Nokia CEO Stephen Elop: "Nokia, Our Platform Is Burning"

Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop recently introduced a memo to its employees where he describes Nokia’s current status. For more figurative introduction he compared Nokia with the man who is standing on a burning platform and has to jump in order to survive. Of course, you understood the man is Nokia and the fire is Nokia’s competitors in face of Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and the low-end phone manufacturers in such countries as China or India are.

So from Elop’s word we can assume that Symbian didn’t prove itself and by the end of 2011 we’ll see only MeeGo-powered devices. Though I guess this is not news for many geeks, as such conversations buzzed for a long time. All its attempts to promote Symbian^3 platform has not success, and probably Nokia decided not to deceive themselves and switch to more promising policy. We can also think about Windows Phone 7 as an alternative for Symbian.

Besides his “novel” Stephen Elop also introduced three treats for Nokia: first, Symbian and MeeGo is not enough to compete with other smartphone makers. Second, Samsung is the main competitor of Nokia as it develops “home” markets such as Europe, while Nokia implements several kinds of campaigns in Asia and Africa. But it’s under great pressure from low cost Asian newcomers in India and China.

For this case Nokia is the most popular brand in India, which has the fourth biggest economy in the world, and will overtake Japan in third place this year. This means half a billion people join a new middle class, which is about the size of Europe. So it’s a good market for sharing.

Anyway, Nokia decided to change its strategy understanding Symbian and MeeGo yield their positions. I guess Stephen Elop was invited to Nokia for these deals – to change the company’s policy wholy.

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