I have seen my Future. It’s at Yahoo!

After 10 fantastic years at Nokia I have decided to quit. As of September 12th I will join Yahoo! as VP of Global Mobile Product first based in London and then moving to California late in 2006. This opportunity will allow me to increase my competence in the Internet domain, the area where I envision lots of growth and innovation coming from in the next years. The job will allow me to leverage my understanding of mobility, mobile devices and their users. I think this will become an amazing learning and creation journey.

This move will mean a total life transformation. Our family will move to London and later to California. My wife, I and our two daughters will experience a different culture, something I grew up with through my Danish mother. I believe that in global world it is crucial to have a international background. I was fortunate to have lived in Finland, United States, Denmark, and United Kingdom before I was thirty and now I have been living in Finland for the past ten years. It felt time to move abroad and try something new.

Leaving Nokia is very emotional, a company I have seen grow, prosper. A culture which has been a strong part of my identity will become a vivid memory. I think it is now a good time to leave; Nokia is in my opinion in good shape. The high end, driven by the multimedia group is making money, the products are cool and they are consumed by millions.  The new Nseries sub-brand should create good momentum, and with Anssi Vanjoki at the helm you can count on an innovative drive. The Mobile Phones group with Kai Öistämö at the helm, an old close colleague of mine, has got mid range back in shape. The low-end in emerging markets is a very interesting innovation and growth opportunity. My old boss and mentor Erik Anderson came back early August eager to do some cool phones. Enterprise Solutions is a question mark for me. I see more and more little Communicators and the users seem very pleased. Finally Networks has new management, which should be good as there is lots of work to be done. A collective thanks to all my former colleagues who taught me so much. Keep on connecting people!

So why change Nokia for Yahoo! There are three reasons:

1. Yahoo! is a great company.
Yahoo! is a perfect blend of a communication and content company, filled with humble, very smart and dedicated passionate people. I had a rare opportunity to meet most of the management team and the two founders. One of the things I probed with them was trust. The fact that people trust Yahoo! with some of their most valuable content, photos, e-mails and their blogs put a lot of pressure on Yahoo! to retain integrity and ensure things are not lost in cyberspace. This is something I am very dedicated to work towards. Here the humble culture of Yahoo! makes a great foundation.

2. Internet is the big growth opportunity and I think big players will score big.
We are at dawn in a Web 2.0, a phase when Internet will transform tremendously. Small players will be able to reach global audiences; big players will reach small developers with their open API’s. It will be a time of rapid innovation, here Yahoo! is very well positioned with big user base and strong brand.

3. I believe Yahoo! really want to crack mobile internet nut.
In the next 5 years the Internet will be accessed as naturally on a pocketable device as on a bag sized laptop. In my opinion no one has cracked how to put Internet in the pocket. I do not have the answer, but I have the passion and dedication to try to crack it and I see no better place to have a go at it than at Yahoo!

Let the future begin…