Date:01/09/11

Senior Nokia exec leaves for investment fund

Finnish handset maker Nokia Corp. Wednesday said its long-serving senior executive Tero Ojanpera is resigning to join a newly-established investment fund, Vision+.

Ojanpera has been at Nokia for 21 years and served as the company's chief technology officer from 2006 to 2008.

He has also held positions as Nokia's head of research and head of strategy. He is currently executive vice president of services.

Ojanpera will leave at the end of September when his contract with Nokia finishes and will become one of the founding partners at Vision+, an independent investment fund set up to finance innovative products and which funds applications and games for various platforms.

In a separate announcement Wednesday, Nokia said it plans to be an "anchor investor" in Vision+ as part of its strategy to broaden application and games development for its Windows phone platform. Nokia declined to disclose the size of its planned investment in the company.

Nokia has struggled to compete in the lucrative smartphone market for some time, largely due to its failure to compete with the likes of Apple Inc.'s iPhone and phones operating on Google Inc.'s Android platform.

In February this year Nokia said it would abandon its Symbian smartphone platform and focus on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows phone operating system.

The company is due to launch its first Nokia handset based on Microsoft's operating system--the Mango version of the Windows Phone 7-in the fourth quarter. The company hopes the phone will mark the start of its comeback in the sector and help it to regain market share.

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