Former Rovio CEO Pekka Rantala hired to relaunch Nokia-branded mobile devices

HMD Global Oy, the Finnish company that is the global licensee of Nokia, said it has hired Pekka Rantala as its chief marketing officer. Rantala was the former CEO of Rovio Entertainment — the creator of Angry Birds — and senior vice president of global marketing at Nokia.

Rantala served 17 years in Nokia's mobile phone business across different sectors such as sales, marketing and operations roles and later on as senior vice president for global marketing, before becoming the CEO of Rovio. Recently, he served as the chairman of Jot Automation, the company that supplies services to the electronics industry.

HMD's upcoming Nokia phones and tablets will run on Android. There have been rumours circulating for a long time indicating Nokia will re-enter the global smartphone market with Android devices.

The most recent one claims Nokia is planning a comeback with two new smartphones powered by Google's latest Android Nougat operating system version 7.0. The handsets are expected towards the end of 2016 or might be pushed to the first quarter of next year, depending on the testing and development.

HMD said it plans to leverage and grow Nokia's brand reach while delivering high-quality products. It has decided to invest more than $500m (£387) over the next three years to support global marketing of Nokia devices.

"Pekka has an important mission to rejuvenate the Nokia brand in mobile phones. He is an experienced consumer marketer who knows how to run global operations and teams, and is passionate about the Nokia brand," said Arto Nummela, CEO of HMD global.

"Branding has become a critical differentiator in mobile phones, and 96% of global mobile phone users are familiar with the Nokia brand, our unique asset. We know people around the world are excited about a new wave of Nokia phones, and we are working hard to create a beautiful range of Nokia-branded devices that people will love," added Nummela.

FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Foxconn, will be responsible for manufacturing Nokia devices. HMD said it will announce its plan and product roadmap in due course of time.

In May, Nokia signed a brand and intellectual property licensing agreement with HMD enabling it to create Nokia mobile devices for the next 10 years. According to the deal, Nokia will receive royalty payments from HMD for sales of Nokia mobile products.

"There are very few opportunities like this, to work with a global brand with the power to touch hundreds of millions of people every day. It is a privilege to work with this unique brand, to engage with the millions of dedicated Nokia phone fans around the world and create a generation of new ones," said Rantala.

"We are going to bring together a new team of talented people who can build something incredible," he added.