Stephan Elop, CEO of Nokia (and ex-Microsofter) is a loved/hated man. For some, he saved Nokia from sailing the ship of irrelevancy into the sunset. To others, Elop is the sunset. Either way you look at him, based on a new post Mobile-Review’s Eldar Murtazin, we all might not have to look at him as the CEO of Nokia for much longer.
In the aforementioned post, Murtazin goes on to recap a lot of Nokia history over the last several years, touching on Symbian’s demise, MeeGo, Meltemi and Windows Phone. He also talks about how, overall, Elop has been one of the worst (and probably the worst by his accounts) person to ever take the helm at Nokia. Most intriguingly, however, in the last paragraph Murtazin drops a bombshell:
“Elop will be leaving Nokia this year but when he does there is nothing left to restore the company.”
Tales of Elop moving on haven’t really been cycled around too much. That said, murmuring of Elop being a temporary CEO aren’t new. Back in mid-2011, Eldar Murtazin made a very similar statement/claim, saying:
“Stephen Elop will resign in the end of 2012 (begin of 2013 according to another source). So thats a plan of Nokia board. Short term CEO.”
Considering Murtazin is more often than not pretty close in most of what he claims, we’ll once again raise an eyebrow. Also, we’d have to say we’re fairly interested in how Nokia (and Elop) handle themselves over the next 6 months. Still, as always, such source-less rumors always need a pinch of salt or two to keep reality in check.
If Nokia were to find itself CEO-less by the end of 2012 without a suitable replacement waiting in the wings, things could go from bad to worse. Already down 20,000+ employees and a couple of successful platforms (with one not so successful one) means Nokia would be a sitting duck. By late this year, the Galaxy S III will still be selling by the truck loads and the next-gen iPhone will also be assaulting bank accounts globally. By that time we should also begin hearing about the next generation of Android hardware for early 2013. Nokia, meanwhile, will have perhaps a slightly upgraded Lumia device that adds in a second core and higher resolution display. Having to continue going through the employee loss and costs associated with trying to break into the market with an all-new device(s) and platform can’t be easy. Having to deal with the CEO two-stepping into the open air certainly doesn’t help, either.
Stay tuned…
Via: Mobile-Review
