Nokia’s head of partnerships, business development bails after 27 years

Beleaguered Nokia has lost yet another senior executive.

Robert Andersson, a senior vice president of the consumer electronics giant, has decided to leave Nokia to join TeliaSonera, Europe’s 5th largest telecom operator.

Make no mistake: this is a huge blow for Nokia. According to his LinkedIn profile, Andersson has worked for the company for over 27 years. Furthermore, Andersson was a member of the Nokia Group Executive Board from 2005 to 2009, when he was appointed SVP in charge of corporate alliances and business development.

You may remember Andersson from the time when the company was merely starting to grow a cosy business relationship with Microsoft; Andersson in fact played an instrumental role in the formation of an alliance between the two companies to bring enterprise software to Nokia smartphones back in 2009.

When that happened, Andersson “talked smack” about rival Research In Motion (and yes, that’s a picture of Andersson shaking Stephen Elop’s hands before the latter left Microsoft to become CEO of Nokia – and you know what happened next).

More recently, he played a key role in selling off Nokia manufacturing plants.

After his long career at Nokia, Andersson (51) will now become president and CEO of Sonera in Finland, as well as a member of TeliaSonera Group Management.

In his new role, he will “manage all business units with customer interface in Finland”.