The partnership ended in 2021, but nobody seemed to notice
Future Nokia phones won’t come with the Zeiss brand as they have done for over five years. HMD Global, the company that makes Nokia branded phones, has confirmed that its partnership with Zeiss optics has ended. In fact, the relationship between the two brands ended in 2021, but the company has now officially confirmed the news after NokiaMob noticed the branding had been removed from the Zeiss website.
A statement from Zeiss says, “After long and successful collaboration, in 2021 ZEISS and HMD Global have mutually agreed not to prolong their non-exclusive partnership which included collaboration for imaging technologies of “Nokia” branded smartphones with ZEISS as consulting and development partner.” We’ve asked HMD Global for comment on the end of the partnership, but we’ve yet to hear back.
As the partnership ended in 2021, the last phone from HMD Global that included the branding was the Nokia XR20. There’s no official reason given why the Zeiss partnership won’t be continuing, so it’s unclear if it was a mutual decision between the two brands. Imagery hasn’t been the highlight of the Nokia brand since HMD Global took over. Still, the company has succeeded with smartphone photography on handsets like the Nokia 9 PureView, which was among the best camera phones of its time.
When Nokia made its own phones, the company also partnered with Zeiss. 2005’s Nokia N90 was the first phone the two companies collaborated on, and it continued with other handsets like the Nokia N95, Nokia 808 PureView, and the Nokia Lumia series. HMD Global partnered with the brand in 2017, bringing Zeiss optics to handsets such as the Nokia 8.3 5G and Nokia 9 PureView.
Zeiss hasn’t retreated from the mobile photography space entirely, as the brand partnered with Vivo in 2020. Zeiss worked with HMD Global and Vivo simultaneously, so we may see the optics company lend its expertise to other Android phone brands in the near future. Zeiss was involved with the Vivo X80 series that was revealed in China back in May.
