Nokia Technologies, one of only three business units of the once dominant Finnish mobile phone maker to remain, may be staging a re-entry into the consumer smartphone market as early as 2016. Sources familiar with Nokia Oyj’s plans told Re/code that, alongside a new smartphone, the company is also working on virtual reality technology, among other projects.

Nokia exited the mobile phone market when it sold its mobile phone division to Microsoft Corp. for $7.2 billion in 2013. What remained of Nokia was its maps business, its network hardware business and Nokia Technologies. Nokia owns in excess of 10,000 patents, and Nokia Technologies is charged with licensing those patents to third parties.

Last year the company took a stab at the tablet market when it launched the Nokia N1, an eight-inch Android-based tablet. The Nokia N1 may have been designed in Finland, but it is only available in China so far and is built, marketed, sold and distributed by Foxconn Technology Group, the Taiwanese manufacturer who is best known for making Apple products.

Under the terms of the deal with Microsoft, Nokia is not allowed to bring to market a mobile phone carrying the Nokia brand until December 31, 2015, and even then it is unlikely to bring manufacturing back in-house. The company will likely follow the same strategy as it did with the N1 tablet.

According to the report, Nokia is not resting on its laurels, but rather the company is preparing for the future by preparing to launch new products in 2016 and after.

“They have a lot of great stuff in development,” Richard Kerris, a former Nokia executive and consultant told Re/code. “It gave me complete confidence that Nokia is a company that is not going away.”

Details about these projects under development were not forthcoming; however, Kerris said “people will be blown away if some of the stuff he saw comes to market.”

Given what little we know, we can only speculate as to what Nokia’s strategy for a comeback to phones would be. They may launch an Android smartphone as an accompaniment to the Nokia N1 tablet and sell it in China as part of the existing deal with Foxconn, or they could take a different route entirely.

Microsoft has since dropped the Nokia name and branding on its smartphones.

photo credit: Nokia N9 Unboxing 003 BestBoyZ via photopin (license)