“Nokia Corp.’s head of MeeGo Devices Ari Jaaksi has decided to leave the company, only months before the Finnish mobile phone maker is expected to launch high-end handsets based on the new operating platform,” Gustav Sandstrom reports for The Wall Street Journal.
MacDailyNews Take: MeeGo now, why there’s still something to leave. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya!
Sandstrom reports, “Mr. Jaaksi, who has been involved in the development of the new platform working under MeeGo Computers chief Alberto Torres, has decided to step down for personal reasons and will leave the company in a couple of weeks, Nokia press spokeswoman Eija-Riitta Huovinen said Tuesday, continuing the recent exodus of senior executives at the Finnish company. Mr. Jaaksi wasn’t immediately available to comment further on his departure.”
“Mr. Jaaksi’s decision to quit comes amid a wave of departures of top Nokia executives,” Sandstrom reports. “The company last month replaced Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo with Microsoft Corp.’s Stephen Elop. Shortly after that, Mr. Vanjoki said he would resign after he was passed over for the top job, while Chairman Jorma Ollila plans to step down in 2012.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nokia obviously has severe retention issues to go along with their braggadocio-wthout-backup issues. This is what happens when companies sit on their duffs and fail to innovate: When real competition arrives, first there’s lots of talk, then there’s lots of action – in the exodus department. Watching Nokia’s headlong slide into irrelevancy is particularly delicious.
To be fair to Nokia, they have innovated far more that the majority of also-ran handset manufacturers. In fact, their Maemo OS is very impressive so I don’t really understand is why they decided to get into bed with Intel on Mee-Go. It creates confusion in the market place and so it would seem, in the boardroom too.
Better to reserve judgement on Mee-Go until we see it, and more importantly what the reaction of the public and the also-ran handset manufacturers like HTC and LG.