“NO PRESSURE” said Stephen Elop, Nokia’s chief executive of eight months, as he discussed the launch of the company’s new Windows-enabled smartphone from the stage at the Excel Centre in London yesterday.
And they say Americans don’t do irony.
Mr Elop took over Nokia eight months ago, his job to turn around the Finnish behemoth and to persuade the world that the company had a future beyond supplying handsets to the developing world.
The company has lost around 68 per cent of its market value since the launch of the iPhone in 2007. The launch of the new Lumia model – the “first real Windows phone” – was watched by an audience far beyond the crowd of journalists, developers, analysts and Nokia lifers who took their place in the hall.
This was Elop’s first big moment since moving from Microsoft, and his e-mail describing Nokia’s Symbian operating system as a “burning platform”.
Shareholders are keen to see two things come from the Nokia World event this week. That the company’s product offering can compete in the high-price, high-margin smartphone world of iPhones and Android devices, and that it can do so quickly.
The hope is that Nokia’s reputation for dependable production methods can be married to a bit of Apple-like glitz. The phones come with music and Nokia’s own proprietory mapping programmes, along with the appeal of Microsoft’s Office suite. With other Windows phones coming from Samsung and HTC, the need to differentiate will be critical to winning new users.
The Finnish company has developed a reputation for being sluggish to market, a flaw cruelly exposed in the dynamic sector. “The supply chain is looking for something spectacular before the Christmas selling period and he needs to deliver,” said Francisco Jeronimo, analyst at IDC.
As if to counter this issue, Mr Elop attempted to link live with the company factory in Helsinki to get a glimpse of the smartphones flying off the production line.
Almost inevitably the technology failed, and Mr Elop was left to talk to a blank screen for what must have seemed like a lifetime. He, and Nokia’s shareholders, will hope it wasn’t an omen.
