New Sprint CEO Resigns From Nokia's Board

Daniel R. Hesse, who was recently named the new President and CEO of Sprint Nextel, Inc, is going about taking care of other business surrounding his new job. The first of which, apparently, includes resigning from his position on the Board of Directors for our favorite Finnish company, Nokia.

Hesse has served on the board since 2005 and according to Board Chairman (and ex-CEO) Jorma Ollila, will be sorely missed. However, I find this fascinating. I was unaware that Hesse served on Nokia’s Board of Directors. Nokia doesn’t currently make CDMA handsets, and Sprint’s current network here in the U.S. is CDMA, though I suppose that serves to ensure there’s no conflict of interest for Hesse.

However, knowing that Sprint is working on launching a WiMax network soon, and that Nokia’s interested in anything that Qualcomm doesn’t have their paws into too much (such as WiMax) I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing some more Nokia-friendly things going on with Sprint Nextel.

Note: Sprint does indeed currently offer some Nokia handsets, but they are merely outsourced and then get the Nokia brand slapped on them. They’re not *truly* Nokia handsets.