Owner of the Nokia phone brand HMD Global on Thursday announced it was going to acquire assets of Valona Labs, a Finland based security software company, with an aim to sharpen the brand excellence.
The phone producer would transform the assets into a research and development (R&D) centre, in which the brand intended to further develop its security related services, HMD Global said in a media statement.
“As a company that believes every phone should be built upon the foundations of security, reliability and dependability, we are proud to announce the acquisition of assets of Valona Lab,” said Juho Sarvikas, chief product officer at HMD Global.
“Through the acquisition of these assets, we will lay the foundations of a R&D hub that will help us transform our business and increase the products’ quality,” the official said.
He believes that such an initiative would bring more trust for the brand.
The new R&D hub titled Centre of Excellence in Tampere of Finland will propel HMD Global’s transition from a purely hardware business, to a combined hardware and services company, the statement said.
Meanwhile, in March this year, the HMD entered a new service category with the launch of its global data roaming service, HMD Connect, which enables people around the world to benefit from a hassle-free data SIM.
Over the coming months, the centre in Tampere will concentrate on developing this service further and begin work on other services such as remote device locking, enterprise mobility management, mobile device software security, secure network communication and black box testing, reads the release.
The global smartphone giant has also plans to expand the scope of the centre to include imaging and audio technologies in the future.
The centre, led by the former award-winning Head of Unit for Valona Labs Ari Heikkinen, would hire new technical talents immediately for going to operation, said the press release.
