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By Eric Auchard, Jussi Rosendahl and Leila Abboud FRANKFURT/HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia is hiring software experts, testing new products and seeking sales partners as it plots its return to the mobile phone and consumer tech arena it abandoned with the sale of its handset business. Once the world's biggest maker of mobile phones, the Finnish firm was wrongfooted by the rise of smartphones and eclipsed by Apple and Samsung . It sold its handset business to Microsoft in late 2013 and has since focused squarely on making telecoms network equipment.

Nokia, the world's third-largest mobile equipment maker, has seen nothing in its business that would lead it to change its financial outlook, its chief executive said on Sunday. It is kind of business as usual,” Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said in response to a reporter's question during a press conference ahead of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona. In late January, the company said that for its mainstay Nokia Networks’ business, it expected net sales and operating margins in the first quarter to decline compared to the fourth quarter of 2014, typically a seasonally stronger quarter.