Elop suggested on the company’s recent earnings call that a shift in strategy is needed for the company to better compete at the high end of the smartphone market and hinted the company might be open to adopting a new operating system such as Windows Phone or Android.

“The game has changed from battle of devices to war of ecosystems,” Elop said on last month’s earnings conference call, adding later that “Our industry has changed and we have to change faster.”

Until now, Nokia’s strategy has focused on its homegrown Symbian operating system, with plans to move to a mobile Linux variant known as MeeGo. In recent weeks, though, the company has been said to be weighing other alternatives and has canceled plans to bring a new smartphone to the U.S.

A Nokia representative declined to comment on any potential executive shifts. No major executive departures have been announced since Elop assumed the top post in September.

Currently principal of DeVard Marketing Group, DeVard previously served as SVP of marketing and brand management at Verizon and as CMO of Citigroup’s e-consumer business. When she begins her new gig at Nokia she’ll oversee the company’s newly created Marketing and Communications division, where her experience at Verizon should come in handy. “Her experience and proven track record from a wide range of consumer businesses will be a great boost to increasing consumer focus and will bring fresh thinking as we strive for a clearer value proposition for our consumers and continue to build the Nokia brand,” Elop said in a statement.

“We have narrowed [the issue] down to the way we assemble the engines,” Nokia Executive Vice President Niklas Savander explained, adding that the number of devices affected is small in comparison to the total number shipped. “However, for the one individual where it’s not working, it is, of course, a significant issue. As a precautionary measure we have taken immediate action across the product line.”

A tough break for Nokia and the N8, its long-awaited marquee smartphone and the first to run the Symbian 3 OS. Said Strategy Analytics Neil Mawston, “This doesn’t help the Nokia brand, that’s for sure. The problems have been mounting for the past few years and every little negative headline adds to that. It’s not a great start for their supposed iPhone or Android killer.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Nokia N8 Ships
• Nokia’s N8: Table Stakes in the High Rollers Room

[Image credit: Flickr/Christchurch City Libraries]

And so this morning, the handset maker announced another sweeping overhaul of its management structure, its second reorganization in less than a year. This time around, Nokia (NOK) is dividing its Devices and Services business into three units.

Mobile Solutions (smartphones and services), will be headed by Anssi Vanjoki; Mobile Phones (low-end handsets) by Mary McDowell and Markets (sales, marketing and distribution) by Niklas Savander. Solutions will handle smartphones and services; Mobile will oversee Nokia’s low-end phones and Markets will take care of sales and marketing, supply chains and sourcing. (Click on chart below to expand.)

Another significant rejiggering of Nokia’s management. Interestingly, there appears to be no place in it for former Chief Financial Officer Rick Simonson, who was tapped to run the company’s mobile phone business as part of its last restructuring seven months ago. Remember, it was Simonson who heralded Nokia’s recovery in smartphones.

“Yes, we have lost ground in the smartphone space over the past 18 months, but the decline has stopped and stablised in the second and third quarters of 2009,” he told India’s Economic Times in January.

“The New Year will see [our] recovery in smartphones….By 2011, our efforts will start producing results, as we will be at par with Apple and RIM in smartphones,” Simonson added. “Not only [will] we draw level with them, we will also win the war because, in addition to e-mail, we will be adding content, chat, music, entertainment and several other features, which will soon become very critical for success of any company in this space.”

Pulling that off evidently wasn’t quite so easy as Simonson or Nokia expected.

In any event, Nokia believes it has things dialed in now. “In addition to extending our leadership in mobile phones, we are decisively moving to respond faster to growth opportunities we expect in smartphones and mobile computers,” CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in a statement. “Nokia’s new organisational structure is designed to speed up execution and accelerate innovation.”

In theory. But in practice? Well, we’ll have to see how things play out. The company’s last organizational shakeup was intended to do exactly the same thing, and as far as I can tell, didn’t substantially improve Nokia’s position in anything.

Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, will soon be just a tad smaller. This morning the company said it will sack a further 450 employees in its mobile services business, a division charged with developing and delivering the Ovi-branded Internet services tied to Nokia devices. Seems the still souring economy has undermined Nokia’s (NOK) ambitions in that area, and Apple’s (AAPL) success with the iPhone App Store has inspired it to look to third-party developers to bring new applications to its devices. Said Niklas Savander, Nokia’s executive vice president of services, “The planned changes are aimed at improving and simplifying the user experience of Nokia services, increasing opportunities for third party developers and other partners to create compelling services, and accelerating the development of a common platform for Nokia’s different service offerings.”

In other words, the planned changes are aimed at catching up with Apple. “As much as iPhone and App Store is a success for Apple, it’s a humiliating defeat for the rest of the mobile industry,” Bengt Nordstrom, chief executive of telecom consultant Northstream, told Reuters. “Twenty years of efforts from operators and vendors to create mobile applications that customers like is overtaken in a heartbeat by someone that never done it before.”

Overall, Nokia’s announcement is good news for mobile app developers, bad news for the ones handling them internally at Nokia. It’s not as if we didn’t see this coming, though. The econalypse has been having deleterious effects on Nokia. In January, the company warned that world-wide sales in ’09 are likely to fall 10 percent year-to-year. As CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo put it at the time, “the macro environment is challenging and, we believe, will remain so in 2009.”

Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, will soon be just a tad smaller. This morning the company said it will sack a further 450 employees in its mobile services business, a division charged with developing and delivering the Ovi-branded Internet services tied to Nokia devices. Seems the still souring economy has undermined Nokia’s (NOK) ambitions in that area, and Apple’s (AAPL) success with the iPhone App Store has inspired it to look to third-party developers to bring new applications to its devices. Said Niklas Savander, Nokia’s executive vice president of services, “The planned changes are aimed at improving and simplifying the user experience of Nokia services, increasing opportunities for third party developers and other partners to create compelling services, and accelerating the development of a common platform for Nokia’s different service offerings.”

In other words, the planned changes are aimed at catching up with Apple. “As much as iPhone and App Store is a success for Apple, it’s a humiliating defeat for the rest of the mobile industry,” Bengt Nordstrom, chief executive of telecom consultant Northstream, told Reuters. “Twenty years of efforts from operators and vendors to create mobile applications that customers like is overtaken in a heartbeat by someone that never done it before.”

Overall, Nokia’s announcement is good news for mobile app developers, bad news for the ones handling them internally at Nokia. It’s not as if we didn’t see this coming, though. The econalypse has been having deleterious effects on Nokia. In January, the company warned that world-wide sales in ’09 are likely to fall 10 percent year-to-year. As CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo put it at the time, “the macro environment is challenging and, we believe, will remain so in 2009.”