Ex-Rovio CEO Hired To Make Nokia Smartphones Relevant Again

For many years, Nokia was the company to beat in the global smartphone market. Things rapidly charged after 2007 and the Finnish company lost out a significant chunk of its market share. It ended up selling to Microsoft which basically tried to overhaul it but ended up disposing of it as well. The Nokia brand now rests with another Finnish company called HMD Global and it has hired ex-Rovio CEO Pekka Rantala to make Nokia’s Android-powered smartphones relevant in the global market.

HMD Global was started by ex-Nokia and ex-Microsoft employees who acquired the licensing rights to the Nokia brand a few months ago, the company came into being in the same month that saw Microsoft sell part of Nokia to a subsidiary of Foxconn.

So in reality, the Android-powered smartphones that will hit the market bearing Nokia’s name will just be Nokia in name only. The actual Finnish company will have nothing to do with these handsets. The handsets made by HMD Global will be manufactured and distributed by Foxconn which has already acquired Nokia’s feature phone business from Microsoft.

You might be wondering why an ex-CEO from a game development company is the best bet for HMD Global, what you may not know that before he went to Rovio, Rantala was actually an employee of Nokia for 17 years. He was there during the time that Nokia dominated the market, and now as chief marketing office at HMD Global he has been tasked with restoring the iconic brand’s name to glory.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Microsoft, Nokia, Rovio