Jean-François Baril and the name on the phone

In 2023, Jean-François Baril had an unusual announcement for someone whose company had spent years selling Nokia phones: HMD would put its own name on the devices. For a business built around a name that customers already knew, this was a consequential change of introduction. The familiar badge had opened the door. Now the company behind it wanted to be recognised when it walked into the room.

Baril had helped create HMD in 2016. Before that, he had spent much of his career organising the intricate business of getting electronics made. His territory was procurement, components, factories and suppliers. These are things customers generally notice only when they fail. A phone may get a standing ovation at its launch; the purchasing department rarely gets asked to take a bow.

His route to the chief executive’s chair makes more sense from that less glamorous end of the business. HMD combines brands, industrial partners and distribution. Baril’s career has repeatedly brought those pieces together. The question running through it is how much you can accomplish by persuading other people to build something with you.

A fax before the smartphone

Baril studied engineering at Arts et Métiers and Stanford. The American chapter began with a Schlumberger opportunity advertised by fax at his student residence in Paris. He went to California in 1980. A professor suggested a doctorate; he returned to Europe for military service instead. His early working life then took him into oilfield operations in Congo and Angola.

In 1984, he moved into purchasing at Hewlett-Packard in Grenoble. Procurement offered a meeting point between engineering and finance. His next major move, to Compaq in 1994, took him to Scotland and subsequently Texas. Among the people he reported to there was Tim Cook, before Cook joined Apple.

The connection is a useful reminder of where computer companies develop their leaders. Beneath the advertising sits a business of quantities, timing and difficult choices. A beautifully designed machine still requires someone to secure its parts. Baril’s apprenticeship took place close to that problem, long before HMD had a name to print on a box.

Finland required a different introduction

He joined Nokia in 1999 as a senior vice president responsible for sourcing and procurement. Taking charge of a supply chain meant taking charge of relationships, including those inside the company. Baril later recalled seeking help from a philosopher to understand Finnish working culture, and arranging a coaching session on a Baltic island. The lesson he took away was that authority had to be earned through demonstrated ability.

It is an appealing detail in a career of components and contracts: somewhere in the machinery, room had to be made for philosophy. An organisation chart can tell people who reports to whom. It has rather less to say about whether anyone will listen.

By Nokia’s 2007 Capital Markets Day, Baril could present concrete results. His slides linked supply flexibility to sales opportunities, product costs to margins, and inventory management to cash flow. He also presented Nokia’s first-place position in AMR Research’s supply-chain ranking that year. Then came a slide warning that the result was insufficient. Even a prize, apparently, could become another item on the to-do list.

Those slides also give a glimpse of his management vocabulary: collaboration, shared development and trust. Suppliers appeared as contributors of capability and innovation, alongside scale. This was a purchasing argument with a broader ambition. Choosing whom to work with could help determine what the company was able to make.

Building a company out of connections

After Nokia, Baril established Connecting Partners, then Ginko Ventures in 2015. Ginko’s investment brief joined European and Israeli technology businesses with industrial resources. Its description identified Foxconn as a limited partner and highlighted access to manufacturing, research and networks in Asia. Capital came with a practical question: who could help a young business turn its technology into a product?

HMD followed in 2016. Its founding arrangement divided responsibilities across several companies. Nokia licensed the brand and intellectual property. HMD would oversee the phone business, including sales and marketing. FIH Mobile, part of Foxconn, brought manufacturing and engineering resources into the arrangement. Android was the planned foundation for the smartphone portfolio.

The original agreement granted HMD a ten-year licence, excluding Japan. Nokia would receive royalties. The structure matters because buying a famous company and licensing its name are different transactions. HMD was a separate business, with partners supplying different parts of the proposition. Baril had helped assemble a way for Nokia-branded phones to continue without recreating the old organisation in full.

That approach suited his industrial background. A founder does not always begin with an invention on a workbench. Sometimes the opportunity lies between existing businesses: one has a name, another a factory, another a route to the customer. Making the arrangement hold together becomes the work.

The borrowed name gets company

In September 2023, Baril announced HMD’s original brand on LinkedIn. His message described a portfolio that would include HMD devices, Nokia devices and collaborations with other partners. He also acknowledged difficult trading in 2022, including pressure on supply chains and consumers, and said the company had restructured.

The announcement changed the job of the HMD name. It had identified the business behind the phones; now it would have to mean something to the person buying one. Customers who recognised Nokia would need another reason to look at HMD. Repairability, price and partnerships became parts of that explanation.

At Mobile World Congress in 2024, the company publicly set out the multi-brand approach. Alongside Nokia phones and its own devices, it would work with established consumer brands, including Barbie. This created several routes to an audience. A familiar phone name, a new hardware name and a cultural partnership could each begin a different conversation with a buyer.

Baril compared the transition to growing up in a July 2024 interview. The point was clear. A company could value its upbringing and still want its own name on the door.

“HMD is now like a teenager becoming an young adult.”

Jean-François Baril, July 2024

A screwdriver enters the sales pitch

That same month, HMD introduced its Crest smartphones in India. Baril described products developed with Indian requirements in mind, supported by a global platform. He discussed both the domestic market and exports, and pointed to HMD’s work with iFixit on repairability. A broken screen was part of his argument for making repairs more accessible.

Repairability brings a very ordinary moment into the conversation about technology: the moment something breaks. By then, the launch presentation has finished, the packaging has gone, and the owner wants a usable phone. Making replacement parts and instructions accessible gives the original purchase a longer practical horizon.

It also connects the product to Baril’s earlier career. Procurement asks how components reach a factory. Repair asks how a component reaches someone who already owns the finished device. The commercial circumstances differ, but both depend on decisions that happen out of sight of the glossy product photograph.

India also places a demanding test in front of HMD’s independence. Its own name has to compete on the device and the terms of ownership. A recognisable executive connection or an interesting corporate origin cannot replace that transaction. The phone has to justify its place in someone’s budget.

The next connection may have buttons

By March 2025, Baril was describing a business with several ways of reaching customers. HMD reported that its partnership with African financing platform M-KOPA had put devices into 2.5 million customers’ hands. That was a company-reported measure of the partnership’s reach. Financing extended the business problem beyond making and shipping the hardware to how a customer could pay for it.

In March 2026, HMD announced plans to add a digital wallet, video calling and an AI assistant to a new generation of feature phones. India was the proposed starting point for the wallet, with wider expansion planned. Partners included Kivi3 and Polygon Labs for transfers, and Sarvam AI for locally relevant AI experiences.

These were announced plans, with availability and expansion still to follow. Their direction was nevertheless revealing. Baril’s company was asking how much useful service could fit into a simpler device. The feature phone, usually given a supporting role in the smartphone story, was being offered another set of jobs.

Across his career, the objects have changed: oilfield equipment, computers, Nokia phones, HMD devices. The recurring work has involved bringing people and capabilities into a functioning arrangement. His own brand now makes that work more visible. The next judgement will come through the everyday experience of owning the phone: buying it, using it, repairing it, and deciding whether it deserves another place in the pocket.