European phone maker HMD spent years as the company making Nokia phones under license, but after pressing pause on that brand, it might not be looking back.
We haven't had a new Nokia phone in quite some time, and recent leaks have suggested that HMD's next phone will instead sport its own branding.
Now, it's taken that process another step further, by rebranding its website and social channels to make it clear that HMD is now making phones under its own name.
If you head to the Nokia account on X (formerly Twitter), you'll see hardly any mention of phones - apart from a note in the account's description pointing you back to HMD's profile.
HMD's website, meanwhile, has had a snazzy new makeover, complete with a tagline that looks pretty clearly designed to clarify what's happening: "The largest European manufacturer of smartphones and makers of Nokia phones. That’s us."
If that wasn't enough, there's also a newly released video teaser produced by HMD to more thoroughly introduce the brand to those who might not have realised it was behind Nokia devices in recent years.
So, with HMD clearly positioning itself to try to make a major entrance (or re-entrance) to the market, it looks like all that remains is for it to actually unveil a smartphone or two.
That's heavily rumoured to be in the works for this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, an event that typically sees loads of phones shown off.
The handsets that have leaked so far are expected to be mid-range options rather than premium flagships, since the top-end of the market is so incredibly hard to break into thanks to the dominance of Apple and Samsung (and lately Google, too).
Whether HMD's massive experience can actually see it make some of the best phones out there now that it doesn't have the brand recognition of Nokia to fall back on is anyone's guess until we can get our hands on them.
Still, it's sad to think that unless something surprising happens with either the license or HMD's approach, we may have already seen the last ever new Nokia phone come out - the end of an era.
