Nokia veteran heads to venture fund firm

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Nokia has confirmed one of its leadership team will leave the company at the end of the month to work at a new venture investment fund aimed at helping develop new applications for the company's phones.

Tero Ojanpera, Nokia's executive vice president, who had worked at the company for 21 years, will become a managing partner at investment fund Vision+.

"My new role at Vision+ will give me a fantastic opportunity to leverage my strong industry relationships and versatile experience built up within Nokia and the surrounding mobile ecosystem," said Ojanperä.

"Vision+ will be able to provide support to developers and entrepreneurs when they plan to introduce the best visions and product concepts into global and local markets."

Nokia said it would invest in Vision+ to bolster the venture capital fund's plans to help develop new applications for Nokia phones.

"We're excited to work with Vision+ and foster innovation for the mobile developer ecosystem where we believe that the next big opportunity will be local application development," said Marco Argenti, senior vice president of Nokia's developer experience unit.

"The Nokia developer programme provides strong support for local developers and it aims to have the most local application portfolio. Thus this initiative is a great addition to our developer activities, including those with Microsoft. We look forward to more and more innovative applications from creative entrepreneurs in the mobile space."

Nokia created the smartphone market in 1996 with its first Communicator model but has failed in recent years to mount a serious challenge to the surge from Apple Inc's iPhone. It has also lost ground in the cheaper end of the market to Asian brands like ZTE.

Chief executive Stephen Elop has been pinning turnaround hopes on new smartphones using Microsoft software, due later this year.

(Additional reporting by IT Pro)

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