Niklas Savander Nokia Strategies Interview: Nokia MeeGo products to ship very close soon after announcement

Niklas Savander and crew at Nokia World 2010

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kwp_gcLhXo]

This interview of Nokia’s EVP Markets, Niklas Savander with CNET was tipped to us several days ago by Andan and Webby (cheers guys) but I never got around to posting it.

It actually had some extremely interesting snippets of info on Nokia Strategy as well as confirming what we suspected/already knew.

• Symbian will go to midrange. N8 is already NOT the highest product Nokia are aiming for. MeeGo will come above Symbian in FUNCTIONALITY and PRICE.
• We see a role for MeeGo at the very high end of our product range.
• MeeGo to come in 2011#
• MeeGo will ship very closely to announcement date. Hurrah! No endless waiting. Have ready product, announce and generate some buzz, sell! “during 2011, you will see us announce MeeGo products, and they will be very close to shipment dates. When we announce it, it’s going to come.”. Man I have already saved up for MeeGo (phone/tablet)
• Microsoft are making Office for Symbian in Qt (Ex Office Boss Elop had 400 Engineers working on Qt)
• Core Nokia Applications to be written in Qt, e.g. phonebook – huge benefit in having the same competencies in Symbian AND MeeGo allowing shifting of resources between both
• You don’t need to have a Symbian expert write Symbian applications and a MeeGo expert write MeeGo applications.
• No room for Android (what about WP7 :p)
• To win the consumer is to be competitive in the eyes of the consumer. It’s about creating a platform for consumption and a phone that works. To convince consumers we are still in the game, we will do it with our products. Nothing else. But it needs to be balanced with being attractive to the networks/carriers as if you’re not working well with the operator it doesn’t matter that you’re perfect for the consumer.
• Location not just navigation will be big in many markers. “we have the availability of locally relevant apps. It doesn’t matter if you have 200,000 applications in Vietnam if they are all in English.”
• “The next game is not going to be who gets to 300,000 apps in California, it’s going to be who gets to a few thousand apps in every country of the world.”
• There must be choices on applications, even if we provide our own. e.g. Ovi Maps to Google maps – that must be possible.
• New CEO Stephen Elop is a change management master based on track record and will bring a lot to the table.

via CNET

Tags: Niklas Savander, Nokia

Category: Nokia