Tweet
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop speaks at the Open Mobile Summit.(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)
LONDON--Stephen Elop, Nokia's new chief executive, today shot down rumors that business partners Microsoft or Samsung are in talks to acquire the company.
"All those rumors are baseless," he told attendees of the Open Mobile Summit here. The company isn't for sale, he indicated.
Speculation has been rife about Nokia's fate since it ditched its own operating systems in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 then, last week, ditched its own financial forecasts for the year. After the Finnish company reported its mobile phone revenue had plunged, its stock price followed suit, making any acquisition more affordable.
One rumor pegged Microsoft as a potential buyer; yesterday, it was Samsung, which builds both Android and Windows Phone 7 devices and which supplies phone components to Nokia.
True or not, the rumors show the difficulties Nokia has charting its own course during the awkward phase after it's announced its dramatically new strategy but before it actually has any product to sell. While Nokia is in a sort of limbo, selling product lines it's already announced to be obsolete, Apple's iOS and Google's Android both are growing in market power.
Elop argues Nokia had no choice but to strike off in a bold new direction. The Symbian operating system wasn't competitive with Android and iOS, and Nokia's higher-end MeeGo operating system required hardware that was too expensive to be affordable in many markets. At the same time, people started buying phones for the wealth of software they could install on them, not just for whatever was built in.
"Fundamentally, our assessment of the industry is [that] it has shifted," he said. "It has shifted from a battle of devices to a war of ecosystems."
Nokia is moving as fast as possible to make the transition to Windows Phone 7, but won't have any products on the market until Microsoft's "Mango" update to the operating system later this year. Consequently, Elop's speech rehashed old material: the justification for the move to Windows Phone 7 and the strategy for making the change successful.
Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials