New CEO offers scathing Nokia assessment

From CNET News.com: Stephen Elop, Nokia's new chief executive, has seemingly begun bracing the company for radical change with a no-holds-barred memo saying the once dominant mobile phone company is now "years behind" its competitors.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop
(Credit: Nokia)

The memo, published at The Wall Street Journal and Endgadget, arrives on the eve of a public strategy briefing at the end of this week and the massive Mobile World Congress trade show next week. Nokia, which reported a 21 percent decline in profits for the fourth quarter of 2010, declined to comment on the memo.

In it, Elop says Nokia is like a man on an oil platform in the North Sea who wakes to explosions and fire, but who survives after choosing to leap into the icy sea. "Nokia, our platform is burning," Elop said, and Nokia itself, not just competitors, has poured gasoline on it.

He said Nokia has failed to respond to three competitive challenges: Apple's iPhone, Google's Android operating system, and low-cost phones from China. Its own Symbian operating systems is unwieldy, and its higher-end MeeGo is late. And while Nokia failed to respond, the rules of mobile phone competition expanded from specific devices to ecosystems.

"The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, e-commerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem," Elop said.

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