Nokia Mobile strengthening its R&D center in Tampere, Finland

Nokia Mobile, or HMD Global that stands behind the operation, founded an R&D center in the city of Tampere, situated in Finland. It all started with the strategic acquisition of Valona Labs that specializes in the mobile, enterprise, and cybersecurity software. 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.

 But, Juho Sarvikas revealed to us in an interview we had last year that HMD is planning on recruiting new developers and engineers in the Finnish city of Tampere where the new R&D will be situated. The plan is also to hire engineers also in the city of Espoo. 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.

It seems that HMD Global is still hiring new and experienced designers according to opened job post applications at LinkedIn. They will be working on designing graphic user interface elements, like menus, tabs, and widgets, development of UI mockups and prototypes that clearly illustrate how feature function and look like, creating original graphic designs, and so on. The job post is in Tampere Finland, which means that the R&D center is still functioning and could be a vital part of the changes of the Nokia smartphone brand we could be seeing soon.

So far, HMD Global has three apps that are designed by their own workforce (at least I think they were), Camera, My Phone, and HMD Connect. Maybe, we will be seeing more apps being designed for Nokia phones since the advantage that Android One brings to Nokia phones will soon be charged monthly by Google (Photos app, and so on).

It is about time that we see some first developments of Nokia Mobile’s R&D center because the only way you can get some differentiation is by making stuff yourself.

By the way, HMD Global doesn’t seem to be such a small startup company anymore. More than 1000 folks are working there now, according to LinkedIn, which makes them more of a classic company than a startup of 15 or 20. Call me an old and obsolete guy, but the company where I work has 1600 folks, and it wasn’t called startup when it had 1000 folks working there.