If WSJ is to be believed, Nokia is looking out for a new CEO. Not surprising if you have been following the stock price or quite simply following the mobile space regularly. Nokia has been struggling to hold some ground in the high end phone market. Its several ‘old’ products in the segment have taken a real beating from players iPhone, Nexus and Droid.
Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the present CEO has been trying day after day to revive the laggard symbian platform but to no avail. May be the decision to stay out of the Android market is unleashing its fury. Views of the experts is simple, “work on your operating system or perish”. We are sure that Nokia leadership knows it better than anyone else and thus we have our doubts if a mere change at the top would really stimulate anything revolutionary.
In spite of being a leader in terms of volumes by virtue of its leadership in countries like China and India, Nokia has been continuously missing market expectations in terms of earning and the impact is quite visible on the stock price. The Nokia Stock has lost more than 42 % of its value since April 19. Quite evident it is that the stakes are high, as far as the high end segment is concerned and the Finnish giant can no longer afford to be happy pulling out volumes from the developing world. It’s time to fight the game of operating system interface, aesthetics and unparalleled customer appeal rivaling those of competitors like Apple and Google.
I hope this move works but its a part of the very big change needed and also may be a little to late. What do you think?
