Digital

Nokia boss (sort of) says “basically we’re shit”

By | Published on Thursday 10 February 2011

Nokia

Remember when Nokia mobile phones were the cool ones to choose? No? Go on, focus your brain on 1999. They were happier, simpler times, when the kids got all excited about infrared and how it enabled two-player Snake (if you kept very still). But in this iPhone, Android age, happy times are long gone at Castle Nokia.

And their new CEO Stephen Elop has gone to great lengths to summarise the one time mobile technology giant’s woes in an internal memo which was circulated around the net yesterday, in which he admits that Apple has completely taken control of the high end of their traditional market, while Android phones start to dominate in the mid-range and Chinese competitors are launching new devices for economy customers faster than “it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation”.

The memo, published in full by Engadget, pretty much admits that every Nokia venture in the last couple of years has been a disaster, confirms that concerns in the investment community about the firm’s future has affected its credit rating, and blames all these problems on poor leadership. It’s all so gloomy that it makes me feel bad for constantly pointing out just how shit their Comes With Music service was. Though it was really, really, really shit.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel, Elop says, in that later this week he will reveal his new strategy for turning the company round. So, that’s exciting.

The memo opens with the story of a North Sea oil rig worker who chooses to jump 30 feet into the icy sea because his platform is on fire and, compared to the certain death of waiting for the flames to engulf him, the dangerously icy waters below suddenly don’t seem so bad. Presumably, therefore, Elop is planning on proposing some radical and possibly risky plans for the mobile company, arguing that said plans are better than just waiting for Nokia’s own burning platform to destroy the company.

Take a look at the brutally honest memo here – it makes for good reading: www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/



READ MORE ABOUT: