Stephen Elop interview at D9

Ahead of his keynote speech at Qualcomm’s Uplinq conference tomorrow evening, Stephen Elop took  (is taking) the time out to answer a few questions from Walt Mossberg at their currently ongoing D9 conference. While you can currently follow this liveblog here courtesy of the fine folks at ThisIsMyNext, there were a few choice quotes that I felt Nokia lovers would like to hear, albeit you may not actually believe.

On the comments surrounding Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s hardware arm amongst other things-

“We will remain in possession of the hardware business. The rumors are baseless. It doesn’t make sense when you think about it. You’d have to descale it and de-leverage it to make it profitable”

“Look at the synergies between the companies — if you sell, you destroy value in the process.”

In justifying the decision to adopt Windows Phone 7 as their main smartphone platform in lieu of other options Elop said the following

“I went to Nokia knowing there were challenges. I went there planning on moving towards MeeGo. We looked at Android,We looked at Windows Phone — but decided when I sat down with the head of Symbian, he said we can put a great product into the market in a third of the time it will take with Symbian”

On why Nokia felt they’d be better served using Windows Phone as opposed to Android in a differentiation stakes –

“The pattern that we’re worried about on the Android side — will the OEMs truly have assurance that their takes will be able to shape and form Android.”

It seems Nokia wants to be able to influence the look, feel, functionality and performance of the Windows Phone ecosystem in a big way. Hopefully they have a seat at the table when decisions need to be made, much like they did when Symbian was still an independent company. On the flip-side hopefully that is one of many seats at the table as opposed to the situation with Symbian where Nokia called many of the decisions made outright.

As for making sure there’s no massive platform fragmentation-

“We will not do something on our WP7 phones that won’t work on other WP7 phones — it’s a philosophy for success.”

While this is not exactly a lot of information, I’m inclined to believe that there will be some changes to the user experience on Nokia’s Windows Phone devices but the general usage paradigm should be similar. Hopefully their changes look a little like this or at least as beautiful.

On MeeGo-

“We’ll ship a MeeGo device this year”

On Windows Phone devices –

“We’re making very good progress. We can expect them at the end of the year”

He did dodge a few questions about global/local launches. Would be very nice to see a worldwide launch for that first device covering the North American, Asia and Pacific and Eurasian regions in one fell swoop.

On tablets –

“I’m not going to announce one today, but I want to make a point. Whatever device it is, that connected digital experience will define what consumers are looking for. For a company like ours, it’s obviously very important to make sure we’re playing that space.”

To me it seems like they’re waiting on a worthwhile way to enter that space. For obvious reasons MeeGo won’t be what they’re looking for and Windows 8 in it’s current iteration is not only not RTM but it’s not quite where we the consumers would want it to be. I’ve made my own personal views about the tablet market and what I would like it to be in the near future. It would seem Microsoft also agree with that view and hopefully Nokia aren’t too far behind ’em.

PS. Elop did pull a device out of his pocket when prompted by Walt, if only we knew what it was ;).

Via ThisIsMyNext

Tags: D9, Elop, Mango, Microsoft, Nokia, Stephen Elop, Walt Mossberg, Windows Phone

Category: Nokia