Nokia sales seemingly dry up across Europe in wake of German patent dispute

Including its home market of Finland

If you live in Europe, and you've tried to buy a Nokia phone recently, you might have run into a few problems finding one for sale. Granted, Europe is one of the main markets for Nokia devices, but it's not like demand for these HMD-made phones grew exponentially overnight. Instead, we appear to be seeing fallout stemming from a legal battle in Germany that ultimately forced the company to pull its phones from the nation.

The conflict is with a company called VoiceAgeEVS LLC over the use of Enhanced Voice Services, in its phones. The audio codec is mainly used in VoLTE calls, and VAEVS sued HMD claiming that it doesn't have a license to use that tech. That's led to an injunction, preventing many Nokia models from being sold in Germany. In a statement provided to German media outlets, HMD said the following:

HMD is a defendant in a number of lawsuits filed by VoiceAgeEVS LLC (“VAEVS”) in various jurisdictions, including Germany. We are disappointed with the completion of the VoiceAge enforcement proceedings in Germany in December and have lodged a complaint. In the meantime, we have ensured that none of the devices offered and distributed in Germany support EVS.

With this, most phones, except for a few exceptions (such as the Nokia G11 and G21), are currently not available for purchase in Germany. While this particular injunction only mentions one country, Android Authority pointed out that the strange drought of Nokia phones has also extended to other European markets such as France, Spain, Italy, and even its home place of Finland. While we can't say if that's a directly causative relationship, the timing is hard to ignore.

There's no word yet on when Nokia phones might return en masse to store shelves in Europe, but in the meantime, if you really want to get one, you can take a quick trip over to the UK, where phones are actually still in stock.

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