Nokia Reorganizes
 

This just showed up on Reuters. The overview:

* Splits phone business into three
* Former CFO Rick Simonson to head core phone businesses
* Jo Harlow named head of smartphones
* Apple's John Martin to head high-end mobile computers unit
* Sales chief Timo Ihamuotila to take over as CFO

All Maemo products fall into the "high-end mobile computers unit" (the smartphone unit is for Symbian devices). Martin is supposed to take over in November.

An Apple-ite in charge of the N900 and Maemo.

Let the gnashing of teeth begin.

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssC...11535220091016

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

This means they want this unit to be the as cost effective as possible.

That is actually good news. Remember that some people behind the Palm Pre were former Apple guys.

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

Yes. And they managed to mess up completely. That's the guys creating the whole Jamie Z. trouble, remember?

(Note that I don't think there's any reason whatsoever to mistrust this Apple person in this role at Nokia, ref. Quim's writings on the issue. What I'm saying above is that the argument about Palm Pre is not the most assuring pro-Apple argument.. ;))

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

Took long enough.

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

My point is, that someone comes from Apple doesn't automatically mean that they want to impose Apple's closed ecosystem where there go.

I know the Palm Pre issues with the developer community, however, the base idea is still quite more open than Apple's.

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

Yes, and that subject has been hashed over well enough. I admit to being concerned myself, but I'm willing to wait and see.

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

I don't think we have any other option...hehe

BTW, how is the N900 going?

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

How do you conclude they messed up completely? How do you know who developed the policy?

That trouble you refer to was result of policy which got changed recently, after the trouble emerged. Same former Apple folks who did reversed the policy, was it a holy ex-Be engineer, or the kittens, or...? I'm damn sure the engineers at Apple who do UI design are not the same folks who do security and DRM design, nor same folks who define policies of what is allowed in the software repositories.

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

So were the guys behind OQO - the Apple tablet if Apple had made a tablet. Now bankrupt.

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

Wild rumour going on in finnish media: Rick Simonson will be next CEO after OPK retires. This roulette of changing seats was done so that Simonson could get experience on hardware side of business.

EDIT. Checked more finnish news sites and saw just the opposite rumours, Simonson has been sidetracked from CEO path by this move. Anyway, I think that there is truckloads of behind the scenes corporate powerplay going on right now.

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

It also may or may not mean anything that the original Nokia press release only mentions Simonson and Ihamuotila.

Smartphones are mentioned only in passing: "Mobile Phones is one of two new entities within the Devices unit that came into operation on October 1, 2009, the other being Smartphones."

Tablets and Maemo are not mentioned at all.

Someone brew some tea on their overheating iPhone so we can read the tea leaves.

http://www.nokia.com/press/press-rel...newsid=1347929

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

Did bit googling with Simonson and it seems that his background is almost completly in finance/accounting/business. Now, he is moved to head the mobilephones unit. He certainly didn't get that post because of is experience in the field. Being groomed for something that requires understanding Nokia as a whole (i.e CEO position) is the only logical reason for his new post that I can come up with.

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

I could just not see a non-Finn CEO of Nokia...

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

Fair point.

Argument against that: finnish investment- and commercial banks have lost their traditional straglehold on Nokia. Large institutional investment funds hold most of the stocks now. Meanwhile, the finnish society has transformed quite a bit during the last two decades. We migt not be a multi-cultural utopia, but we certainly aren't the kind of introverted monoculture we were when I was child.

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

Good points Rauha, but never underestimate the sentiment aspect. ;)

Here's my take: put the finance guy in charge of the division you're planning to sell or spin off.

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

I would say it's due to the fact that the average price of the mobile phones (non-smartphones) Nokia sells dropped significantly. I would expect big cost cutting moves.

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

Yeah, I was thinking like an American, sorry. :D

Still, as an old engineering type I'm more comfortable with knowledgable process people finding ways to cut cost rather than "bean counters". The latter rarely know where unnecessary cost can be removed without pain... the former are always ready with plenty of good suggestions. ;)

Re: Nokia Reorganizes
 

IMHO Basic cell phones are more of a commodity business today and more cost driven than technology driven. Perhaps Nokia's overhead is too high to make a good margin. The business model of all functional groups for basic cells would need to change. Applying those changes to the technology oriented product lines would be detrimental so breaking the technology focused products away so they can have a different business model makes sense. Splitting Maemo and Symbian smartphones may be to better understand and measure the costs of each and to perhaps let them operate differently from each other.