Rumour: Nokia CEO offers stark and frank assessment on company - ‘we are standing on a burning platform’
Purportedly leaked internal memo calls for a radical change in the company’s direction
A memo purportedly sent by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop to staff at the Finnish mobile giant has provided a frank and worrying assessment of where the phone manufacturer is currently situated.
Elop reportedly wrote that Nokia is standing "on a burning platform", claiming that "Apple owns the high-end range" while Google "has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core."
"While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time...we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind."
I keep using the word 'reportedly' (or variations thereof) because, despite Engadget having confirmation from multiple unnamed sources, the information in the memo appears at odds with the Nokia the global business, which saw its market share dip slightly last year, but still remains the world’s biggest phone manufacturer by some margin.
Former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen writes on his blog that the memo reads like, "a typical US analyst view who don't know about Nokia's global products and its years of innovations."
Certain parts, however, are very similar in sentiment to Elop’s recent financial results call, in which he stated that the competition now consisted of "eco-systems" in a similar fashion to the memo - "Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem."
