Anssi Vanjoki left because he didn't become CEO?

It would appear that Anssi Vanjoki has come right out and explained his reason for resigning from the company. Being the utter straight shooter that he is, in a Wall Street Journal interview, he said the following when asked about his resignation

“I didn’t become the CEO. It is as simple as that,”

I think this answer speaks volumes to the kind of man that he is and the sort of pain he’d probably felt after being overlooked for a position he’d worked towards in his 20 year career at Nokia. While many people will think that his being overlooked for the position is a sign that he was incompetent, or old-fashioned or simply too close to the old hierarchy, I honestly believe he was overlooked because of maybe 2 decisions made in the past in addition to the board’s aim it would seem to become more Westernized (read: US- friendly ). While he will be missed, we can only hope that the company continues to work away at fixing not just their software and hardware issues (somewhat overstated in my opinion) but their perception in the western world (In no part helped by the primarily US-centric blogosphere ) and their below-par marketing and public relations & communications.

Another quote taken from the same interview, he acknowledges that older versions of Symbian couldn’t possibly compete in the touchscreen sphere and that their initial attempts at this probably failed due to their approach in tweaking the existing software to a larger display and different interface paradigm while delaying a complete rewrite of the software stack.

Hopefully the upcoming S^3 devices and to-be-seen MeeGo devices go a long way to repairing Nokia’s image in the western world.

via

Category: Nokia