HMD Global, the home of Nokia phones, today announced collaborations with three wireless providers in North America – Cricket Wireless and Verizon in the United States and Rogers Communications, Inc. in Canada.
This is the next step in the company’s journey to offer the affordable Nokia smartphones to US consumers.

The company is also expanding its selection of Nokia smartphones on Android with the launch of two wireless provider-specific devices coming to the United States this month and another coming to Rogers subsidiary brand, chatr, in Canada very soon.

The Nokia 3.1 Plus is coming on Cricket’s 4G LTE network and the Nokia 2 V will be the first Nokia phone on Verizon.

Nokia 3.1 Plus offers two-day battery life (3500mAh) , an ergonomically placed fingerprint sensor and NFC-enable Google Pay. It has a
5.99-inch HD+ display and 18:9 aspect ratio, a 13MP Phase Detection Auto Focus main camera, a 5MP rear camera and an 8MP selfie camera. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 mobile platform, the Nokia 3.1 Plus comes with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of ROM in Blue. It is available at Cricket Wireless retail stores and on CricketWireless.com for a suggested retail price of $159.99 from January 25, 2019.

The Nokia 2 V provides a Nordic design with metallic accents and delivers long-lasting entertainment with a 5.5-inch HD display, dual front-facing stereo speakers and a two-day battery life.

The Nokia 2 V’s ,000mAh batter3 allows for quick charging. The device uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425, 64-bit Mobile Platform and is equipped with a 5MP front-facing and 8MP rear camera with auto focus.

Also a member of the Android family, Nokia 2 V will come with 8GB of storage, with support for MicroSD cards up to 128GB in Blue/Silver.

The Nokia 2 V will be available in Verizon stores and on VerizonWireless.com starting January 31.

The road back to the U.S. will not be easy for HMD.

Palm Inc. saw its market share plummet after Apple released the first iPhone in 2007, and ultimately sold itself to Hewlett-Packard Co. The brand’s new owner failed to turn the business around, leading HP to write down the $1.2 billion acquisition and sell off the component parts of the company. Yet another effort to revive the Palm brand was made last year by the startup Palm Ventures Group Inc.

Microsoft bought Nokia's company’s handset division in 2014 for $9.5 billion, in an effort to bolster its Windows Phone platform. But it failed, and in 2016 the then-relatively new CEO Satya Nadella made the decision to write off his predecessor’s purchase and sell what remained of it to FIH Mobile Ltd. and HMD for $350 million.

However, HMD is focusing on the mid- to entry-level and believes that there is still a sizeable opportunity in the U.S. in the prepaid market.