Stephen Elop talks about Nokia's prospects in D9 interview - GSMArena.com news

Stephen Elop talks about Nokia's prospects in D9 interview - GSMArena.com news

Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, was in an interview today with Walt Mossberg where he answered some pressing questions about Nokia, whether it's the transition from Symbian to Windows Phone 7 or about the rumors of Microsoft buying Nokia and about entering the tablet space, he was grilled.


When asked about the move away from Symbian, Elop said it was definitely painful. The reason they decided to move away from Symbian was because that wanted to catch up with iOS and Android and with Symbian it would have taken a lot of time. Elop also described Symbian as being "crufty".
A similar problem was faced when deciding to go with MeeGo. So it was then decided to go with Windows Phone 7 as it would allow them to catch up with the other two platforms at a faster rate. They could have gone with Android but Nokia felt it would have been difficult to differentiate themselves with other Android OEMs and they would not have had the same influence as they do now with Windows Phone 7.
Commenting about the competition, Elop also expressed his wish to see Samsung become more successful with Windows Phone 7 as that would increase the popularity of the platform and make Nokia's goal of establishing Windows Phone 7 as the third major smartphone platform easier.
As for the rumors of Microsoft buying Nokia, Elop said that “the rumors are baseless” and that “there’s absolutely no discussion”. The reason for this is that it would not make sense for Microsoft to buy Nokia because smartphones only form half of Nokia’s business as they also sell a lot of feature phones and “that business does not align with Microsoft’s business”.
About losing market share in US, Elop said that Nokia had 30-40% share of the US market in 2004 but then the people there moved to flip phones and Nokia didn’t think they were very important. He mentions this as a major cause of the drop in popularity for Nokia in the US.
When inquired about when the first Nokia Windows Phone 7 will hit the market, Elop mentioned they are targeting the fourth quarter of 2011, just in time for the holidays.
Regarding tablets, Elop said "We'll have to address that space." But then again, that's no news, isn't it?

Nokia lowers Q2 outlook, promises WP7.5 smartphones in Q4 - GSMArena.com news

Nokia lowers Q2 outlook, promises WP7.5 smartphones in Q4 - GSMArena.com news

Nokia revised its smartphones and services outlook for Q2 and full 2011 and there are some good news and some bad news to investors and users alike. The company will generate substantially less revenue from smartphones and services in Q2, but the Windows Phone smartphone development is going ahead of schedule.

With the sales of the Nokia current portfolio apparently not going according to plan the company says that it won’t be able to achieve its target revenue of €6.1 billion. The estimated operating margin of 6% to 9% will obviously be beyond reach for Nokia too with the revisited forecast suggesting a breakeven quarter.

The company is so far away from its targets that it has given up on its full 2011 forecasts altogether. It says that it will do everything it can to arrest the fall though including some restructuring that should be able to save about 1 billion a year from 2013 on.

On the positive side, the development of the first WP smartphones carrying the Nokia brand is obviously going well and the company is getting increasingly optimistic that it will be able to launch them in Q4.

As you can see the partnership with Microsoft is now vital to the future of Nokia so we really hope it works out. The software giant has already brought its mobile platform a huge step forward with the Mango update so we are now to see if Nokia will deliver on the hardware end.