“While his U.S. perspective will be valuable to Nokia, which has struggled for years to establish a footprint in the world’s biggest smartphone market, Elop lacks any visible ties to the operators that control the distribution network in the country,” Lagorce reports. “Part of the reason why Nokia never managed to achieve more than a marginal presence in the U.S. is because it has failed to establish strong relationships with the likes of Sprint-Nextel, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group. Elop’s appointment will do little to address that issue.”
“Another preoccupation is Elop’s lack of experience in hardware design. Though the success of Apple Inc. with the iPhone is proof of consumers’ thirst for better and simpler operating systems, the look and feel of a new handset remain crucial to its success,” Lagorce reports. “‘Elop is a software engineer with U.S. experience and that is a positive. But it remains to be seen how well he will do on hardware devices. Engineers don’t have a great track record of designing attractive handsets,’ Neil Mawston, an analyst at Strategy Analytics, cautioned.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: eFlop. Overseeing a monopoly (Microsoft Office) is helluva lot easier than trying to turn around a mess like Nokia in a vain attempt to catch up to Steve Jobs. Nokia still makes horse buggies years after Apple introduced the spaceship. Maybe Nokia should concentrate on their specialty — crap margin, low-end, mechanical-buttoned candy bar cellphones — hope they can coast along on emerging markets while they try to figure out what businesses to try next (kitchen appliances? floor wax? breakfast sausages?) before the money runs out?