On Tuesday, Mayor Emanuel announced that Nokia has decided to relocate its Mobile Phones Xpress Internet Services group to Chicago, reaffirming its commitment to the city and providing another 150 new jobs. In the news release that made the announcement about the relocation from the suburb of Itasca, the company also made the announcement that it has immediate requirements for over 100 extra employees in Chicago in a wide range of highly skilled technical positions.
Nokia’s biggest office in North America is in Chicago already, with around 1,200 employees, and the decision to move the group to the city will only increase that number. The two parallel efforts are set to push the firm’s headcount in Chicago to almost 1,500. “Nokia’s growth in Chicago is a huge win for the city of Chicago and further testament that the technology space in the city is exploding,” says Mayor Emanuel. “More and more companies in this space are seeing that Chicago has the top talent available to help innovate and grow businesses in the coming years. I look forward to working with Nokia to extend Chicago’s leadership and growth, creating jobs and economic opportunity for years to come.”
Nokia is a world leader in mobile communications, with products that have become a key part of the lives of millions of people all around the world. The Mobile Phones Xpress Internet Services group is set to join the Location & Commerce (L&C) business in Chicago, creating location based services which are core to the company’s overall vision of building products that sense the world. Location & Commerce intends to build and monetize one-of-a-kind location experiences for superb mobile products, as well as the automotive market, government and business solutions, and the navigation industry.
Nokia Location & Commerce’s vice president, Ogi Redzic, says that the firm has been perfecting digital maps for over 15 years now in the Chicago area and that, in the increasingly mobile environment of today, the firm is on a quest to try and create a virtual index of reality. In order to be able to achieve this goal they are actively recruiting employees in Chicago because, Redzic notes, they genuinely believe that the city offers nothing less than a critical mass of communications, internet and technology talent pool, which will help them to be able to grow.
Mobile Phones Xpress Internet Services’ move from Itasca to Chicago, as well as Location & Commerce’s hiring of new employees, means that the overall presence of Nokia in the city now encompasses over 350,000 square feet of office space. There were a number of financial incentives involved in the relocation of the Nokia team to Chicago from Itasca. Mayor Emanuel met with the global chief executive officer of Nokia, Stephen Elop, on 1st August in order to discuss both the corporate relocation and the firm’s broader plans for the city. This is the 10th corporate, divisional or regional headquarters move that has been announced by Mayor Emanuel during his tenure.
Jon Huser
