NOKIA SHAREHOLDERS REBELLING AGAINST MICROSOFT DECISION

Not everyone is happy about Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft executive, teaming up with Microsoft. Workers in Finland have voiced their displeasure by walking out and now a group of young shareholders is formulating an alternate strategy called "Nokia Plan B".

The shareholders, all of whom have experience working for the company, are happy with the decision to embrace Microsoft and will challenge that decision and strategy going forward.

The group has sent an open letter to other shareholders for support. The group needs to get elected as a majority to the Board of Directors at the next annual meeting on May 3rd. The open letter goes into great detail as to what agenda and concrete actions the group intends to pursue. The details of which are summarized below:

Agenda

• Return to high growth, high profitability strategy
• Maintain ownership of the software layer on Nokia products (read: no Windows OS)
• Introduce hiring strategy that targets young software talent
• Eliminate outdated and bureaucratic R&D policies to improve efficiency
• Avoid becoming poorly differentiated OEM with low margins and commodity products

Concrete Actions

• Immediate discharge of Stephen Elop as President and CEO of Nokia
• Restructure alliance with Microsoft as tactical exercise focused on North America
• MeeGo will become Nokia’s primary smartphone platform
• Increase the lifespan of Symbian to a minimum of 5 years
• Qt development to focus on MeeGo, but support Symbian too
• End of distributed R&D
• End of R&D outsourcing
• Leadership team shakeup
• Aggressively recruit young software engineers
• Strategy for S40 and Ovi platforms going forward

Overall, this strategy would see Nokia become a leaner company focused on MeeGo from a software perspective going forward. It would also see the average age of employees fall due to the new focus on young developers.

RUMOR: MASSIVE EXECUTIVE SHAKE-UP AT NOKIA

German newspaper Wirtschaftswoche is reporting newly appointed Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is executing an executive shake-up. Citing "company sources," the paper stated that Mary T. McDowell, a bigwig in the mobile phones unit, as well as Niklas Savander, the manager of the markets unit, could be on the outs. Moreover, Kai Oistamo (Chief Development Officer) and Tero Ojanpera, the manager responsible for services and mobile solutions, may also be joining them in the unemployment line.

Nokia has reportedly hired headhunters to find replacements for those empty positions. It appears the organizational changes are focused on rectifying Nokia's inability to quickly execute upon its corporate strategy.

This shift comes after Nokia recently laid off 1,800 workers in October.

NOKIA SMARTPHONE MARKET SHARE PLUNGES TO 31%

Stephen Elop's first quarterly results as Nokia CEO have just come out, and while the company's still growing, others seem to be speeding ahead of it. Nokia's reporting its converged mobile devices (smartphones, to you and us) reached volumes of 28.3 million during Q4 2010, which is a neat bump from 20.8 million at the same time last year and 26.5 million in the previous quarter. However, in the context of the broader smartphone marketplace, that figure now amounts to only a 31 percent share, according to Nokia's own estimates, which is a major dip relative to its 40 percent slice in Q4 2009 and 38 percent in Q3 2010.