Nokia Seeking New CEO After Stock Drops 42%
Out with the old, in with the new.
Nokia has faded a little over the last few years. The company might still be selling boatloads of dumbphones, but in a world populated by four iterations of the iPhone and more Android devices than you can shake a stick at, the smartphone business is a tough one to crack.
Word out of Espoo is that Nokia is looking for a new CEO to replace current boss Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. The Wall Street Journal reports that Kallasvuo is struggling to find his footing in the smartphone market and as a result, Nokia stock has fallen 42 percent in the last three months. Citing sources familiar with the matter, WSJ reports that the company has launched a search for a new CEO and board members are "supposed to make a decision by the end of the month."
Though there's no clue as to who Nokia is interested in hiring, these sources say at least two people have been flown in from the U.S. for interviews, and one of them turned the position down because he didn't want to move to Finland.
Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was hired in 2006, just a year before the first iPhone launched. WSJ reports that the company posted weaker than expected quarterly earnings in April, reshuffled management in May, and lowered its profit outlook in mid-June citing "the competitive environment, particularly at the high-end of the market."
Read the full story here.
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It's hard for Nokia to compete in the smartphone market with their current offerings. When you think "smartphone", chances are you don't think "Nokia". The last Nokia I owned was a 5120...back in like 1999. Ever since then i've used phones from other makers that had better features, better performance, and comparable prices.
Ill send them my resume
I'm not sure a new CEO can turn things around this late in the game. I haven't heard of anyone owning a Nokia phone since, well, 1999.
I'd move to Finland (;
Looks like Olli went to Prince's school of technology advancement- The smartphone is completely over.
Apparently Nokia is halving production of smartphones this year to concentrate on lower end phones.
move their headquarters to America instead .
I loved my old Nokia 1100. Durable. Super long battery life. Flashlight.
They seemed to get rid of the basic features (Flashlight, compas, FM radio) and their whole advantage was lost. All they needed to do was add a few features to their existing offerings earlier, and they had some slam dunk products.
Price and marketing was their next mistakes. I haven't even heard Nokia mentioned on main stream channels. Where was the product placement? Last time I have even HEARD NOKIA uttered was in the 1st Transformers movie...
Maddox (Best Page in the Universe) tried to pimp his Nokia when the 1st iPhone came out. But I doubt that even helped.
Nokia still has a chance, but they have to learn the US market and what we want. They might have to just relent and use Android, but I don't see how their products would be any better than anyone else's offerings.
I kind of wish we would switch over to a single system of transmission, like in Eurasia. GSM and unlocked phones are a huge help to the phone market.
I'm sorry, but all those people who think nokia is no longer relavant
I'm not sure a new CEO can turn things around this late in the game. I haven't heard of anyone owning a Nokia phone since, well, 1999.
Well maybe you need to leave your basement and get out more. Yeah icrap and android phones are popular in north america but nokia's smartphones still dominate with over 44% of the marketshare worldwide:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/cell-pho [...] -data/3829
@linmin30, absolutely, a complete accurate comment!, and relevant to the case..
They shot themselves in the foot when they didn't buy Palm. If they want to do smartphones then they better jump on the Android bandwagon now.
how about them releasing the n8 earlier
Yea nokia seem to take a while to release their phones but maybe thats to avoid any teething problems (iphones for example)
But although nokia hasn't released any game changing phones for a while they have at least been on par with the competition and obviously ahead of apple. N95, N82, N85, N86, N96, N97, N900 and the N8 looks good once released, plus i like the idea of having FM transmitters built in.
How about adopting Android?The functionality of Android with the reliability and quality of Nokia phones is one killer combination.
I'm not sure a new CEO can turn things around this late in the game. I haven't heard of anyone owning a Nokia phone since, well, 1999.
In Europe Nokia is still #1 It is still much more reliable than iCrap. Although lately I'm not very happy with their offerings. XM 5800 was a rushed out product. It's not a cool as iPhone but it does great job at fraction of the price - talking. The main complaint I have is that Nokia's Symbian software is so buggy. Older non-Symbian phones were rock solid.
BTW here they sell iPhone 3GS for $500 with 2 year contract.
I've forgot to mention that XM has a quite long battery life which is the most important feature for me.
Hire someone like Jobs who will create a RDF!
I have a nokia myself, been 4 years with me, here in Egypt nokia is the number one brand followed by samsung,
I have been tempted to change my nokia for an iphone but I am a heavy user and I have dropped my mobile tons of time and the iphone cant live with that lol and honestly all I need out of a mobile is to make calls and the rare occasion to go on the net and nokia provides that perfectly and I never complained of reception
"selling boatloads of dumbphones".
Nokia is #1 in the world (not only Europe) and that when being de facto embargoed on US market. And they have great devices too.
So I guess this is a case of "dumbjournalism".
I gave up on Nokia in late 2004. My Nokia 3650 (the one with the funny circular number pad) was stolen and I wanted to replace it with a new Nokia (and maybe another 3650). I had the 3650 for about 20 months at that point in time and I saw NO innovation nor a price drop. The list price for the my phone was $300 when I bought it and the phone cost $250 when I wanted to replace it. What is better is that in almost two year none of their phones had anything better than the basic VGA camera unless you wanted to pay $600 or so for one. I was expecting 1 or 1.2 MP by then form the $200-$300 price range phones.
What was also annoying was the odd product differential scheme. They had 50 or so phones but none had all the features I wanted (at an acceptable price). I was looking for a FM Radio, MP3, and SD Card slot in ONE phone. Each product had one of the features missing. What I noticed from their product line up at that time was a complete lack of innovation and a differentiation of products by force and not new features.
In my opinion Nokia was so used to being the market leader and got so complacent that they no longer knew how to compete. Cosmetic changes to the exterior of a phone does not warrant a new model number nor does removing a feature from a current model and leaving the new model at the same price point. This is kind of like rebranding Nvidia did with the 8800 but Nokia did not drop the price like Nvidia did for the new "new" cards. Nokia in 2004/2005 (and to an extent now) reminds me of IBM in the early 80's with the PC. Both companies got arrogant and lazy and then they got caught blind sided aand had to scrable to catch up.
Don't have a Nokia since Nokia 6230, since then only SE for me (very stable phones).
I have an Xperia X1 at the moment, but I'm always looking forward to see a Nokia phone that interests me, I would only buy Nokia or SE, just hope Nokia changes that Symbian OS for the better. Bought a Nokia XM 5800 for my sister, and that thing is buggy as hell...
Unlike in America, Nokia commands a VERY strong brand presence in Africa, the Middle East and Europe..
This where they should focus their efforts. Africa & Mid East are THE fastest growing mobile markets in the world. I doubt that Americas will ever warm up to the brand...their fixation on the iphone and androiod is like a disease.
Job description:
You must be able to sit behind a desk all day and read scripted speeches from pieces of paper while smiling.
Pay:
Base pay of $1,000,000 per year, with up to $10,000,000 available based on performance.
I'll be one of Bob White's references if I get a 10% cut of that.
Wow, talk about your typical American biased journalism.
Nokia makes awesome smart phones and have since long before Apple or Google even thought about entering the scene.
Here's something to educate you with: http://www.gsmarena.com/stats.php3 Let's look at this objectively and solely by hits of interest. Take into the consideration the total amount of hits that are on that top 15 list by brand: Nokia 60,111,831; Sony Ericsson 31,109,574; Samsung 5,908,673; Apple 5,750,199. On that same page you can see number of hits by brand in summary as well. If you think interest alone isn't a selling factor of the consumer community, then I'm curious why even bother with journalistic endeavors for one of the biggest well-known review sites for electronics which promotes INTEREST from the consumers?
I especially loved this part:
http://www.mobiledia.com/phones/apple/page1.html = 2 phones
http://www.mobiledia.com/phones/google/page1.html = 1 phone
http://www.mobiledia.com/phones/nokia/page1.html = 22 phones
I can tell you that there's no way that someone could pay me for my Nokia E71 to take their iPhone 3GS. It has more open source software development, better hardware, longer lasting battery, can run several applications simultaneously without becoming sluggish, memory card slot, full qwerty keyboard, secondary camera for video calls, mp3s that aren't locked to my devices, and best of all, it's unlocked out of the box - no need to fix what isn't broken. Oh wait, but I guess the touchscreen trumps all of that. Gah, now I know the criteria for a smartphone - if it has touchscreen!
Here ya go: http://www.gsmarena.com/results.ph [...] sFreeText=
Dumb journalism???? What part of "Nokia stock has fallen 42 percent in the last three months" didnt you guys see. Once you've got a Nokia dumbphone you dont need another one. On top of that would you rather make 5 bucks profit on a 10 million phones or $200 on 1 million...
Because Apple and Google are American companies.Nokia is Finnish, therefore European and obviously inferior (to them)
There's hardly such a thing as an 'American Company' in today's international market. They may be perceived as an 'American Company' but in reality they're international. The headquarters may be here, but many of these 'American Companies' do most of their production overseas and sometimes have a greater percentage of their employees and production in foreign countries rather than here (mostly because they can get Zutroy to work for one shiny nickel a week).
There's hardly such a thing as an 'American Company' in today's international market. They may be perceived as an 'American Company' but in reality they're international. The headquarters may be here, but many of these 'American Companies' do most of their production overseas and sometimes have a greater percentage of their employees and production in foreign countries rather than here (mostly because they can get Zutroy to work for one shiny nickel a week).
I believe you missed the point. Demographic isn't the issue. It's 'the man'agement morality, business practices of getting things done cheaply and charging an arm and a leg for the product, and fast talking sales pitches that coincide with such an image.
Nothing of what you said is proving to assist such "American Companies".
If you want an example of a real international demographically oriented American Company, look at IBM.
Nokia is scared of the smartphone market because their stupid N-Gage never took off. Well, no one wanted a game playing phone that was barely usable as a phone (until Apple made one, that is). But people DO want smartphones.
Nokia is also stuck wanting to use their own OS. Unless they get developer support, they'll never succeed. They should just make a phone that runs Android and join the rest of the manufacturers enjoying success in the smartphone world. No one says they have to stop making dumbphones, but eventually, even those people in third-world countries using dumbphones will want smart phones.
Nokia is scared of the smartphone market because their stupid N-Gage never took off. Well, no one wanted a game playing phone that was barely usable as a phone (until Apple made one, that is). But people DO want smartphones.Nokia is also stuck wanting to use their own OS. Unless they get developer support, they'll never succeed. They should just make a phone that runs Android and join the rest of the manufacturers enjoying success in the smartphone world. No one says they have to stop making dumbphones, but eventually, even those people in third-world countries using dumbphones will want smart phones.
You seriously have no idea what you're talking about. Everyone you just said is backwards from reality.
Nokia does make great phones, great dumb phones. Thats why they have a huge market in developing countries. They make phones that just work (nothing wrong with that)
But in this day and age everyone wants more and if your phone doesn't pack the most features or have the most expensive commercials no one is going to want it. To most people its not about the quality of the product but but how bad you want to be seen with said product. Nokia's just don't have that cool hip factor to them that make them desirable for no other reason than media hype (iPhone 4?)
Wow, talk about your typical American biased journalism.Nokia makes awesome smart phones and have since long before Apple or Google even thought about entering the scene.Here's something to educate you with: http://www.gsmarena.com/stats.php3 Let's look at this objectively and solely by hits of interest. Take into the consideration the total amount of hits that are on that top 15 list by brand: Nokia 60,111,831; Sony Ericsson 31,109,574; Samsung 5,908,673; Apple 5,750,199. On that same page you can see number of hits by brand in summary as well. If you think interest alone isn't a selling factor of the consumer community, then I'm curious why even bother with journalistic endeavors for one of the biggest well-known review sites for electronics which promotes INTEREST from the consumers?I especially loved this part: . Really?
net income for FY2009
Nokia 373 million USD
Apple 8.24 Billion USD
They are dying, it's why their stock lost 42%. Even if they have the majority of the world market they can't translate that into income and that means the companies that can will crush them. It's just a matter of time, unless they get their act together.