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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."
One of the key components of Nokia's current attempt to regain relevance is the (open source) Qt toolkit, powering KDE on Linux. It will be very interesting to see how Nokia under Elop will manage that asset and how Nokia's relation to the Open Source community will evolve.
I for one wish him, Nokia and all ex-Trolls well.
of their remarkable success with mobile devices, especially phones? I don't understand this one. How did Elop manage to distance himself from his former employers failures or did Nokia even notice? This does not bode well for Nokia.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
I guess this doesn't sound like good news for MeeGo. But maybe I'm too harsh. If Nokia really wants to be a big player in the smartphone market they will have to continue with MeeGo.
-- Cheers!
Uh, why Microsoft? I think they've proven they suck with anything "cool", especially in the mobile realm. Android is now starting to steamroll BB in stats, and has a cool tablet coming out. Why would a mobile company trying to 'come back' (of sorts) hire a MS person? I don't get it.
The only reason I just bought an Android phone instead of an N900
NITDroid(Android 2.2) runs on N900 just fine, if you don't like the Nokia software, switch.
Thats why N900 is superior platform, it gives YOU the ability to choose the OS yourself instead telling what you can and can't do with the hardware.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
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.
Awesome. He should dead the lame S40 + Symbian + MeeGo plans and make plain a Windows 7 compatible (Linux plus Mono) play to beat Android. Nokia needs big new attack to stay relevant, and symbian and Qt no good at all ever.
Perhaps no exec from Google were willing to leave a successful company, in order to join a company that is struggling (and so far failing) to stay relevant in the High-end phone market?
I know Nokia still sells a lot of phones, but they are mostly in lower profit area of the market.
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"
"Google, at least, is giving Apple a run for its money"
Just how delusional can you possibly be?
Google's Android dumped Apple into 3rd place in the cellphone market two quarters ago. And Google dumped RIM into 2nd place this last quarter.
Android was selling at a rate of 200,000 new phones a day/73 million a year a few months ago. And that rate has been increasing at a tremendous rate quarter after quarter for the past two years.
Perhaps you spend your day sitting around in Starbucks, but out in the real world Google is the leader of the cellphone market.
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?
Nokia phones now come in Home, small business, big business, magcorp, media and facebook editions.
This guy is taking the role of CEO, not chief engineer.
Thank you. Most people seem to have missed the point that he's going to be in charge of the business end, not product development.
Granted, the two are obviously intertwined, but he's going to be dealing with money and people, not the decisions about what software to pursue/cancel except on a big picture scale.
What decline? They've lost market share because the market has grown so much. They sold over 5 million more smartphones 2009 Q2 -> 2010 Q2 source: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1421013
This looks like a troll but it's not. Google "Microsoft master phone" for details. The curse of history is that those who don't learn it are doomed to repeat it.
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A lot of people are asking why a guy from Microsoft?
Basically, Nokia didn't hire a "Microsoft exec", but Stephen Elop of lately Microsoft, but previously of Juniper Networks, Adobe and Macromedia, a software guy with a reputation of excellent communication skills. That might be a very good move, Nokia can make mobile hardware as well as anyone, it's their software and services that have been the problem and not just lately, but at least since 2000.
One of article gives a good overview.
http://www.itworld.com/business/120236/nokia-names-microsofts-elop-new-ceo
The Guardian has very nice article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/sep/10/nokia-stephen-elop-smartphone
Only thing I can think to add, that I read in Finnish media, was that Elop handled Microsoft's relations with Nokia and is relatively well known inside Nokia's boardroom already.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
In what Microsoft spokesmen called an "unfortunate accident" Elop got hit by a flying chair while trying to leave the Redmond campus.
Holier-than-thou declaring that the mere mention of "letdown" as the main user experience isn't enough for your taste is even less useful. hth.
Still and all, because you asked oh-so-nicely, some tidbits:
- 6310 has a "timer" feature. Not so the e52. Best you can do is set an alarm for a certain time in the future. After setting it'll "helpfully" remind you that it'll go off in N minutes. N being one less than expected based on simple time calculation. Look, that thing has enough cpu power to calculate that sort of thing for me, why can't I put in "now + N minutes" right away?
- 6310's calendar has a "call somebody" entry type. Not so the e52. It has lots of ways to specify the location, but no way to simply say "I want to call that person, that number, then, that time" All the extra fields that it does add loses me the most-used option. Not useful.
And as a bonus:
I used to store SMS messages on the SIM. The e52 simply doesn't let me do that. It won't even show the messages already on the SIM except for the first few characters. There's no way to show the entire message short of taking the SIM out and putting it back in the 6310. Maybe if I moved them off the SIM to the phone first, but that'd mean they get stuck on the e52 and can't be put back on the SIM. GIven that this is the fourth or fifth phone that's held this SIM, that's simply not acceptable.
There's many more where that came from, like how VoIP 3.0 breaks compatability with just about every SIP provider Out There, the GPS unit is near-deaf and doesn't even show what it's up to, the USB cable isn't usable to recharge the thing if it's too exhausted to pick up the USB before shutting itself off again but not too exhausted to show a nicely lighted start-up animation, and so on, but this should be illustration enough to satisfy your bitching.
They could simply continue making featurephones and dominate that segment, and make tons of money doing so.
That's like saying Dell or HP can continue to make commodity PCs and dominate that segment. While it may be true, the statement misses the fact that as the mobile market matures, feature phones will become a smaller and smaller slice of the overall pie. Moore's Law is relentless; the feature phone is dying as smartphones become the standard. There is no way Nokia execs are sitting around a big table discussing how they can use feature phones to ensure market dominance. If Nokia doesn't find a way to take the battle to Apple and Android, they're in deep trouble.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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...
The guy is nothing but a bunch of hot air. He did almost nothing for Office, he came in after Raikes left in 2008, and it was Raikes who ran Office division so successfully. A monkey with half a brain could continue running this monopoly. They needed someone who knows what to do with the company. Elop certainly does not.
true but from what I've seen, the Microsoft koolaid infects quite successfully. He's also been able to leverage all the Microsoft shops who look for products from Microsoft instead of looking at what is already on the market so in many cases, it just means putting something which kinda works in front of them and they purchase it. Yes, I've seen this. So while he might have been head of part of Microsoft's server software division, have a monopoly and leveraging that monopoly for success is not even close to competing in the open market.
And just because he is the CEO and not the chief engineer, he runs the show and has the voice of the Board of Directors and management. And who's to say he's not going to start replacing many of the existing staff with his own? That is what often happens.
IMO, this guys is untested in a real market and given where he came from, he's a threat to the future of Nokia. Had he been outside of Microsoft for a couple of years more could be known of his ability to lead an independent company but that's now what we have here.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
except for the usa . Their only real competition are apple and google... From the usa ... They have been making smartphones for a decade and are looking to get into the usa market with stuff like the n900 and n8. They haven't been able to break the us market so far and i'll bet this is elop's first task .
Deleted
These issues have everything to do with the topic. Every possible corner of the topic is covered in these issues. We have Mobile competetive field, Microsoft executive moving to competitor, deals with the devil, partnership potentials, future potentials, breach of faith and so on. We don't have the death of the moved-to company yet because Nokia is not yet in that phase of the engagement.
And yet I'm going to relent. After further consideration Nokia is too smart to be bought off by Microsoft, too big to believe in a benefit, too clever to leave their CEO ungoverned. At 30 months this guy's too new to Redmond to be an external asset unless their mindscaping has risen to Treadstone levels, and I don't believe it has. There's no evidence of a significant Scientology incursion into the Microsoft culture, which is what it would take to turn him so quick. Nokia's Board is learned enough and responsible enough to consider these issues, monitor their new CEO carefully and judge the risks. They're not dumb, and they've not reached their dotage. If he's a plant he's not going to sprout at Nokia.
I recant my objections. He may compete well and that would be a Good Thing.
If Nokia should enter into a "partnership" with Microsoft in the near future though, Nokia is an easy short. Microsoft is a competitor with trivial market share and limited resources in the space. Microsoft wants to compete in this space with Windows Phone 7. Nokia remains, and is projected to remain, the dominant player in the space. Such a partnership would gain Nokia nothing and benefit Microsoft well so it would be an abrogation of corporate responsibility for Nokia to enter into such a deal. If you see it, Nokia is PWNed. Short Nokia hard in that case and you can retire on the movement.
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Microsoft's Marc Brown had nothing to do with phones either, when he took a seat on the board of Sendo.
He was then and remained through the project, an employee of Microsoft.
Help stamp out iliturcy.