March 21, 2017, 8:43 p.m.
At Mobile World Congress HMD Global jointly took the stage with Nokia and outlined a vision for a new dawn for Nokia branded smartphones. Even Rajeev Suri, who is Nokia's CEO at the MWC conference said, "We would not license the Nokia brand to just anybody. It means too much to us by way of our corporate culture, our values, but it also means a lot to many people across the world."
"We believe they (HMD Global) can truly forge a new dawn for Nokia phones" he went on to say.
Even Mehta said the same thing reiterating that HMD Global may be a new company, but it is Nokia through and through at its heart.
"We are essentially all Nokia people. I've been with Nokia for 12 years, Arto my boss has been with Nokia for 20 years and essentially the entire leadership team is from Nokia," said Mehta. "We have a bunch of passionate people who will not rest till Nokia (for mobile phones) is up and running," he added.
Interestingly, Arto Nummela was the guy behind iconic Nokia phones like the 6630 and 6680 as a product manager in the Nokia of old. After D Shivakumar left Nummela was the guy heading the regions which included India, Middle East, and Africa till he transitioned to Microsoft along with thousands of other Nokians.
At Microsoft, Nummela had even a larger role where he oversaw the GAMEA region that included greater Asia, Middle East, and Africa.
"You will find true Nokia attributes in our devices -- reliability, simplicity, ease of use, quality and human touch. A true Nokia soul in our devices," said Nummela at the keynote in Barcelona.
Even Mehta believes this deeply as he points out that Nokia's engineers started the mobile revolution which is an advantage that no other organisation has in its DNA and that's something that has trickled down to HMD Global.
While true, the Microsoft acquisition has also led to a situation where a lot of the talent has moved on to the likes of Google and Apple and some of the intellectual property (IP) like the "PureView" camera technology is retained with Microsoft.
That being said, Nokia has licensed all IP to HMD Global as a part of the deal and according to Mehta his team is focussing on creating products that are "Finnish in spirit" and "create the Nokia of the future".
Like Nummela and Mehta, many of the folks at HMD Global are from Nokia of old. Their chief product officer Juho Sarvikas was the head of the feature phone business at Microsoft and before that he was with Nokia in the US. Florian Seiche who is HMD Global's president was Microsoft's SVP for Europe and before that he was SVP at Nokia for European sales and marketing. The company even managed to rope in Pekka Rantala as their Chief Marketing Officer who was SVP for marketing till 2011 and he eventually went on to become CEO of Rovio Entertainment, the Finnish company behind the Angry Birds games.
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