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Nokia Names Microsoft's Elop As New CEO
itwbennett writes "Nokia has tapped Stephen Elop, former president of Microsoft's business software group, to become its new CEO effective Sept. 21. Elop will replace Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, who loses his board seat immediately and will step down from the CEO position on Sept. 20. Microsoft said Elop will leave immediately, but the company doesn't seem to be rushing to fill the vacancy at the top of one of its largest divisions. 'I am writing to let you know that Stephen Elop has been offered and has accepted the job as CEO of Nokia and will be leaving Microsoft, effective immediately,' Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote in a letter to employees late Thursday."
I bought a e52 because it had a bunch of things that I wanted and hey, symbian is open source now too, right?
Well, in a word, disappointment. Serial disappointment. It's not the surface of the interface, it's not qt or lack thereof, it's complete cluelessness in functionality. Every single feature disappoints in some way, down to the calendar and the timer -- both of which are far inferior to the very same thing in my 2001 vintage 6310. The only thing you might run the "open sourced" symbian on within the foreseeable future is beagle boards. Nothing wrong with beagle boards, but I wouldn't run symbian on them. I want to fix my damned phone, but that part isn't open.
It really is impressive just how much nokia failed to "get". It's like they're dead set on finding irrelevance from within heaps and heaps of potential.
Not really. This guy is taking the role of CEO, not chief engineer. Elop probably has a proven track record in managing Microsoft's business-software division (which does better than most divisions at MS) so they want him to deliver the same success to Nokia.
Also, it's worth noting that Nokia's financial success is not dependent on competing with Apple in the smartphone market. They could simply continue making featurephones and dominate that segment, and make tons of money doing so.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Because you're experienced in hiring executives and know that executive != company. Which google exec would you go for? How many executives at a company primarily focused on advertising would really be appropriate to run one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world? I have no idea. Are you just more willing to share your opinion on matters you don't have in depth knowledge of, or is hiring execs your day job?
Maybe Nokia's hoping to move in more of a business direction and eat up Blackberry's market?
Elop comes from Office, which is about as close to a license to print money as you can get in the Office world. Clearly he knows something about managing a product that the business world will want. Cue a handful of people who are convinced that any day now Google Docs or OO will finally make real headway against Office in much the same way that Cubs fans are convinced that this will be their year in the World Series, but seriously -- even if Office somehow went down in flames today, it's still enjoyed utter dominance of its market for, what, 15 years? I'm sure if Nokia ended up with only that kind of dominance over business smartphones out of this move (and I don't think they will, but for the sake of argument... ) they'd be happy with it.
On the other hand MS Office as software is very bloated and inelegant.
On the other other hand, Office enjoys ridiculous market share and makes a staggering amount of money.
I wonder which of those things would be more important to a corporation.
far more, nokia is embracing linux for it's next mass platform (meego) and open-sourcing it's current platforn (symbian).
i hope they will keep this attitude.
for now they are a little slow to deliver, but they are imho the most open mobiles company.
This guy isn't Mr Microsoft. He simply worked for them. Have some damn perspective.
True, but I'm not sure there is such a thing as a functional chief engineer in the consumer space. If they were designing aircraft, I can see the suits deferring to the engineers except for general requirements, budgets, and such. It'll probably be harder to convince any CEO that he doesn't understand cell phones enough to have an opinion...