Nokia's Stephen Elop comes under criticism at AGM: 'Results are what matter'!

   Nokia are an interesting case: they're still one of the companies who ship the most phones in the world, the only problem is that at the moment those phones are the low end ones and they're selling to emerging markets. As of late though budget handsets which offer better features and would be considered 'smartphones' have been eating into Nokia's market share in that segment. That means that margins get slimmer and sales contract. That's bad news for Nokia because they need to keep their volume devices shipping while they build on the image of their Lumia devices and Microsoft brings what they can to the mobile table with Windows Phone!

   Today there was an Annual General Meeting for Nokia and their CEO Stephen Elop is clearly aware of what he needs to do. Indeed, before the meeting he told Reuters India that Nokia 'are continuing to renew our portfolio, which includes plans to announce innovation and new products in the Asha line in the days immediately ahead," which is good to hear. The thing is that the area where people make all of their profit is on high-end smartphones, which is why HTC has bet big on their HTC One.

   On the high end front Elop reiterated before the AGM, and again to Reuters, that Nokia:

"Make adjustments as we go. But it's very clear to us that in today's war of ecosystems, we've made a very clear decisions to focus on Windows Phone with our Lumia product line. And it is with that that we will compete with competitors like Samsung and Android." 

   The only problem with that reiteration of their commitment to Windows Phone was that shareholders don't necessarily agree and indeed it seems that some are starting to lose patience with the Windows Phone commitment. One particular shareholder, called Hannu Vitanen, expressed his discontent by saying:

"You're a nice guy ... and the leadership team is doing its best, but clearly, it's not enough... Are you aware that results are what matter? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Please switch to another road."

   The problem for Nokia is that the Windows Phone transition was slated to take two years, it's been two years since Nokia announced that they were going Windows Phone and despite slow increases in sales, things appear to be very stunted and they are nowhere near in the same ballpark as sales of the most expensive models from Samsung and Apple.

   One interesting point which came out of the interviews Reuters did with shareholders was that some people in the audience admitted that they only held shares still because of the sentimentality which came along with them. The company of the 1990's symbolised a rebirth of Finland, which could make do without its old trading partner the Soviet Union when that fell apart.

   When shareholders are hanging onto their shares purely for sentimental reasons that is not good news and Nokia need to turn things around soon. We just wonder whether the change to Android is inevitable or why Nokia refuses to give it a go. Magnus Rehle from Greenwich Consulting put Elop's leadership together in a sentence, saying:

"He's managed to decrease costs but not to increase market share... Maybe they could go back to Google and say we also want to go with Android. Even if it hurts. Microsoft, they've had their chances, and are not managing to take off."

   What do you think? What should Nokia do? Press on with Windows Phone or give Android a shot? Or should they let out their new Lumia flagship and Asha devices and see where things are in three months? Let us know in the comments below!

Via IntoMobile and Slashgear.

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Elop hints at Nokia tablets, justifies Windows Phone focus and says Nokia is all about standing out!

   Nokia may finally have brought themselves some success with their latest range of Lumia handsets and continued sales of their budget devices in developing markets, but we're still missing one thing from the Finns and that's a tablet. Understandably Nokia is focused on their handset business because that is the core of the company and this is something we've seen HTC do lately too, because of their falling handset sales.

   So it's interesting when we hear Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, talk about tablets and that's exactly what he did in an interview with Australia's Financial Review. Elop revealed that his company is taking a close look at the tablet space and he said that:

“We haven’t announced tablets at this point, but it is something we are clearly looking at very closely... We are studying very closely the market right now as Microsoft has introduced the Surface tablet, so we are trying to learn from that and understand what the right way to participate would be and at what point in time.”

   Despite watching from the sidelines at the moment he did say that in the coming months and years that Nokia will look to, 'broaden out the portfolio, which means pushing to lower and lower price points, in some cases smaller form factors and so forth,' so a tablet isn't out of the question yet!

   When pressed on the normal Windows vs. Android question Elop said that it makes a lot more sense for both a phone and tablet to have an operating system and experience in common, although like always he didn't rule out the possibility of using something other than Microsoft's creations in the future. Elop makes his point perfectly when he says:

"When you think about the Lumia 920, running on Windows phone, having a Windows tablet or PC or Xbox is something that will give us the opportunity to have a pretty integrated experience. Our first focus on what we look at is clearly in the Microsoft side." 

   So there's no change on that front and we do have to agree that integration is very useful and his argument is fully justifiable here. Indeed, his response to the question of using Android is very robust too. He argued that:

“On the Android side, we were very worried that we would be entering Android late relative to everyone else in the industry, that perhaps one vendor was already well on the road to being the dominant Android vendor at the expense of everyone else... If we look back two years to when we made the decisions,then Samsung was big, HTC was pretty big and Motorola was pretty big. Of course what has happened in the two years is that Samsung has captured the lion’s share of it and the others have been squeezed down to much smaller market share. We were worried about exactly that pattern forming.”

   So with that in mind Elop is keen on Nokia focusing their efforts on differentiating their Windows Phones from everyone else's offerings. He said that Nokia's R&D is now heavily invested in making the company 'stand out' and naturally the PureView camera technology is a big part of that. Nokia think that:

“Photography is one case where we can make a big difference. You can put our device next to everyone else, including some of the ones just announced in the last day or so and say "boom this is so much better."”

This focus ties in very nicely with a story which The Guardian posted today which suggests that there will be a Lumia device arriving this summer with the same beefy 41MP camera which Nokia forced inside their 808 PureView!

   We'll have to wait and see on that one, but we would be genuinely excited for some Lumia tablets. Nokia typically has stunning design and that combined with a good dose of Windows 8 may well be enough to tempt people who aren't touched by Microsoft's Surface tablets! What would you like to see? More Lumia's or some tablets from Finland's finest? Let us know in the comments below!

AFW Via TechCrunch and TheGuardian.

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18/10/2012: Stephen Elop is bullish in the face of a Surface phone plus Verizon and Nokia Q3 sales and more!

Stephen Elop remains bullish in the face of a Surface phone.

 

 

    Stephen Elop has today fielded investor questions about his position on Microsoft's much rumoured Surface phone, which would become a flagship competitor to Nokia's Lumia devices.

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