AllThingsD » Stephen Elop

U.S. Sales Are Bright Spot for Nokia's Lumia

John Paczkowski — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:40:08 +0000

Though demand for Nokia’s new Lumia smartphones has been spotty across the globe, the Lumia 900 continues to sell reasonably well in the U.S. Retail checks conducted by Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt suggest that the device is the second-best-selling device at most AT&T stores, after the iPhone.

Encouraging news for Nokia, which was recently sued — stupidly — by an irate shareholder over disappointing Lumia sales. Indeed, it’s McCourt’s impression that demand for the Lumia in the States is still quite good.

“Our conversations with store reps indicated no signs of Lumia demand ‘falling off a cliff’ following the reasonably strong launch week,” McCourt says. “Clearly, at $99 and with very noticeable retail store support from AT&T reps, the Lumia launch in the U.S. was built for volume.”

Certainly, Nokia sounds pleased with the device’s performance in the U.S. In an interview with PC Magazine earlier this week, the company’s U.S. president, Chris Weber, reiterated earlier claims that Nokia is selling Lumias as fast as it can make them.

“Demand has been outstripping supply for the first couple of weeks, and we’ve been working hard to rectify that,” Weber said. “The demand for cyan [phones] is significantly outpacing supply.”

Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case abroad. When Nokia last reported earnings, CEO Stephen Elop said that establishing momentum for the Lumia in Europe has been “challenging.” And according to Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu, that remains true today.

“Consumer interest in Nokia’s flagship peaked at very low levels and is now evaporating in European markets,” Ferragu said in a Wednesday note to clients. “The US remains for now an exception.”

Nokia Dips Into Red as Q1 Sales Drop Nearly 29 Percent

Ina Fried — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 10:45:26 +0000

Finland’s Nokia had warned that its quarterly sales report would be a painful one, and the numbers released on Thursday back that up.

Nokia reported that quarterly sales were 7.4 billion euros, down from 10.4 billion euros a year ago. On the earnings side, the company lost 25 euro cents per share.

The company also announced on Thursday that top sales executive Colin Giles is leaving the company. His direct reports will now funnel to Niklas Savander, executive VP of markets.

Nokia had said last week that it would fall short of its goal of near-break-even results, and cautioned that things in the current quarter would only be about the same as they were in the disappointing first quarter.

“We are navigating through a significant company transition in an industry environment that continues to evolve and shift quickly,” CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement. “Over the last year we have made progress on our new strategy, but we have faced greater than expected competitive challenges.”

In particular, things have been rough at the low end of the market, where Android is gaining quickly on the kinds of feature phones that have historically made up much of Nokia’s profits. In both smartphones and lower-end devices, Nokia saw significant drops in both the number of phones being sold and in the average prices those phones were fetching.

“We have a clear sense of urgency to move our strategy forward even faster,” Elop said. “We have focused our efforts in the low-end of smartphones and feature phone asset to drive improved business results and conserve cash. We are confident in our strategy and focused on responding urgently in the short term and creating value for our shareholders in the long term.”

For the current quarter, Nokia said to expect its operating margins to be worse than the -3 percent it posted during the first quarter. Nokia still looks to reduce its operating expenses by $1 billion over the next fiscal year, as compared to 2010.

“Nokia plans to accelerate and substantially deepen Devices & Services cost savings, consistent with its strategic focus,” it added. “Nokia will share further details as quickly as possible.”

Nokia noted that it did receive $250 million in “platform support payments” from Microsoft during the quarter. Nokia said that while it also pays minimum software royalty commitments back to Microsoft, it expects over the life of the agreement for the payments from Redmond to exceed those it must pay to Microsoft.

Diving Bell Locates Nokia Share Price

John Paczkowski — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:58:41 +0000

Investor reponse to Nokia’s profit warning today was quick and brutal. Shares in the company plunged some 18 percent after the struggling handset maker warned that profits in its phone division would be worse than expected in both the first and second quarter. Nokia’s stock price is just $4.38 as I write this.

Today’s warning — Nokia’s second in less than a year — shows the near-Sisyphean task the company has before it as it works to muscle its way back into the smartphone market. And as much as CEO Stephen Elop says Nokia’s leadership is doing its damnedest to “increase the clock speed of the company,” recovery is still a long way off.

“We see a continued risk that Q2 proves weaker than even the new guidance implies,” Nomura Equity Research’s Stuart Jeffrey wrote in a note to clients this morning. “Moreover, unless new feature phone models are an instant hit, there is a risk that Q3 will see another leg down in earnings.”

With its shares at this level, Nokia’s market capitalization has fallen to $16.25 billion. That’s getting close — if you consider within $2 billion to be close — to the level of Nokia’s cash position, which as of Dec. 31 was $14.2 billion. That would, in theory, make it an easy acquisition target for a cash-rich suitor like, say, Microsoft, which as of Dec. 31 had nearly $52 billion in combined cash and short-term investments. If the share price keeps falling, an acquirer like Microsoft could take out Nokia almost for free, or for a small premium, assuming that Nokia can, in its current state, demand one.

Nokia Warns on Q1, Q2 Earnings Amid Rough Transition

Ina Fried — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:24:02 +0000

Nokia on Wednesday warned that last quarter’s earnings will be lower than expected, and said that the current quarter’s business should be only about where things were in the first quarter.

The company said it expected negative margins of 2 to 3 percent for its devices and services business, as compared to its earlier expectation of roughly break-even results.

“Our disappointing Devices & Services first quarter 2012 financial results and outlook for the second quarter 2012 illustrates that our Devices & Services business continues to be in the midst of transition,” CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement.

Nokia cautioned that it will take “tactical price actions” in its low-end phone business, and also warned that further painful moves could be on the horizon.

The Finnish company said it “will accelerate planned cost reductions and will pursue additional significant structural actions if and when necessary.”

“We are continuing to increase the clock speed of the company,” Elop said. “The change is tangible, and we are proud of the way Nokia employees are quickly responding to the needs of consumers and partners.”

Elop tried to paint as good a picture as possible of things.

“Within our Smart Devices business unit, we have established early momentum with Lumia, and we are increasing our investments in Lumia to achieve market success,” Elop said. “Our operator and distributor partners are providing solid support for Windows Phone as a third ecosystem, as evidenced most recently by the launch of the Lumia 900 by AT&T in the United States.”

Of course, even there, things have been bumpy. Nokia confirmed late Tuesday that a software glitch is causing some Lumia 900 customers to be unable to connect to the Internet. The company is rushing out a software fix and offering a $100 credit to all early Lumia 900 buyers.

Nokia said that it sold more than two million of its Lumia phones in the first quarter, at an average selling price of 220 euros. It added that the number of Lumia phones being activated has continued to grow each month, although that’s probably to be expected as the company brings its Windows Phone products to more markets.

Nokia to Sell High-End Lumia in China

Laurie Burkitt — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:30:19 +0000

Finnish phone maker Nokia Corp. is launching sales of its high-end Lumia smartphones in China in a move to gain market share in the world’s largest smartphone market and to push forward the troubled company’s turnaround.

Nokia will begin selling its Lumia 800C, which runs with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone operating system and is supported by mobile carrier China Telecom Corp., in April for 3,599 yuan, or about $570, roughly within the range for a high-end phone in China. In the second quarter, the company will launch the introductory smartphone Lumia 610C to target younger audiences, said Stephen Elop, chief executive of Nokia, on at a press event Wednesday in Beijing.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Nokia's Strategy Comes Into Focus in Barcelona

Ina Fried — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 07:36:22 +0000

Nokia, which one year ago announced its plans to move to Windows Phones, is now looking to put more devices behind the strategy.

The company released its first Windows Phones — the mid-range Lumia 710 and upper mid-range Lumia 800 — last fall. At January’s Consumer Electronics Show it added the Lumia 900, a device bound for AT&T with a wider screen and support for high-speed LTE networks.

But the company has said it plans an even broader lineup, joining Microsoft in taking Windows Phone to new prices and new markets.

Nokia isn’t just doing Windows Phones, though, especially since the Microsoft-based devices still make up just a fraction of the overall units the company ships. Nokia sells millions and millions of its lower-end Series 40 devices, now sold under the Asha brand.
It also hasn’t given up on Symbian, the homegrown smartphone operating system it is moving away from.

8:37 am: Nokia CEO Steven Elop takes the stage, recapping what has happened in the last year.

“One year, what an incredible amount of things can happen in one year,” Elop said. “One year later it is very clear we have changed the clock speed of Nokia.”

8:41 am: Nokia is starting its introductions at the low end with its Asha feature phones. On stage is the head of that business, Mary McDowell, who promises three new devices.

Though not the sexiest part of Nokia, perhaps, it’s a huge business. Nokia has sold 1.5 billion Series 40 devices.

The new devices build on last year’s Asha phones and are a mix of touchscreen and non-touch devices as well as keyboard and non-keyboard.

8:47 am: The Asha 202 and 203 will come with 75 Euros worth of EA games (more than the cost of the phones).

The games won’t come preloaded, but can be downloaded any time in the first six months, with the goal being to get people in the habit of going to Nokia’s store and consuming data.

The keyboard-equipped Asha 302 has a 1GHz processor and can connect to Microsoft Exchange servers.

McDowell noted that until now she hadn’t been able to use one of her team’s own devices as a primary phone because it couldn’t sync with work email, contacts and calendars.

8:53 am: Elop is back talking Lumia, announcing that the Lumia 900 will be expanded beyond the U.S. In April, it will be available in Canada (Elop’s native country) on Rogers running on LTE.

And it will be sold globally in a non-LTE flavor, as well.

8:55 am: On the software side, Nokia is adding book-reading software as well as an updated release of Nokia’s Drive software, which adds offline features and an ability to set speed limits.

8:58 am: Microsoft Windows Phone unit head Terry Myerson is onstage announcing beta of Skype for Windows Phone now available for download.

There are now 65,000 apps for Windows Phone, Myerson added.

9:00 am: Myerson also announced Windows Phone has been made compatible with operator requirements in China, and Harlow says the company is bringing a range of Lumia phones to China in both CDMA and wideband-CDMA technologies.

Myerson also announced Windows Phone now works with phones with less memory and a less expensive Qualcomm chip.

Microsoft’s moves will allow it to reach 60 percent more people but maintain a great experience, Myerson said.

“With other platforms, lower prices have meant lower quality,” Myerson said.

9:02 am: Harlow announces the Lumia 610, a lower-end phone.

She also presented him with a custom Lumia 610 emblazoned with the Duke logo (Harlow and Myerson are both Blue Devil alums.)

“Go Duke,” Myerson said.

The 610 has a lower-end screen than the 800 but features sleek design and metallic edges aimed at a more youthful audience.

9:05 am: Nokia is also adding public transit info for 500 cities in 46 countries.

9:06 am: As for timing and pricing: The Lumia 610 is expected to arrive in Q2 and sell for 189 euros (unsubsidized) and come in white, cyan, magenta and black. The 900 will sell for 480 Euros unsubsidized and is also due next quarter.

9:07 am: Now she introduces Nokia 808 PureView, a Symbian phone with a remarkable new camera.

“You haven’t seen nothing yet,” Harlow said, announcing its 41-megapixel resolution.

Although Nokia is starting with a Symbian phone, Nokia plans to introduce the technology behind the PureView into several other products.

“This is only the beginning,” she said.

9:12 am: The 808 PureView also features a new “rich recording” capability designed to avoid the tinny distorted sound that often exists in cellphone videos, particularly in noisy settings.

“With this device we are setting new standards by whatever standard you use,” Harlow said.

The phone is due to go on sale in May for about 450 Euros unsubsidized.

“I’m looking forward to bringing you even more in the next year,” Harlow said.

9:16 am: Elop promises the company is investing in new technologies like augmented reality, commute-planning tools and indoor mapping.

Nokia is partnering with Groupon to bring details to consumers with its mapping service.

“It has been a very challenging year for Nokia and yet it has also been an amazing year for Nokia,” Elop said, but insists the company will continue to ramp up its clock speed.

With that, Elop wraps up.

9:23 am: There’s going to be a brief Q and A.

9:23 am: A natural first question: Why is Nokia bringing the PureView to Symbian rather than Windows Phone?

“It was important to us to be able to mature and commercialize the technology,” Harlow said. For more on how the PureView came to be, AllThingsD has an exclusive behind-the-scenes story that just went live. Harlow reiterates the technology will come to other devices, but offers no further details.

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Microsoft's Millions Help Cushion Nokia's Windows Phone Transition

Ina Fried — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:54:58 +0000

While it’s clear that Nokia’s transition away from Symbian will be a bumpy road, Microsoft’s cash is helping to ease the pain.

As part of Thursday’s earnings report, Nokia noted it received $250 million from Redmond in the first of many quarterly “platform support payments.” It’s part of what the company says will ultimately be billions of dollars in support of its shift to Windows Phone.

Nokia also notes that it pays Microsoft royalties on each phone and has guaranteed minimum commitments, an amount it also expects to ultimately be measured in the billions of dollars.

Last quarter, though, the money flow was clearly toward Nokia, with the company saying it shipped somewhere north of 1 million Windows Phones.

Those payments are going to be needed by Nokia, which noted on Thursday that its Symbian sales are slowing considerably faster than it had predicted.

Nokia had hoped to sell 150 million more Symbian devices even after announcing its Windows Phone transition. It said on Thursday that it no longer expects to reach that level. It didn’t provide a new estimate but said it took charges in the fourth quarter related to both excess inventory and future purchase commitments.

Nokia Sells a Million Windows Phones, but Symbian Dropping Faster Than Expected

Ina Fried — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:41:55 +0000

The key financial question for Nokia is whether it can ramp up its Windows Phone business faster than its existing Symbian sales tail off.

The company’s results on Thursday showed that Nokia had better hurry.

Although it managed to ship one million of its Windows Phones last year, the company notes that its Symbian business is declining faster than it had predicted.

“Specifically, changing market conditions are putting increased pressure on Symbian,” CEO Stephen Elop noted in comments accompanying Nokia’s earnings release. “In certain markets, there has been an acceleration of the anticipated trend towards lower-priced smartphones with specifications that are different from Symbian’s traditional strengths.”

In other words, expect low-cost Android to be a strong competitor across the globe. Elop had held out hope that cheap Android phones would prove to be underpowered and less popular.

“Just because there is a version of an operating system at a price point doesn’t mean that it is a great experience,” he said in an interview last year.

But that experience appears to be plenty good enough for a bunch of the customers that Nokia had hoped would continue to buy Symbian devices.

When it announced its plans to move to Windows Phone a year ago, Nokia had said it expected nonetheless to sell a further 150 million devices.

“As a result of the changing market conditions, combined with our increased focus on Lumia, we now believe that we will sell fewer Symbian devices than we previously anticipated,” Elop said.

The company didn’t provide a new estimate, but did say that it took a charge last quarter for excess inventory and purchase commitments that it had made. It also declined to make an overall financial forecast for 2012, in part because of the uncertainty over future Symbian sales.

Nokia's Developer Newsletter More Forthcoming Than Execs, Promises Lumia 900 Set for March Debut

Ina Fried — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:49:59 +0000

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop stuck to his script all week at the Consumer Electronics Show, saying only that the new Lumia 900 LTE-capable Windows Phone would ship in the coming months.

Apparently, not everyone got the message, though. Nokia’s developer newsletter site has an article on the new phone and states quite clearly that it will be available in March. Eventually the site will probably be changed, but as of Friday afternoon the date was still stated simply as a matter of fact.

“The Nokia Lumia 900 phone runs Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5. It is the biggest and fastest smartphone yet,” Nokia said on the site, as noted earlier by WMPowerUser and others. “And it will become available exclusively through AT&T in March.”

A Nokia representative said the newsletter was the result of a “misunderstanding” by its developer team and said nothing was final.

“In a nutshell, we are still working on finalizing the Nokia Lumia 900 together with AT&T,” the representative said. “As such, we do not know exactly what the availability date will be with certainty.”

The Chat I Had With Stephen Elop as We Both Nearly Missed Final Ballmer-Note

Ina Fried — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:44:06 +0000

As I noted in my liveblog of Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote, I barely made it in, as the speech was packed.

That they almost didn’t let in a reporter running late is hardly noteworthy. However, also initially rebuffed was the guy I was with — Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. I even managed to snap this fun photo of the former Microsoft division head being turned away:

You’d think Microsoft would have wanted to make sure that their No. 1 Windows Phone partner was front and center — if not on stage — for the speech. That’s doubly true, considering Nokia’s phone was one of the few bits of news Microsoft was making that day.

That said, Elop and I both made it in, eventually. I called someone, but I am quite sure Elop might have been able to pull a string or two, if he wanted to. But, to his immense credit, he didn’t once turn to anyone — as many executives would have — and bellow, “Don’t you know who I am?”

Anyway, that’s the fun cocktail story. Here’s what Elop had to say during our interview:

First off, he said that the Lumia 900, introduced at the show, reflects Nokia’s commitment to designing products specifically for North America. He wouldn’t rule out the large-screen Windows Phone shipping elsewhere, but said its LTE radio and big screen were things that the company knew were needed in the U.S.

“The operators, particularly AT&T and Verizon, are competing on the basis of their new 4G networks,” Elop said.

But, no, I couldn’t get him to say when it would ship, or what it will cost.

“We’re not quite ready to provide the exact date or the exact pricing,” he said. “We clearly intend to be quite aggressive (on price).”

But, he said, the important thing is that the devices are in good shape.

“There are real devices,” Elop said, noting that he has been carrying one of the phones for a while. Elop and Nokia staffers have been using the Lumia 900 devices for a bit now, but have cloaked them to avoid letting the new design leak out. “Now we can take off the rubber devices we’ve all been using, to use the devices in public.”

One of the key next steps, obviously, will be transitioning from a period in which the company wanted to keep the Lumia 900 device a closely guarded secret to one in which it wants other people to discover it.

“The first obstacle — and this is one I think that we’ve nailed — is the product has to be great,” Elop said. “Someone had to do their best work for this platform and that’s clearly what we signed up for.”

Elop said the device packs Nokia’s best screen, best camera and best design.

The next step, Elop said, is getting the devices in the hands of the sales staff — at the AT&T stores and other retailers — who will decide whether to pitch that or another high-end smartphone.

“You have to seed the market with devices,” Elop said. “You have to put the devices in the hands of people. With our launches, to date, around the world, we have seeded more devices than we ever have done by far as Nokia — tens of thousands of devices, in the hands of store managers and sales associates.”

So would Nokia consider opening stores in the U.S.? Elop didn’t rule it out, but he noted that given the role of carriers here, it is probably less critical than in places where devices are sold unsubsidized for use with any carrier.

“Particularly in a market like the U.S., being in close collaboration with AT&T, for example, is, I think, our strongest step forward,” Elop said. “That will remain, in the U.S. market, our principal approach.”

Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It's Been Dying to Share

Ina Fried — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:47:02 +0000

After offering just a tease of its LTE-based Windows Phone this morning, Nokia is set to share a lot more details on Monday afternoon.

The same folks who were on stage at AT&T’s event this morning — Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and AT&T Mobility chief Ralph de la Vega — are all expected here, and one would presume they will have devices in hand.

As a reminder, Nokia has already announced its first Windows Phone for the U.S. — the Lumia 710 for T-Mobile. That phone, due this month, is an entry-level product that will sell for $50 with a new contract.

We’ll have live coverage, wireless permitting, once the event starts around 3 pm PT.

Earlier:

2:53 pm: OK, we’re here, charged up and logged in. Fingers crossed that Wi-Fi behaves for the event, which should run for about an hour.

3:02 pm: Elop takes the stage. “It’s wonderful to be here in North America on behalf of Nokia,” says Elop, the Canadian former Microsoft executive.

3:04 pm: Elop very briefly mentions the company’s entry-level phones for emerging markets, before turning to the company’s Windows Phone-based smartphone strategy.

Elop uses his favorite lines, talking about how a battle of devices is now a war of ecosystems and once again refers to the Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 as the first real Windows Phones.

3:06 pm: Elop talking up Lumia 710, which goes on sale this week (Jan. 11) on T-Mobile.

More war talk: Nokia is establishing beachheads, country by country …

Nokia Lumia 900 for AT&T introduced with a video. Elop holding it up, talking about AT&T’s exclusive.

Initially available in black and cyan (that’s blue to you and me).

Primary camera has Zeiss optics and wide aperture for low light along with a front-facing camera for video chat.

It looks like the Lumia 800, only bigger with its 4.3-inch screen.

3:10 pm: Nokia senior VP Kevin Shields comes up to show off a few of the device’s features.

The device is made from injection-molded polycarbonate, like the N9 and Lumia 800, which it looks an awful lot like.

3:17 pm: Shields touts the phone’s front and rear cameras, Nokia Drive (built-in turn-by-turn directions) and some custom apps such as the ESPN Windows Phone app that is exclusive to Nokia.

Other partners include Univision, the Atlantic Coast Conference and Sesame Street (of which I am a huge fan).

3:21 pm: Ballmer now on stage talking about Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia. He notes that Nokia has delivered the first Windows Phones in well under a year.

3:23 pm: Ballmer underscored, as he has repeatedly of late, that Microsoft has “room to grow” in terms of selling Windows Phones.

3:24 pm: Now out is the third in the executive triumvirate, AT&T Mobility chief Ralph de la Vega. “We’ve been spending a lot of time together,” de la Vega said, noting their appearance together at AT&T’s event this morning.

“Nokia is going to be back in the U.S. in a very big way,” de la Vega said, adding the Lumia 900 will be out “in the coming months.”

“We’re big fans of Windows Phone,” he said.

3:26 pm: Elop isn’t any clearer about Nokia 900 timing, saying only that the device will ship “in the months immediately ahead.”

Time for Q and A.

3:28 pm: What about Verizon? “Today we are just announcing AT&T” but clearly the company wants to get in front of as many U.S. consumers as possible.

3:30 pm: Asked about potential for fragmentation in the Windows Phone market, Elop says he is glad that Nokia isn’t alone in making Windows Phones. “I’m so happy companies like Samsung and HTC are releasing” Windows Phones. “We all need that to get the ecosystem going.”

That said, he added that “we do need some elements of differentiation.” The company is focused on specific apps and other things that won’t break compatibility within Windows Phone.

3:32 pm: Asked about pricing and specifics on availability, Elop again declines to give a more detailed time frame and, on pricing, he says only that it will be “aggressive.”

3:33 pm: As for where Nokia is headed, Elop indicated the company sees room for Windows Phone devices that cost less than the 710.

3:35 pm: In addition to its other app partnerships, Nokia said on Monday that it is working with games leader Electronic Arts to bring more than 20 new games to Windows Phone “coming first to Nokia Lumia devices.”

3:38 pm: Asked about what it would take for Nokia to get into tablets, Elop said it would want room to stand out.

3:40 pm: Why no NFC?

Elop notes that Nokia has been a pioneer in near field communications and already ships it on some Symbian phones.

As for why it is not on the first Windows Phones, Elop said the company had to prioritize and it wasn’t the most critical thing for consumers at this point.

“NFC is growing in importance. It’s something I personally believe in.”

Asked for an update on reports that Nokia looked at some sort of deal for RIM, he said, “There’s never been any information at all so there is no update available.” That said, he indicated Nokia does see an opportunity to make inroads in the business market RIM has dominated.

And with that, the press conference ends.

Why Microsoft Might Yet Need to Buy Nokia

Ina Fried — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:45:56 +0000

Conventional wisdom says Microsoft got everything it wanted from Nokia when it struck its deal in January to make Windows Phone the Finnish company’s smartphone operating system of choice.

Even if it is forking over a few billion dollars in marketing aid, technical help and other incentives, that’s still a fraction of what an outright purchase would have cost. For that price, Microsoft managed to get one of the biggest names in cellphones to commit to a Microsoft-centric future.

And yet, there’s a case to be made that Microsoft might still need to bite the bullet and buy Nokia.

Here are a few reasons why a full-on acquisition might be necessary.

Windows Phone is still growing very slowly
It’s getting nice reviews and customer satisfaction numbers, but Windows Phone is falling further behind Android and iOS in market share every day. Even CEO Steve Ballmer admits sales aren’t where they need to be.

The benefits of the Nokia deal depend on Nokia remaining healthy through the transition
The company has already issued one earnings warning this year and it’s not clear that sales will stay strong enough through the transition to keep Nokia the healthy partner that Microsoft needs.

Aside from Nokia, Microsoft is still getting sloppy seconds
Samsung and HTC — two of the biggest names in smartphones — are doing Windows Phones, but the vast majority of those companies’ resources are devoted toward Android devices.

Microsoft would be able to offer truly integrated phones
Perhaps that happy medium between Apple and Android isn’t so happy after all. If it isn’t going to get the diversity of devices that Google has, Microsoft could decide it needs to handle everything itself.

All that being said, there are still plenty of downsides that make a deal very much a long shot.

A deal would be expensive, even by Microsoft standards
Nokia would make Microsoft’s biggest previous acquisitions — Skype and Aquantive — seem small by comparison. Nokia is measured in the tens of billions of dollars.

Nokia has a huge low-end phone business
A good chunk of the company’s revenue comes from feature phones and other devices that are lower in cost than even the least expensive Windows Phones. (Microsoft could always sell off that part of the business)

The challenges of integration
Nokia and Microsoft are miles apart — and not just geographically. While Nokia’s CEO is an ex-Microsoftie, the two companies are still very different beings. Nokia is a hardware manufacturer at heart.

[ATM photo via Shutterstock]

Nokia CEO Vows to Pump Up the Volume

John Paczkowski — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:27:55 +0000

Now that Nokia has brought its first new Windows phones to market, what’s the next big milestone in its reinvigoration?

Driving up sales volumes.

Speaking at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media and Telecoms Conference in Barcelona this week, CEO Stephen Elop said now that the company has a competitive smartphone to sell, he wants to really push it into the market.

“We want to see volumes begin to move,” he said. “We need to get developers recognizing there is a growing opportunity here, so that we attract applications.”

And as rivals have shown, a thriving application ecosystem is key to winning, indeed surviving, in the current market for mobile devices. That means building a large enough user base to attract developers. And that may be difficult with devices like Nokia’s new Lumia 800, which some view as overpriced.

Not to worry, though. Evidently the Lumia’s pricing is a work in progress.

Said Elop, “You see us pricing the devices so that we can get what we think will be a good volume.”

Nokia's Lumia: New Dawn or Dawn of the Dead?

John Paczkowski — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:03:41 +0000

“It’s a new dawn for Nokia,” CEO Stephen Elop said, following the launch of the new Lumia Windows Phone line earlier this week. And to look at the devices, with their solid guts and sleek design, it’s easy to agree. Certainly, they’re a big step forward in Nokia’s effort to make its high-end phones credible again. And as Barclays observes in a research note this morning, Nokia’s carrier partners seem to be excited by them.

“We believe all six devices will be competitive in the marketplace from both hardware and pricing standpoints,” the research outfit’s Nokia team wrote. “We have been positively surprised by the large number of wireless operators involved in the Lumia’s launch (an average of 5 per country where the device will be launched in Western Europe this quarter).”

So, good news for Nokia, and a good start.

Or not.

Because over at Bernstein, they’re taking a very different view. There, analysts are saying there’s really nothing to differentiate the Lumia from the competition. Worse, at the high end of the line it’s overpriced and at the mid and low ends it’s got a “cheap build.”

“This new product portfolio appears worryingly uncompetitive,” says Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu, adding that because of its $580 price point the Lumia 800, Nokia’s hero device, will be hobbled at launch. “This phone is condemned to be either anecdotic [sic] or go through massive price cuts in the next 6 months.”

If that’s to be the fate of its marquee handset, Nokia has another tough year ahead of it battling it out with the iPhone and Google’s Android army.

“This product portfolio has only a limited chance of regaining ground against two operating systems that take 85 percent of the high smartphone market, particularly as the price points appear uncompetitive at present,” Ferragu concludes. “I now believe the company is unlikely to see a meaningful change in trends as it launches these products. Initial shipments may have only a limited impact on shipments and gross margins, but we would be surprised to see a lasting positive effect.”

So two divergent views. New dawn or dawn of the dead. For Nokia’s sake, let’s hope it’s the former.

Tablets an "Interesting Opportunity," Says Nokia CEO

John Paczkowski — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 10:06:57 +0000

Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft has finally borne its first fruit: The handset maker’s new Lumia Windows Phone line. With those devices finally headed to market, will Nokia turn its attention to tablets, rolling out a Windows 8 device to compete with the iPad and its would-be rivals?

Tough to say, but in an interview with the Financial Times, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop made it clear that the company is considering the idea.

“One of the things that we are excited about in terms of support for the Windows Phone are the announcements made around Windows 8 for tablets and personal computers,” Elop said. “When you see the user experience from the Nokia Lumia environment appearing on hundreds of millions of tablets and PCs in the future, you can see that there is a clear synergy between all those environments. So that presents an interesting opportunity for Nokia.”

So, in Elop’s eyes, Nokia’s ecosystem should extend well beyond just handsets. The question is, will the Lumia allow the company establish enough of a beachhead in the smartphone world to get it there?

Nokia Beats Views as Low-End Shines

Christopher Lawton and Arild Moen — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:15:09 +0000

Nokia swung to a second successive net loss in the third quarter, but reported better-than-expected results thanks to higher sales of its low-end cell phones. Its shares rose more than 8 percent, as results highlighted an increase in shipments of its cheaper feature phones. The company’s American depositary shares jumped over 8%, as results highlighted an increase in shipments of its cheaper feature phones owing to strong sales of dual-SIM handsets, which allow users to have multiple phone numbers. Nokia shipped 89.8 million feature phones in the quarter, up 8% from a year earlier.

The world’s largest cell-phone company by volume posted a net loss of €68 million ($93.6 million), beating Wall Street expectations of a €321 million loss. Sales dropped 13% to €8.98 billion.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Nokia Cutting Another 3,500 Jobs, This Time in Manufacturing

Ina Fried — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 04:06:45 +0000

Nokia said Thursday that it plans to cut a further 3,500 jobs as it revamps its manufacturing operations as part of its broader strategy shift.

The company plans to close a facility in Romania and location services facilities in Malvern, Penn., and Bonn, Germany, with the job cuts coming by the end of this year. The reductions are in addition to the cuts Nokia announced earlier this year. Furthermore, the company said it is starting to reevaluate its staffing levels at a number of other facilities, with an eye toward cutting more jobs next year.

Nokia is in the process of shifting from a smartphone strategy focused around its aging Symbian platform to one based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. Its first Windows Phone devices are due out later this year.

“We are seeing solid progress against our strategy, and with these planned changes we will emerge as a more dynamic, nimble and efficient challenger,” CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement. “We must take painful, yet necessary, steps to align our workforce and operations with our path forward.”

Separately, Nokia said both it and Siemens are investing a further 500 million Euros into their Nokia Siemens telecom gear joint venture.

Nokia CEO Elop Sees Shades of "Danger" in Google's Motorola Deal

Ina Fried — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:55:12 +0000

Having cast his lot with Microsoft and Windows Phone, it’s no surprise that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop sees trouble ahead for Android in the wake of Google’s planned Motorola deal.

Speaking to a crowd of business leaders in Helsinki on Wednesday, Elop said he would be worried if he were in the Android camp.

“If I happened to be someone, an Android manufacturer or an operator, anyone with a stake in that environment, I would be picking up my phone and calling certain executives at Google and saying ‘I see signs of danger,’” Elop said, according to Bloomberg.

Elop, though, was also saying he sees shades of Danger — a reference to the name of Android chief Andy Rubin’s prior start-up, which did both the operating system and the hardware for its smartphones.

That said, Elop is hardly an objective source on the issue, having rejected overtures from Google to join the Android ecosystem. Instead, Nokia announced in February that it had struck a blockbuster deal with Microsoft to make Windows Phone its smartphone operating system of choice, a deal that Elop has said included more than a billion dollars headed in Nokia’s direction from Microsoft.

Japan Poised to Get First Bite of Windows Phone 'Mango'

Ina Fried — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:00:41 +0000

It appears that Japanese consumers will be the first ones to get a taste of Mango, the next version of Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system.

Fujitsu has announced plans for a colorful, waterproof Windows Phone to run on the network of KDDI. The device is expected to be formally launched late this month, hitting store shelves a short time later. The launch of Mango also marks Microsoft’s reentry into the Japanese phone market, having skipped the country with the first version of Windows Phone 7.

The Mango release builds on the Windows Phone 7 release from last year, adding improved browsing and multitasking as well as the integration of Twitter into the People Hub, among other features.

But while Japan may soon be able to get a taste of the fruits of Microsoft’s labor, many other countries may have to wait a bit.

Unlike the initial release of Windows Phone 7-based devices — in which Microsoft tightly controlled the launch timing — Redmond appears to be taking a far more laissez-faire approach this time around.

Microsoft finalized the software late last month and appears content to let various device makers and operators launch their products whenever they are ready. Officially, the company says only to expect products in various markets this fall from a host of phone makers, including past partners, such as Samsung, and new partners, including Acer and China’s ZTE. Existing phones are also due to get a free upgrade to Mango, though no details have been released on when consumers here can expect the upgrades.

Although the staggered launch denies Microsoft a big bang for Mango, it allows new products running the operating system to hit the market sooner. That could help maximize sales heading into the back-to-school and holiday seasons, in addition to allowing those device makers that are ready to get out ahead of whatever Apple has up its sleeve on the iPhone front.

Such a strategy is not without its risks, however. In addition to potentially diffusing the buzz, Microsoft faces the risk that some will look at the first product or two and evaluate the whole of its Mango push based on those devices, whether or not they are representative of the products that will follow.

Perhaps the biggest question mark is when and where Nokia’s first products will launch. The company has said it believes it can deliver at least one Windows Phone model this year, but, in an interview last month, Nokia smartphone-unit head Jo Harlow suggested that more than one device remains a possibility.

“I’m committed to one model this year,” Harlow said. “More would be great.”

Nokia has also refused to commit to specifics on which regions will get the products first and when. Chris Weber, head of Nokia’s U.S. subsidiary, maintained that position in an interview with AllThingsD this week, though he stressed that the U.S. is of key importance and promised a huge marketing push in the States.

“It’s a prioritized market,” he said. “In terms of when and how product gets shipped, we haven’t shared details.”

Nokia’s first products, code-named Sea Ray, are being developed in large part at a 600-person Nokia operation in San Diego, Calif. The North American market is a top priority, Weber said, but he refused to confirm that means that the products will launch here first.

Weber made it clear that the company is working to build strong relationships with U.S. wireless operators — something it has not had in the past when it came to smartphones. Weber suggested broad reach, but stopped short of guaranteeing it would be available from the big four U.S. carriers.

“What I would say is it is probably safe to assume our phones will be available through your favorite operators,” Weber said.

Exclusive: Nokia to Exit Symbian, Low-End Phone Businesses in North America

Ina Fried — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 17:25:24 +0000

Nokia plans to stop selling both feature phones and Symbian-based smartphones in the United States and Canada as it tries to put all of its muscle behind the company’s huge bet on Windows Phone.

In an interview with AllThingsD, the head of Nokia’s U.S. subsidiary said that the company will also focus exclusively on sales through traditional wireless carriers. In the past, Nokia has sold its smartphones at full price to consumers, after finding carriers unwilling to significantly subsidize or market the products. It has also had a significant — if low margin — business selling low-cost feature phones.

However, Nokia says it needs to put all of its efforts into its Windows Phone products, which are due out later this year.

“When we launch Windows Phones we will essentially be out of the Symbian business, the S40 business, etc., ” Nokia Inc. President Chris Weber said in an interview. “It will be Windows Phone and the accessories around that. The reality is if we are not successful with Windows Phone, it doesn’t matter what we do (elsewhere).”

North America is a priority for Nokia, Weber said, in part because it is a key market for Microsoft and also because Nokia sees it as a key to winning in the smartphone battle globally.

“We’ll develop for North America and make the phones globally available and applicable,” Weber said. “In fact, evidence of that is that the first Windows Phones that will ship are being done by our group in San Diego.”

Nokia plans its biggest-ever marketing push focused on reestablishing its presence in the U.S.

“Without getting into numbers, it is significantly larger than anything we have done in the past and the most we will invest in any market worldwide,” Weber said. “They are putting their money where their mouth is.”

T-Mobile did start selling a Symbian smartphone earlier this year — the Nokia Astound — but it’s launch came after Nokia had already announced its move to Windows Phone and sales have been disappointing, Nokia Weber confirmed.

The moves are part of a series of changes that Nokia has made since Weber assumed the top U.S. post in February. Like Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, Weber came from Microsoft, where he most recently headed enterprise sales.

As part of the shift, Nokia also said it has no current plans to bring its lone Meego-based phone, the Nokia N9, to the U.S., a fact reported earlier Tuesday by Engadget.

The company is moving its sales force to Sunnyvale, and Weber told AllThingsD that the company also aims to consolidate more of its operations in Sunnyvale, shifting away work now done in other facilities in White Plains, N.Y., and Dallas. Those changes are expected to be made by early next year.

Reindeer Antlers and Reykjavik: How Microsoft and Nokia Are Getting Down to Business Together

Ina Fried — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:30:16 +0000

Like many marriages, the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft began with a lot of celebrating and travel and presents. And reindeer antlers.

As both companies’ chief executives announced their partnership in London in February, the Windows Phone team gathered at Daman’s, a watering hole near Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters. Having sealed the most important mobile deal in the company’s history, the workers toasted each other with a custom concoction they dubbed the Noble Finn:

A combination of Finlandia vodka, Chartreuse, sparkling soda, sugar and lemon juice, stirred with a reindeer antler.

The next month, Windows Phone engineering head Terry Myerson and a group of his co-workers traveled to Finland to get to know some of their Nokia compatriots better. The teams went snowshoeing (pictured right), then hit a dry sauna to warm up.

“We ran out of the sauna on fire and rolled around in the snow to survive,” Myerson said. “It was indescribably hot.”

The next day, with the courtship phase over, it was down to business, as Myerson and his team toured Nokia’s factory in Salo, Finland.

So far, executives on both sides of the partnership insist the marriage is a happy one.

“We’ve spent the last couple months working really closely together to get first products really materializing,” Nokia’s Jo Harlow, who is in charge of Smart Devices at the phone giant, said in an interview. “We all feel confident about where we are.”

Although the deal was announced in February, the paperwork wasn’t signed until April.

Well before all the i’s were dotted and t’s crossed, though, the engineering teams had already been hard at work, the companies said. Nokia had prototype hardware designs running prerelease versions of the next Windows Phone software.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has been boasting for a while that he is carrying something along those lines, and a recently leaked video shows him with an early version of the hardware.

Harlow declined to comment on that leak, but says she is increasingly confident in the first product that will arrive this year, and that the company may yet have multiple devices for sale before the end of the year. The first Nokia phones are expected to arrive this fall alongside Mango, the first major update to Windows Phone 7.

“I’m committed to one model this year,” Harlow said. “More would be great.”

For next year, though, Harlow said there will be a steady stream of releases — something that Microsoft badly needs as it tries to keep up with rivals, particularly Android devices, which are released on a constant basis.

If Microsoft was close to the latest hardware when it released the first Windows Phones last fall, it is fair to say that its models now look dated when stacked up against the latest Android models, some of which boast 3-D screens, dual-core processors, high-definition video recording and other features.

“I’m hoping that won’t be an issue next year,” Myerson said.

Harlow said her goal is that Nokia will have more frequent hardware updates, keeping the company, and by extension Windows Phone, front of mind with phone shoppers.

As the two companies settle into working with one another, they are using a variety of methods to manage their long-distance relationship.

Although most physical travel involves workers from one company visiting the other, the two companies have also found an in-between location to meet — Reykjavik, Iceland.

Why? Because it’s roughly in between Finland and the U.S., and there are direct flights from both Helsinki and Seattle. On occasion, executives have often met at Iceland’s government-owned Culture House, a spot just a couple blocks from the Höfði, the spot where Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev held a now-famous summit in 1986.

While the Americans and Soviets often struggled to find peace after a long Cold War, Harlow and Myerson say they share a good deal of common ground.

Nokia and Microsoft find themselves in a similarly tough position in the mobile space. Both companies have fallen behind Android and Apple’s iPhone in the smartphone race and have bet their future on each other as the way to recover.

There are other ties binding Myerson and Harlow: Both graduated from North Carolina’s Duke University; Myerson got his engineering degree in 1991, and Harlow, who graduated in 1984, was captain of the women’s basketball during her time in Durham. To honor the shared heritage, workers at Nokia presented both executives with custom Nokia E7 phones emblazoned with the logo of Duke’s mascot, the Blue Devil (pictured left).

While Harlow said she expects to rack up plenty of frequent-flier miles as a result of the deal, the intercontinental travel has been reduced thanks to a video conferencing technology known as Halo.

“We were planning on going to Finland, but decided to give Halo a try first, and decided we didn’t need to fly over there [as much],” said KC Lemson, who works for Myerson on the Windows Phone camera team.

Myerson echoed the importance of Halo, which he said he hadn’t used before the Nokia deal came together. The customized room lets a team in one place seem like they are separated only by a window from colleagues sitting halfway around the world.

“It’s as if we are sitting in the room with people in Finland or London,” Myerson said. “It’s like something out of ‘Star Trek.’”

Halo is used, on average, five or 10 times per week to bridge the engineering teams from Nokia and Microsoft.

But sometimes that’s not enough, of course. Nokia has transferred a top executive — Waldemar Sakalus — to Seattle to oversee the Microsoft relationship, and is spreading hardware development work across several locations, including San Diego, Calif., and Beijing, as well as two sites in Finland: Salo and Tampere.

Nokia also hired Kevin Shields, a former member of Myerson’s Windows Phone team, to oversee Nokia’s efforts to build on top of Microsoft’s operating system.

For its part, Microsoft said it has shifted its priorities to make sure that Nokia’s needs are being met first. The company has increased its focus on going global more quickly, as Nokia counts on Windows Phone to quickly fill a gap created by the rapid decline in its existing Symbian phone business.

“We had been focused on North America and Western Europe,” Myerson said of the company’s early efforts. That, he said, has now changed.

Although Microsoft is also working with its other partners, Myerson isn’t shy about saying that he is pouring more energy into his partners in Finland. After all, while HTC and Samsung build Windows Phones, they also make phones running Google’s Android software. Nokia, meanwhile, has pledged to make Windows Phone the core of its smartphone strategy.

“We are prioritizing work proportionate to Nokia’s commitment to Windows Phone, which is unlike anything we have had before,” Myerson said.

Nokia's Stephen Elop Jumps Off Burning Platform Onto D9 Hot Seat: The Full Interview (Video)

Kara Swisher — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 13:02:01 +0000

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has not had the best of times since he left a top job at Microsoft to take over the reins of the Finnish mobile giant.

What with layoffs, executive shakeups, an earnings scare and stock drops, along with a need to completely overhaul its offerings, he’s had a lot to wrangle with.

Oh yes, there’s also that big deal with Microsoft and its Windows Phone that had better work.

No wonder Elop penned that memorable missive to Nokia about jumping off of burning platforms.

Elop talked about all this and more with Walt Mossberg in a wide-ranging interview at the ninth D: All Things Digital conference:

[ See post to watch video ]

Nokia Introduces N9, Reiterates First Windows Phones Will Ship This Year

Ina Fried — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 02:23:28 +0000

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that he has increasing confidence the company will ship its first Windows Phones this year, though significant volumes won’t come until next year.

“We have shifted our organization,” Elop said, speaking at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore. The event was also broadcast over the Internet. “We have a new strategy and we are focused on delivering results.”

Elop’s comments come three weeks after the company warned that sales and earnings would fall well short of expectations. As he noted when he spoke at our D9 conference earlier this month, the company already has working Nokia devices running a test build of the next version of Windows Phone software.

Nokia announced back in February that Windows Phone, rather than Symbian or MeeGo, would be the company’s main smartphone strategy going forward.

But, given that Nokia is counting on Symbian-based phones to account for nearly all of the company’s smartphone business this year and significant revenue for next year as well, the company spent some time talking about where it is headed on that operating system. The company showed its Symbian Anna software running on a current Nokia N8 handset and featuring a number of updates to the software, including improved browsing and brighter icons.

The new software will start shipping on new hardware next month, while existing Symbian phone owners will be able to add the new software in August.

The company plans to introduce as many as 10 new Symbian devices over the next year, Elop said, with plans to offer support and software upgrades through 2016.

Mary McDowell, who heads the unit that focuses on basic mobile phones, also talked about strides the company is making in that part of the business, announcing the company’s third dual-SIM card phone in as many months. The phone, C2-03, is a touchscreen slider phone that has one SIM on the inside and a second slot on the side of the device to easily swap out additional SIM cards. The device will also be the first to bring mapping capabilities to the company’s series 40 phones. Unlike with most smartphones, the maps are loaded onto the phone and the positioning can be done without a data plan.

“We may be late to this party, but we are in full swing now,” McDowell said.

Update: Nokia also introduced the N9, an all touch-screen smartphone based on MeeGo, a mobile version of Linux that had once been Nokia’s platform of the future. Although it is moving away from MeeGo for smartphones, the company had said it would release a single MeeGo phone and also maintain experimental development work on the platform.

“With the N9 we wanted to design a better way to use the phone,” said Nokia Senior VP of Design Marko Ahtisaari.

The phone, with its curved screen, is designed to be easily used in one hand, Ahtisaari said. Users can easily swipe between a notification window, a start screen and a window with open applications.

Although it uses a separate operating system from Nokia’s past Symbian and future Windows Phone devices, the N9 is capable of running applications for QT, an environment that has shipped on more than 100 million devices.

The N9 sports high-definition video capture and an 8 megapixel still camera that boasts a wide aperture for taking photos in low light. The phone’s body is machined out of a single piece of polycarbonate, a material that the company says offers the best antenna.

“Unlike some competitor products, you don’t need to hold it a special way to make reliable phone calls,” Ahtisaari said. The phone will come in black, cyan and magenta.

The device uses Near Field Communications (NFC) technology to allow the N9 to be paired with bluetooth speakers or a headset just by touching the device to the accessory in question.

“We’re going to be launching the N9 later this year,” Elop said, but said that pricing and other details will come later.

Nokia's Bumpy Ride Gets Bumpier as CTO Rich Green Goes on Leave

Ina Fried — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:33:04 +0000

Nokia confirmed on Thursday that Rich Green, its chief technology officer has taken an indefinite leave of absence “to attend to a personal matter.”

Green joined the company just over a year ago after a long career at Sun Microsystems.

“We have not provided a specific timetable for his return but during his absence, Henry Tirri, head of Nokia Research Center, will assume the responsibilities of the CTO office,” Nokia said in a statement to AllThingsD. “This has no impact on our product strategy or our expected product launch timelines.”

Word of Green’s departure broke in a Finnish newspaper, which also said that Green is not expected to return and had disagreements with the company over strategy, particularly the company’s decision to move away from the mobile Linux-based MeeGo operating system it had been developing with Intel and instead pin its hopes on Microsoft’s Windows Phone software.

In any case, Green’s leave is the latest bump in an already far-from-smooth transition. The company warned last week that quarterly sales would fall short of estimates as Symbian sales are already dropping faster than expected–particularly worrisome since Nokia won’t have a full slate of Windows Phone products until sometime next year. Nokia also withdrew its full-year 2011 fianancial guidance. Nokia aims to get its first Windows Phone model out in the fourth quarter of this year.

In an interview after appearing on stage last week at D9, CEO Stephen Elop said he wasn’t concerned that Android would be able to eat away Symbian’s entire base as the Google operating system reaches the lowest-end of the smartphone business.

“Just because there is a version of an operating system at a price point, doesn’t mean that it is a great experience,” Elop said.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop: It’s Not a Battle of Devices, It's a War of Ecosystems (Video)

John Paczkowski — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 03:12:25 +0000

Nokia spent years of effort and untold sums of money developing Symbian, a mobile operating system it ended up dumping for Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. Why couldn’t it build a future on Symbian? And what makes it think building one on Windows Phone will be any easier? Video highlights from Nokia CEO Stephen Elop’s D9 appearance below:

[ See post to watch video ]