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Former CEO of Angry Birds-Maker Rovio Hired To Revive Nokia's Phone Business (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the bring-back-from-the-dead dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Nokia really started to go downhill after it agreed to sell itself to Microsoft at the end of 2013, going all in with Windows Mobile. When that faltered, "Microsoft folded Nokia into its mobile business, maintaining the Finnish company's brand on feature phones, while offering up smartphones under the newly integrated Microsoft Lumia line," reports TechCrunch. In May of this year, Microsoft sold its feature phone business to Foxconn for $350 million. At around the same time, Nokia essentially licensed its brand to Finnish company HMD global Oy to create phones under the Nokia name, "which would be manufactured and distributed by Foxconn." Now, TechCrunch is reporting that Nokia has hired Pikka Rantala, the once CEO of Angry Birds creator Rovio, who stepped down in 2015 after a rough year with the mobile gaming company. He will be joining the company as Chief Marketing Officer.

2 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Nokia was going downhill well before that by ErikTheRed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've friends that worked for Nokia and from what I've heard they were in a death spiral well before Microsoft bought them out. Nasty internal politics, software development drama, no real plan for the smartphone revolution, etc.

    I loved Nokia phones back in the day, but I'm not sure what they would bring to the table now. They can compete with all of the "Me-too!" Android vendors in East Asia, try to push out a new OS (good luck), or keep beating the Windows Mobile dead horse. Personally, I would *like* to see another mobile OS have some success, but that's a mind-blowingly difficult and expensive pursuit right now.

    --

    Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
  2. Re:nokia already going downhill before M$ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Are we still trying to pretend Elop wasn't a trojan horse from Microsoft?
    http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/07/the-sun-tzu-of-nokisoftian-microkia-mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-whose-the-baddest-of-them-all-waterloo.html

    He did this:
    http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/.a/6a00e0097e337c8833017743174241970d-pi

    He did this by claiming the TOP SELLING, FASTEST GROWING phone OS was dying, and that it would be dead ended, and switched to Microsoft's OS. And that was the effect. The Microsoft phone OS had no market, no apps, and no features and was unfinished. The license agreements meant that Nokia was locked in a suicide mission with a failed OS vendor.

    He received $17.5 million reward from Microsoft:
    http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/.a/6a00e0097e337c8833017743174241970d-pi