Friday, June 10, 2011

Nokia CTO Leaves Adding to More Bad News


Chief Tech Officer of Nokia, Richard Green, is on leave from the company. According to “Nokia CTO on Leave Amid Report of Strategy Disarray” by Ritsuko Ando and Georgina Prodham of Reuters.com, there is speculation that Green left “over Nokia’s Microsoft-focused smartphone strategy and might not return”.  The official and only response from Nokia is that he is on leave for personal reasons. 

Nokia is not doing as well as its competitors. As the mobile market has advanced, the company has been run over by competitors in the smartphone market and cheaper competitors in the low-end market. The company’s market value and ratings have dropped. According to one analyst “We will probably see more of these negative news from Nokia in the coming weeks…”

The news about the leave came on a day when CEO Stephen Elop spoke at a conference in London. Elop avoided the CTO leave issue and instead focused on Nokia’s current state. He shut down all rumors that Nokia was up for sale. Yesterday, CNBC reported rumors of Microsoft buying Nokia, along with other companies.  The article reports Elop is probably telling the truth as Nokia does not seem attractive to any potential buyer. Nokia will be working with Microsoft to develop phones using Windows Phone OS. According to the article, “Elop stuck to this line that the company needed not a fundamental rehaul but a more focus and better execution”.  Nokia’s focus is clearly competition as Elop stated: 

“It is more important for us today to compete with Android and Apple than to compete with a Samsung Windows phone”

Having a tech company’s CTO leave is bad for the company image. The only things that can save Nokia are an upcoming great product and consumer confidence. Whether for personal reasons or disagreement, the leave does not inspire confidence from consumers or investors. If the company is lacking focus and execution as the CEO implied, it’s going need an overhaul. The biggest issue is Nokia has to have a product that does better than other models and beats Android and Apple; the phone has to do well overall. Windows Phone OS is still in infancy and Nokia isn’t known for having better rated smartphones than other models. I wish good luck to the company; as a consumer, I love having a litter of phones to choose from when I upgrade.

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