ESPOO, Finland—Frank Nuovo, the designer who helped Nokia Corp. attain the world’s largest market share of the mobile handset business, will turn over his primary duties to a new design team, the company announced today.
Nuovo has worked for Nokia for 16 years, and is credited with Nokia’s original design style and the personalization of handsets made possible by changeable face plates. Nokia has sold more than a billion handsets, the majority bearing some aspect of Nuovo’s touch. He will remain principal designer at Vertu, Nokia’s luxury handset brand.
Meanwhile, a global team led by Alastair Curtis—currently lead designer for the Finnish handset maker’s low-cost phones—is being reorganized to improve its ability to initiate or discern design trends and rapidly bring them to market. Curtis remarked that Nokia is working to slim down its phones while improving functionality, perhaps a harbinger of Nokia’s approach going forward: functionality and fashion must be combined to win against rivals.
With Motorola Inc.’s super-slim Razr phone achieving superstar-like sales during the past two years, phone design has become one of the hottest areas for handset vendors to distinguish themselves. Indeed, Motorola reportedly has retained Pininfarina, a designer for car maker Ferrari, to produce two handset designs per month for three years. The move indicates that Nokia’s competitors will continue to look for blockbuster hits to capture sales as well as headlines.
