Nokia appoints an ex Microsoft exec as CEO

[3GScottishUser]

So Nokia have a former Microsoft executive in charge now....

I wonder how long it will take him to shake up their crap smartphone range and idiotic support of Symbian.

I bet Nokia will have Windows Mobile 7 and possibly Android offerings before the end of 2011.

[Hands0n]

Wow - that woudl be an interesting development. But for sure they have to do something to reverse their misfortunes.

[Ben]

...and a Microsoft exec is just such a perfect choice. Microsoft, after all, being renowned for their spectacular success in mobile phones.

[miffed]

LOL ,the rest of the world unites to conquer the iPhone , ....they'll stop at nothing you know !! , (except of course , producing a better device than the iPhone )

[The Mullet of G]

I said ages ago that Nokia should sack Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, mostly for comedy value but also because he was a bit of an idiot. I wouldn't write off Microsoft either in the mobile phone sector, as Windows Phone 7 seems to be getting a fair amount of positive buzz. :)

[Hands0n]

Well, Nokia certainly had to do something. The brand rep was sound, but the product where all the buzz is was noticeably vacant. I would hate to have presided over that stillborn, the N97, and pretty much everything since.

Look, Nokia, stop trying to re-invent the wheel. There is a perfectly good mobile device OS out there that is but for the taking. Make your mark with that. Re-trench yourselves. Then, and only then, consider trying to lead the pack.

But right now the ship has sailed and you guys are still standing on the dockside.

[The Mullet of G]

Seems to be a fair amount of positive buzz surrounding Nokia World today. :)


@Hands0n

If that "perfectly good mobile device OS" is Android then I disagree, I don't want to see Android on any Nokia device anytime soon, besides why would Nokia want to go from one fragmented platform to an even worse one? For me Android would be a step backwards compared with Symbian and Maemo. :)

I think Nokia's upcoming range of phones will show that there is more than a bit of life left in Symbian, and despite what the nay sayers and Apple fanboi's say, the market data will speak for itself when they start flying off shelves upon launch. :)

[Hands0n]

I'm not sure that such predictions are safe or even warranted. Nokia's history of these things for the past few years has been lamentable. I would make no assumption that they've found the root cause and remedied it.

Symbian - well I think we both know where each of us is coming from. What next from Nokia? CP/M?

[miffed]

I am actually quite interested to see what transpires , Just been looking at Dan's pictures over at his site , and I am more impressed than I thought I'd be ,
I saw a slide of an 9000 Communicator was among the photos , so I like to think that was all part of looking back at working out where they went wrong. this can only be a good thing !

I am starting to come around to the idea that there is a market for devices that lack the quick slick UI of the iOS / Android - I think Nokia have been brutally honest with themselves ,realised they are never going to compete on those terms , and decided to own the "clunky" side of the market
Looking and the N8 , it looks like the natural progression of Mobile phones , or should I say what it WOULD have been had the iPhone never existed After literally announcing they were going after the iPhone (and then turning out the 5800 !) I think they have learned from this failure , and the progrssion we see is what Nokia are / were always good at - Stylish , well built phones with as much "feature" spec as possible - (i.e. 12 megapixel camera ) ...but probably not enough RAM etc for the device to blow anyone away.
So yeah I reckon the N8 will do well , and I look forward to the N8 mini (same but smaller) and the N9 ,which will be the same , only with a 13MP camera !) ....Oh wait , they aleady have an N9 don't they ? Christ knows where they are going to take these model numbers then !

[Hands0n]

Thats an interesting contention there @miffed, "Looking and the N8 , it looks like the natural progression of Mobile phones , or should I say what it WOULD have been had the iPhone never existed". I'm not of a mind to let Nokia off the hook quite so lightly ;)

I rather wonder if this touchscreen malarky would have ever have really got off the ground had it not been for a certain company named after a fruit from which you can make Cider.

Thinking back to immediately prior to the first iPhone what did we really have? I believe we had the very very nasty Viewty to remind us of how LG cannot do things at all well. We had a few UIQ devices if memory serves me well. And we had a clutch of membrane touch devices that required poking with a stylus that was easily lost.

But for the life of me, I cannot recall one single Nokia touchscreen device at the time. I've got the N95 8GB in my head, and the Nokia Communicator (could you prod that with anything usefully?), but nothing else springs to mind.

So, going along some kind of speculation I really do have to wonder if Nokia would have even tried to rise out of their complacency to produce anything even close to the N8 as we see it today. And lets be kind to Nokia and remember that the N8 has arrived over three years after the first iPhone hit the streets. Also some two years behind the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1.

That said - I find the N8 visually appealing, and I love the notion of so much metal in the casing, the convenient means of swapping out SIM and SDHC cards. My major reservation is the continued use of Symbian - but I'll be patient enough to see what the production release of the code is like before commenting. What I've seen on the YouTube video is not disappointing - but then nor was it with the stillborn Nokia N97 (and N97 Mini that followed it). With Nokia software/firmware it is always best to wait and see :)

[miffed]

Yeah you might be right there WRT Touchscreen , in the Pre-Phone days I probably used more touchscreen devices than most with all the WM stuff & UIQ handsets ... none of which are anything like the touchscreen UI's of today.
Its funny I hear a lot of comments by people who "Don't get on with touchsecreens" , and for that reason are looking for hard buttoned alternatives to the iPhone / Desire / Galaxy S , - then they reveal that their bad experiece with touchscreens refers to an LG Viewty , Orange Vegas or some old Windows mobile 5 HTC device ! , Now I am not going to try and tell these people they don't know what they like , but I am pretty sure that most of them would find a MODERN touchscreen device as easy and effiective to use as a hard buttoned one - The stigma created by the poor touchscreens of yesterday is alive and well today !

[Hands0n]

You are absolutely right, anything that pre-dated the iPhone touchscreen simply does not relate to what we are finding these days, regardless of the OS. Chalk and cheese would be apt.

Isn't the N8 Nokia's first capacitive touchscreen? At least in the Symbian variant? So the N8 is very new for Nokia on two counts.

The new CEO offers hope that Nokia's "lost sheep" syndrome can be expected to come to an end. One certainly hopes so. He is one man and has to win over Nokia's diehards who have steered Nokia's design. Clearly [I can't get over how dire the N97 was] they need a kick up the botty.