Nokia shuts out Android with Microsoft deal
Stephen Elop says Windows Phone 7 partnership will steer off Apple and Android competition
Nokia has announced a range of strategic and structural changes, including the adoption of Windows Phone 7 software, in a bid to retain its hold on the mobile market and increase its reach into the smartphone business.
The firm will announce its plans in detail at an event in London today at 10am, but has provided some information to journalists in advance.
The list includes details of a range of structural changes, as well as a hotly tipped tie up with Microsoft that will see Windows Phone 7 become the primary operating system on its handsets.
Nokia will now focus its investments on next-generation disruptive technologies, the firm explained, and will look to build devices that appeal to the "next billion" unconnected but potential phone users in developing markets.
Nokia expects that the changes will help propel the company forward, and said that it had a distinct focus on speed, results and accountability.
The plans appear to be mutually beneficial to Microsoft and Nokia, and the latter said that using Windows phone on its smartphones will drive the platform forward through its work on hardware optimisation and software customisation, as well as its support and scale.
Microsoft will provide developer tools to boost the ecosystem around its Windows Phone 7, the firm added, and help increase the scale of Nokia's Ovi application store.
This is not the end of Nokia's current operating systems, and the company expects to keep selling Symbian-based devices, talking of some 150 million new sales.
The Meego platform will become open source, and Nokia expects to ship a smartphone running the operating system later this year.
Management and structural changes were also announced, and the group executive board has been replaced with the Nokia Leadership Team, led by chief executive Stephen Elop.
Alberto Torres, Nokia's vice president, has stepped down and will leave the company.
Nokia shuts out Android with Microsoft deal
Stephen Elop says Windows Phone 7 partnership will steer off Apple and Android competition
Nokia will split into two business units, Smart Devices and Mobile Phones, or smartphones and mass-market phones. Each unit will have its own profit and loss responsibilities, suggesting that Nokia is determined to keep them apart.
Further information is scarce, and Nokia's local PR team was unable to provide even the slightest clue as to the content of the presentation. In a pre-brief released earlier this week, Nokia said simply that it will be holding a "strategy and financial briefing".
"Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward," Elop will say this morning in a statement.
"Today, we are accelerating that change through a new path aimed at regaining our smartphone leadership, reinforcing our mobile device platform and realising our investments in the future."
The past few years have not been kind to Nokia, even though the manufacturer remains the leader in mobile phone hardware sales.
Nokia's Meego is unproven, while Symbian has fallen out of fashion. The company has failed to make the most of the smartphone market in recent years and has seen its sales eroded by Google's Android and Apple's iPhone.
This week the firm was rocked by the publication of an internal memo in which Elop described Nokia's difficult situation.
"The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience," he wrote in the widely reported memo.
"Android came on the scene just over two years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable."
Comparing the business to a man faced between standing on a burning deck or throwing himself into the sea, Elop said that, as well as facing competition from Apple, his firm was being undermined by Chinese hardware manufacturers that can produce a high number of phones at lower cost.
These difficulties, which have increased in recent years, have pushed the company into making some bold moves.