Nokia and ZEISS smartphone camera partnership ends

The debut of Nokia’s Android mobile phones under HMD Global just a few years ago brought hope to the market for the famous European brand, but now the Finnish company doesn’t seem to be doing as well as we had hoped. The lack of high-performance smartphones on offer and uncompetitive pricing in the market has led to the brand quickly being forgotten in the pool of potential customers, and now, even Nokia’s traditional partnerships won’t work. ZEISS, the German optics manufacturer, did not continue its partnership with HMD Global after it expired in 2021.

Nokia phones from HMD Global will no longer use ZEISS technologies

HMD Global has confirmed that its partnership with ZEISS is ending in 2021, but neither company has come out publicly to say so far. The confirmation came in the form of a response to inquiries from the Nokiamob website. Thus, the next Nokia smartphones that the company will announce will have cameras without optics, software or other technologies from the famous camera equipment manufacturer. The Nokia XR20 is the latest model to benefit from this partnership, the phone was launched last year.

It’s not exactly clear why this long-established partnership has been abandoned, but it could come from HMD, which may be removing ZEISS technologies in a bid to deliver more affordable smartphones at competitive prices. A similar strategy has been adopted by OnePlus, which has confirmed that the 10T will not feature Hasselblad camera technologies, and the decision was a financial one to achieve a lower price point at the shelf.

ZEISS, however, still has a presence in the smartphone market, even without Nokia. Its current partners are Sony, another long-standing partner, which uses ZEISS optics on its Xperia 1 series devices, and Vivo, which offers cameras with ZEISS technologies on its X series.