Connect with us

International Circuit

HMD global starts a new global R&D center in tampere Finland

HMD Global, the startup company that is behind the Nokia Mobile and the return of Nokia to the smartphone business, announced it is acquiring Valona Labs, which marks the foundation for the brand-new R&D Centre in Tampere, Finland. This acquisition is an important move for HMD Global since it represents the financial strength of the company and further investments in the security aspects of the OS, which could be beneficial to enterprises and regular users of Nokia phones. 

Valona Lab is a young company that specializes in the mobile, enterprise, and cybersecurity software. Their expertise will help HMD Global bring even faster software updates and security to Nokia smartphones. The new Centre of Excellence will be developing but not limited to HMD Connect, Remote device locking, Enterprise mobility management, Mobile device software security, Secure network communication, and Black box testing.

We got a chance to chat a bit with Juho Sarvikas and Ari Heikkinen, who is coming from Valona Labs and is appointed as a Senior Director of Security and Enterprise Solutions at HMD Global. We discussed the current strategy and what this means for HMD Global as a startup.

Juho stated that HMD Global is dedicated to bringing Nokia smartphones and HMD Global back to Nokia’s roots. The entrance in the software development does resemble Nokia’s late D&S department that had both strong hardware and software development. 

He also revealed that HMD is planning on recruiting new developers and engineers in the Finnish city of Tampere where the new R&D will be situated, but also in Espoo. If you remember, Nokia used to have an R&D center in Tampere, which still represents a large pool of skilled engineers that used to develop new technologies for Nokia. Valona Labs’ intellectual assets will be used to develop security software and features for services like HMD Connect, and some new services inside the My Phone app.

Juho also said that this is a new beginning on bringing faster software updates to Nokia phones but Nokia Mobile will still rely on partners to develop software updates and do tests for various markets. Nokia Mobile now has numerous R&D centers, some are their own, but some are based on high-quality partners like Valona Labs used to be. It was interesting to hear that there is an imaging R&D team in Taiwan, software developers in India, and now a new Global R&D center in Tampere Finland.

Juho also confirmed that even more affordable 5G phone than 8.3 5G is coming with the latest SD695 5G chip and that they are focused on high-end devices too. But, no news about Nokia 9 since I got a standard can’t make any comment answer, but Juho did say that Nokia Mobile will be more active on selling accessories, and he also took note of Nokia hoodies and shirts.

-CT Bureau

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Copyright © 2024 Communications Today

error: Content is protected !!