Apple Just Hired The Expert Behind Nokia's Amazing Smartphone Cameras

Apple has hired Nokia's head of photography for its line of Lumia and PureView smartphones.

Ari Partinen, who is listed as Nokia's photography lead for mobile phones on his LinkedIn profile, announced the news via Twitter, which was first spotted by Engadget.

Partinen hasn't specified what his role at Apple will entail, but he announced that today will be his last day with Nokia before he joins Apple in June.

In a post on Nokia's Conversations blog, the company had referred to Partinen as its "own camera expert."

Partinen's LinkedIn profile says he has "worked with mobile imaging, starting from camera module production all the way to the final image quality tuning and verification."

He's also assisted with compiling blog posts for Nokia's Conversations blog, such as one in which he organized a studio photo shoot with the Lumia 1020, one of the company's flagship smartphones that features a 41-megapixel camera.

Here's what he tweeted earlier:

Windows Phone is still far behind iOS and Android when it comes to U.S. market share, but Nokia has always flaunted the camera on its Lumia phones as being its prized feature. In fact, the Nokia Lumia 1020 has one of the best smartphone cameras ever made.

It's unclear how Partinen's departure will impact Nokia's mobile camera development, but the move also hints that Apple is putting more resources into the cameras for its iPhones.

Nokia's Lumia smartphones and the iPhone both take some of the best pictures you can capture with a smartphone, so the matchup could potentially yield some interesting results.