Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

[Posted September 13, 2010 by ris]

The Nokia blog reports that Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo will be stepping down from his role as President and CEO of Nokia, to be replaced by Stephen Elop. "In a little over a week, Stephen Elop will take over as Nokia's new President and CEO. Following a thorough selection process Nokia believes it has found the right person to lead Nokia through its transformation and that Elop makes a perfect compliment to Nokia's current competencies. Previously Stephen was head of Microsoft's business division after a stint as COO of Juniper Networks and which followed his role as president of worldwide field operations at Adobe Systems Inc."

to post comments

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 13, 2010 20:26 UTC (Mon) by boog (subscriber, #30882) [Link] (11 responses)

In: Windows 7
Out: MeeGo
?

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 13, 2010 20:39 UTC (Mon) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link] (9 responses)

Which hardware maker will want to re-develop all their Linux drivers for Windows Mobile, for a company that's out of the smart-phone market? Or do you expect Nokia to develop Windows drivers? With which employees, the MeeGo or the Symbian devs?

I think Nokia will have to go on the Linux way, one way or another.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 13, 2010 23:20 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (6 responses)

The only thing that switching to Windows would do would kill Nokia faster then if they stuck with Symbian. I would hope that they are not so stupid as to allow something like that to happen.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 13:29 UTC (Tue) by emk (subscriber, #1128) [Link] (5 responses)

About a year ago, I read an article in a French newspaper with a senior Nokia executive who was very, very excited about their Microsoft partnership that allows them to read Office documents on their phones. When asked about competing smart phones, he seemed to get pretty obsessed about how wonderful Microsoft was. I felt pretty worried about Nokia's future after reading that article.

Note that this should be taken with a grain of saltit's been filtered through both a newspaper reporter and my limited command of French. But I wouldn't rule out a big strategic shift to Windows 7 Mobile, either.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 14:50 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

If the future of Nokia is about making phones optimised for its own executives then they might as well get started with the process of shutting the company down before their competitors have the pleasure of doing so in the marketplace.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 18:07 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (3 responses)

> Microsoft partnership that allows them to read Office documents on their phones.

Well that is actually a big deal for a phone. The ability to edit office documents is a killer for businesses and businesses are a huge consumer of smartphones. But I would not read much into the wankerings of executives in press releases. To them everything is wonderful, all products are ground breaking, and all partnerships are invaluable!

But who knows what they really think.

Like this Stephen Elop. How loyal to Microsoft do you think he is? How attached to Windows Mobile is he? It's really a very personal choice for a executive like that. Maybe he felt that Windows Phone 7 design is shit and wanted to break away from his old company to prove that he could do a better job if he was put in charge? That is just as likely as him hoping to eliminate Symbian and Meego in favor of Windows Phone 7 phones.

Maybe after breaking away from Microsoft because of Balmer refusing to stand down the last thing he would want to see is all the profits of his new company draining away into the pockets of his old nemesis.

Who knows?

We will just have to wait and see.

If this is any indication:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/14/nokia-hires-peter-skil...
They just hired a ex-Palm executive, Peter Skillman, who was responsible for much of the design of the palm pre phone. He is going to head up Meego 'user experience'.

It certainly looks like Nokia is not aiming to abandon Meego any time soon.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 18:20 UTC (Tue) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (2 responses)

I'd like this opportunity to link to FreOffice... The only free software mobile office suite. OpenDocument based, can read most ms-office documents, lots of cool stuff and... development sponsored by Nokia: http://freoffice.blogspot.com/

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 16, 2010 16:50 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] (1 responses)

Office suites are for opening attachments from old people. I guess there is a market for "senior-friendly phones," though.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 17, 2010 10:42 UTC (Fri) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link]

> Office suites are for opening attachments from old people.

If you mean by that "old enough to actually have a job", I'd agree.
SCNR

No changing horses in midstream

Posted Sep 14, 2010 5:28 UTC (Tue) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (1 responses)

for a company that's out of the smart-phone market?

Eh??? Outside of the USA, Nokia still has a very hefty chunk of the smartphone market. Symbian is globally still the most widely used smartphone OS, despite all the iPhone and Android hype (and even Gartner thinks it will have a 39% share in 2012). But I agree it would be extremely stupid for Nokia to switch OS'es to a totally different one now. Even if Elop tried, I doubt he would succeed, there is too much we-do-it-our-way culture at Nokia for that to happen. He would have to fire all the engineers...

No changing horses in midstream

Posted Sep 14, 2010 11:52 UTC (Tue) by anandrajan (guest, #146) [Link]

It's likely the parent meant Microsoft and not Nokia. Though, the contention that Microsoft is out of the smart-phone market is dubious considering they just released Windows Mobile 7 a few days ago.

Didn't a top Microsoft exec go to Vmware (EMC)? These things happen all the time and we shouldn't read too much into them. IMHO, Intel and Nokia have too much invested in Meego to switch horses midstream. But, Nokia - being a hardware company - is capable of making Windows Mobile 7 phones, Meego phones and even Android phones for that matter - like Samsung and HTC. Whether it is in their interests to do so is another matter altogether.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 12:38 UTC (Tue) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link]

WinMo or deeper connections to MSFT seem unlikely.

Stephen was only very short time at Microsoft and not related to MS mobile side at all. If anything he'll bring more Flash from his eight year CEO seat at Macromedia...

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 13, 2010 20:41 UTC (Mon) by mosfet (guest, #45339) [Link] (8 responses)

I heavily recommend to read this article by Jean-Louis Gassée

http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/09/12/nokia%E2%80%99s-new-...

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 0:53 UTC (Tue) by klbrun (subscriber, #45083) [Link] (7 responses)

If Nokia went with Android, they could add value by applying their expertise in making cell phones, especially in power and network management (expertise that Google and Apple lack). They could provide "best of breed" Android phones. Since the wireless network is going to be a problem for some time, this is an opportunity for Nokia.

On the other hand, a huge market is non-smart phones in the developing world, and Nokia is already there (one of the reasons Nokia is still number one in cell phones). Although various Chinese companies are developing cheap Android platforms, I doubt these will make much headway in that market, because what people need is cheap access to the wireless network, not network heavy software apps on power hungry platforms.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 3:26 UTC (Tue) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

By jumping in with Android Nokia loses a great deal of control over the phone OS.

Now with symbian^3 based on opensourced symbian code, and meego having a very heavy Nokia presence, jumping in with Android would utterly destroy its relevance

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 8:00 UTC (Tue) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link] (2 responses)

> they could add value by applying their expertise in making cell phones, especially in power and network management (expertise that Google and Apple lack)

But this expertise is not as much in the phone makers' lab as it is in the chip makers' (TI which Nokia used in many of its phones, Qualcomm which HTC uses in its phones, etc...) labs.

Really, Nokia quickly needs a new phone that can compete with the Androids and iPhones of this world. And if they are waiting on Intel to deliver an Atom-optimised MeeGo running with an Infineon modem, they will be out of the picture before then.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 22:39 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

I do not think that power management expertise mainly lies in hardware.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 22:44 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Really? Without hardware support, software can't do a great deal to implement power management. The hardware designers need to implement the functionality - the software authors merely need to use it.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 8:33 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (1 responses)

Have you been to China lately?

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 9:41 UTC (Tue) by klbrun (subscriber, #45083) [Link]

I'm not sure we should still consider China to be 'developing'...

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 13:44 UTC (Tue) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link]

> On the other hand, a huge market is non-smart phones in the developing world, and Nokia is already there (one of the reasons Nokia is still number one in cell phones).

Industrialized countries also have a huge non-smartphone market.

Lots of work for the new CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 0:22 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

This gentleman will have his hands full, there is no doubt about that. Nokia is still churning a million different devices, none of which have a piece of software installed that is fully polished, modern and truly usable.

I think the main thing for him to understand is that (smart)phones are computers that can make phone calls, not phones that also do computer stuff. Once he's across that, there is some chance for Nokia.

I'm expecting a device cull to start soon...

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 8:20 UTC (Tue) by macson_g (guest, #12717) [Link] (2 responses)

IMHO this is a very good news not only for Nokia but also for Free Software in general.

Nokia's offering was lagging behind the competitors in recent years and they realise it and they doing what they can.

First thing they did was to embrace Free Software.

Second was ditching Symbian, but before they did it - they took their part in opensourcing it.

Then: acquisition of Trolltech and releasing Qt under GPL3, introduction of fully-open telephony stack (oFono) and continued work on Linux-based mobile OS. And they are not shy to use (and release) GPLed softwareL.

It looks like the last bit they're missing to become 'geeks favourite phone manufacturer' is vigorous management. I hope that the new guy - albeit of non-FOSS-friendly background - will do the job.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 8:31 UTC (Tue) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

Qt is _L_GPL even.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 19, 2010 11:36 UTC (Sun) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link]

Second was ditching Symbian

They have in no way ditched Symbian. Nokia are shipping new phones running Symbian, with more in the pipeline.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 8:30 UTC (Tue) by sylware (guest, #35259) [Link] (2 responses)

The meaning of this will probably slowly appear in futur nokia doings or non-doings.

The bright side: this guy may have done his coming out in open source software as I and certainly many did before (he's late).

The dark side:nokia is toasted from an open source software point of view, or at least risky to deal with, especially with its open source technologies.

Like oracle and mysql... I would start to look for alternatives right now, and certainly not put all my eggs in the same basket. For instance, Qt would be on hold, and a switch on GTK+/Clutter/EFL/etc would be seriously considered.

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 14, 2010 11:12 UTC (Tue) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link] (1 responses)

Again, Qt is LGPL. So what could be the point of switching?

Stephen Elop to join Nokia as President and CEO

Posted Sep 16, 2010 14:46 UTC (Thu) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link]

Familiarity for existing Maemo and Moblin developers, existing community and investments. But they went with QT, peace be with that, I just hope Novell will do a MonoTouch like development framework for MeeGo one could use for a consistent experience.