes the Motorola badwing brand, but it’s built by Bullet now. You might think that means bullet is also behind all those police body cameras and two-way radios for the public sector, but nope those are made by another company called Motorola Solutions entirely separate from the Motorola.
We know as a Lenovo company today phew now it’s important to keep in mind. A licensed product is not necessarily shorthand for inferior product, we’ll use Motorola for another example. Several years ago, it licensed its brand to another company called Ebu now, in order to create the 2020 edition of the moto 360 SmartWatch, and that thing was actually a really good product, which I continued to wear long after my review elsewhere in the wearable world, the Citizen Diesel and Michael Kors brands are borne by smart watches that are actually built by fossil group and, as my buddy David kogan just told me, the famous Marshall audio brand was recently acquired by a company called zound. But you better believe that famous Marshall word Mark ain’t going anywhere and let’s come back to Blackberry, for a sec. Research In Motion was no stranger to licensing even as far back as 2 000. It offered branded versions of its interactive 950 pager from Compaq, and even America Online see previous episode again.
So when the company announced back in 2017 that it had teamed up with TCL to reboot the brand as Blackberry mobile, I was cautiously optimistic with TCL building the hardware and blackberry adding features to the Android OS. The key two actually ended up a pretty compelling phone for the kind of user who never got over, giving up a qwerty keyboard. Of course, it wasn’t compelling enough because there’s no key three and in fact no licensee ended up building another one after 2020., and even so, people today continue to associate the Blackberry name with phones, even though today it’s basically a cyber security company.
Speaking of security, we’re about to finish up with a brand, that’s even more misunderstood than Blackberry, but first join me for a word about keeping yourself secure online. You probably already know that your personal information is being bought, sold and traded online. Then, if you didn’t well sorry to give you the bad news, in fact, this privacy problem is so huge that you might even think why bother trying to address it.
It’S impossible, but it’s not. This video is sponsored by delete me. A simple subscription service that gives control of your personal data back to you just tell them who you are and they go to work scrubbing your private information from the web. I’M talking current and past addresses names of your family members, property and court records. In seven days, you get a privacy report like this Yep. This is my actual report and just look at how many data Brokers had my information.
No wonder I get so many spam calls well thanks to delete me. All these Brokers are now removing my information. I didn’t have to spend 10 hours doing it myself and delete me, will automatically repeat the process every three months so Take Back, Control and delete your personal data from the web visit join deleteme.com Mr mobile and use code, Mr mobile for 20 off thanks to delete Me for sponsoring this video. It was tough to pick a favorite device at Mobile World Congress 2023, but I had no trouble choosing my favorite booth at the show.
After years of slogging away with the same low-key logo, Nokia debuted the new brand it had developed with consulting firm Lippincott with a booth. That literally, was the logo. Now look new brands are always polarizing and I saw some good jokes in the wake of that relaunch. I think my favorite was the one that said the new Insignia reminded them of a new type of yogurt, but I also saw many of the same reactions. I saw to the Blackberry news this week. People not getting that Nokia doesn’t actually make phones anymore.
So while I think most of my audience understands this, here’s a wildly condensed timeline for those who are still confused back in the early 20 teens. Microsoft was still trying to make Windows Phone happen and, as with Android today, Windows phones were being built by many different manufacturers, but Microsoft had a much closer partnership with Nokia than anyone else. So in 2013 the companies said. Look we already lived together. We’Ve got the dog and the shared checking account: let’s just go down to City Hall and make it official.
In other words, Microsoft bought Nokia’s mobile phone business, but crucially not the rest of the company Nokia’s other businesses from cellular network equipment to Data Centers to mapping providers. Microsoft didn’t buy any of that and that’s the Nokia that still exists today. A 5G B2B networking company with no consumer mobile products at all, wait I hear you saying, then why can I still buy Android phones that say Nokia on the back and by now you know the answer.
Licensing see among the things Nokia didn’t sell to Microsoft were its patent portfolio and the right to its brand. So in 2016, Nokia licensed that brand to hmd Global, a Finnish company owned by a private Equity Fund run by a former Nokia executive and in short order. The world was getting the Android powered Nokia phones, it had wanted for years, or I thought it wanted anyway notice that those phones and presumably future hmd phones will continue to Bear the old Nokia logo, because the whole point of the Rebrand was to help the real Nokia distance itself from the mobile phones it used to be known for according to reporting from The Verge and Nokia mob licensed products will continue to use the classic logo any of this matter. In my view, you should know from which company you’re buying something. After all, that’s the same company you’ll need to turn to for support, and, if you’re, sharing user data with them, you better damn well know who they really are for what it’s worth. I and any other reputable Creator or reviewer will always strive to make it clear when recovering a licensed product versus one from a self-owned brand disclosure.
This video contained footage of review samples from many manufacturers, but no company was offered editorial input or copy approval concerning same if you have a question or a story about licensing or branding in the mobile tech. World leave a comment, and please subscribe to the Mr mobile for more mobile device reviews from today and yesterday, coming soon next time from Michael Fisher, thanks for watching and stay mobile, my friends .