What would you do if you were Nokia’s CEO?

Oh the internet. We love sharing our opinions and the opinions of others. In the Nokia Context, we love to “Arm Chair CEO”, what Nokia should be doing based on our perception of the situation. Sometimes in terms of apps/features, Nokia does pay attention. They have online sessions talking to members of the Nokia community. The more “important stuff” is left behind of course to middle/upper management and senior execs who, sometimes, makes decisions we find hard to understand.

@MRMweb tweeted to @AAS asking them when they had become @AAWP due to them running WP stories. I think Rafe said they would be transitioning anyway along with the company so might as well start now, eh? The article in question was from Ewan Spence, controversially titled:

Your knee-jerk reaction to Redmond is wrong

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/12591_Your_knee-jerk_reaction_to_Sea.php

My post is NOT about the article, more a comment by Shaun Murray:

“It’s not really about their products Ewan, it’s a matter of ethics. Nokia have thrown theirs away. Microsoft don’t have any. Nokia’s developers, typically non-Microsoft types, don’t trust either now.

Here’s what Elop should have said…

“Today we’re announcing our continued commitment to our Symbian and MeeGo developers who have kept Nokia running despite our delays and poor execution. We expect to have stunning MeeGo products available later this year and developers need to get ready for that by continuing with Symbian development using Qt. Symbian will be gradually be wound down with the transitional bridge being Qt.

In the US market, we’re facing a struggle getting our smartphones into US carriers and we need to take a different tack. In the US we’re going to launch Windows Phone powered Nokia handsets. We intend to extend our Qt development framework to allow developers to easily port their applications to Windows Phone. We’re partnering with Microsoft to jointly bring our Ovi services to Windows Phone users and Microsoft services to our Qt enabled platforms.

Addressing Android, we’re reaching out to the significant growth in Android development over the past year with Qt on Android bringing the lighthouse project in-house officially. We want Android developers to develop for Symbian, MeeGo and our new Windows Phone handsets. Qt is how we get those developers to develop for us.

Lastly, for the next billion mobile phone users, we’re moving Qt down into S40.

Qt – write once, deploy everywhere.”

I don’t know what cards Elop was sat with but that’s my armchair CEO assessment of their options looking from the outside.”

Steve Litchfied and a few others agree:

Brilliant. Agree 100%. Well said.

An important thing Shaun notes is “looking from the outside“.  There are many details and factors at Nokia from the inside that we are not and may not ever be privy to which might change (I’m hoping critical changes to our perception of ) the actual situation. But since we won’t know that, all we do have is our view from outside the Nokia Cube (anyone seen the film Cube? Watched it last night. Trap!)

Also note that there may be several factors already open to the public that, not really paying attention to them all, we won’t get the whole picture. I’m guilty to this, and that’s why I’m still trying to learn (Nokia-MS 101 is one of my voluntary modules ha jk.)

Shaun’s strategy sounds pretty good to the Nokia fan. It is what we had expected during the rumour area. We’ve discussed it a few times before but not in the “What if hypothetical anything goes” sense….so what would you have done as Nokia’s CEO?

Category: MeeGo, Nokia, Symbian, Windows Phone