With Nokia’s brand soon to disappear from the smartphone business, one of the lead developers of the company’s camera technology is defecting to Apple. Senior engineer Ari Partinen said Friday was his last day with Nokia and he would soon be starting work in Cupertino.

Partinen was called Nokia’s “own camera expert” by the company and had a big hand in the development of the PureView oversampling technology and the Lumia series of devices, as well as the much celebrated hardware of the 41 megapixel Nokia 808.

Last month, software giant Microsoft revealed plans to drop the Nokia brand following its recently completed acquisition of Nokia’s devices and services business.

The firm’s newly-appointed executive vice president for the Microsoft Devices Group, Stephen Elop, who was formerly CEO at Nokia, explained on the Conversations at Nokia blog that while Microsoft is allowed to use Nokia’s brand name for its handsets for a period of time, the firm plans to do away with it in the near future.

“Nokia as a brand will not be used for long going forward for smartphones,” Elop said on the blog. “Work is underway to select the go forward smartphone brand.”

In related news, there are rumours swirling that Apple is close to a deal to acquire Dr Dre’s headphone manufacturing operation Beats, for an excess of $3bn. But so far there is no substance to the reports.