New Nokia (OMX: NOK1V, NYSE: NOK) Chairman Risto Siilasmaa was interviewed by national broadcaster Yle in TV1 program Päivän Kasvo ("today's face")- show yesterday. It is available for online-viewing from Yle Areena at the moment. He said that painful decisions had to be made but is excited about working with a lot of new positive upcoming issues. More cuts may still follow. He believes that bad news come like waves and once the tide turns, investors will focus more on the positives. In a rather striking comment, he says that he himself always calculates the number of shares and feels that if there are no more stocks, he has not lost anything if the market value has gone down.
Siilasmaa said that Nokia hasn't bet everything for Windows Phone but that "dumbphones", location services in particular, NSN and patents all are important. Siilasmaa also said that Nokia indeed has some back-up plans but believes strongly in the current strategy. He admitted that there was no chance to continue with Symbian. In his view the Symbian slide has not escalated at any point but the trend is steadily down. He said that around the time of new CEO hire, very thorough internal review lasting several months was done where Nokia's own operating systems such as MeeGo, Android and Windows Phone were compared and the view was that in Android system only Samsung will be able to do well, own systems cannot be competed with, thus leaving Microsoft as the clear choice.
To a straight question regarding how much time CEO Stephen Elop has, he instead discussed how difficult situation Elop was thrown into following O-P Kallasvuo but that his actions and decisions have been very transparent and analytical, thus rebuffing conspiracy theorists claiming he is a Microsoft trojan. Siilasmaa twice sidestepped how much time Nokia has to turn the ship around, just saying that with new Windows Phone 8, positive development will be seen. He twice stressed how important new user experience will be achieved once you can switch seamlessly in between screens of personal computer, tablet, smartphone and television (with Xbox).
No comments:
Post a Comment