Hard Times in Finland: Nokia Fires Top Execs, Panics Like Crazy

Is Windows Phone 7 enough?

Feb 6 2011, 12:17pm CST | by Robert Evans

Hard Times in Finland: Nokia Fires Top Execs, Panics Like Crazy

Oh Nokia, what will become of you? Despite a few brief rallies in Q2 and Q3, Nokia ended 2010 at 31% market share. Compare that to 38% in Q3 and you'll see just how bad things have gotten. It's no wonder CEO Stephen Elop is about to fire a ton of long-standing execs.

If any company was ever in terrible need of a house cleaning, Nokia is it. They failed to deal with iOS or Android, clinging to their European and Asian markets and assuming the rest of the world would always be satisfied with Symbian. When that became clearly untenable, they tried to repackage Maemo as a next-gen smartphone OS (it was originally a tablet OS). That didn't work right away, so Nokia rolled it into MeeGo.

Which has yet to turn into anything worthwhile- although the MWC may change that.

So we can see that big changes are necessary if Nokia is to survive. Stephen Elop is expected to reveal a new company strategy on February 11. German weekly Wirtschaftswoche believes that Mary T. McDowell (in charge of Nokia's mobile phone unit), Niklas Savander (manager of Nokia's market's unit), Kai Oistamo (Chief Development Officer) and Tero Ojanpera (manager for services & mobile solutions) will all get the axe next week. Nokia is reportedly headhunting for execs with extensive software experience.

Another possibility is that Nokia is working on a Windows Phone 7 device. Or an Android device. There have been more rumors about the former, and we've also been tipped to a Feb 11 reveal.

All eyes will turn to Nokia next week (unless someone more interesting makes an announcement) as they work to rebuild their brand. The odds seem long right now, but Nokia still holds more than 30% of the world smartphone market. We can't count them out yet.

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Robert Evans
The excitement about new smartphones, tablets and anything mobile drive Robert to unearth the latest rumors and developments in this fast moving space. He adopted 4G as soon as it become available and knows where the mobile market is going.
Robert can be contacted directly at robert@i4u.com.