HELSINKI, Finland - Nokia's head of technology has taken a leave of absence and is not coming back after disagreement over a new group strategy, Finland's leading daily Helsingin Sanomat reported on Thursday.

"Two independent sources for the Helsingin Sanomat say (Rich) Green will be gone until the end of the year and is unlikely to return to Nokia," the newspaper said.

Nokia, the world's leading maker of mobile phones, told AFP that Green "had taken leave to attend to a personal matter" but did not provide further details or a date for his return.

The company said however that Henry Tirri, who currently heads Nokia's Research Center, would take over as acting chief technology officer during Green's absence.

Helsingin Sanomat's unnamed sources said Green disagreed with a decision by Nokia to scrap plans for its Meego operating system, an open-source platform developed in co-operation with Intel which was eventually supposed to replace the Symbian platform in Nokia smartphones.

In February, new chief executive Stephen Elop announced a radical restructuring of the company, which included phasing out Symbian in favour of Microsoft Phone for its smartphones, and essentially relegated Meego to an engineering side project.

Green took over as chief technology officer as part of Elop's corporate shake-up, replacing Alberto Torres in February.

Elop's gamble on the Microsoft platform was a dramatic move to stop a crippling loss of market share at the hands of Apple and phones running Google's Android operating system.