It has finally come to pass: no longer will Nokia make mobile phones, and for those of us who have watched and monitored the company over past decades it really is the end of an era. The Nokia we knew is no more now that the deal to sell its devices unit has finally gone through. Microsoft also appears to have little intention of keeping the famous phone brand, according to recent remarks by former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop.
Even the NSN brand is now a thing of the past: once known as Nokia Siemens and Networks and more recently renamed as Nokia Solutions and Networks, NSN is now known simply as Networks. In future, Nokia will have Networks, Technologies, and Here mapping and location services. No phones.
Nokia has already taken to Twitter with a new handle, #NokiaNext, and is excitedly tweeting about its new CEO, Rajeev Suri (the least surprising appointment this year, possibly) and its new business plans.
Meanwhile former Nokia contacts are passing on new Microsoft details, and no doubt hotdogs have replaced pickled herring on the canteen menu at Nokia House in Espoo. The former Nokia HQ will also probably get a new name, if it hasn't already, and images all over the Internet show that the Microsoft brand is already replacing the famous blue and white Nokia logo on the building.
The media is now busy speculating about Microsoft's next steps with its new business, and the prevailing view is that the new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella faces a daunting challenge. Finding a new brand name for phones formerly called Nokia will only be the first in a series of difficult decisions.
For "new" Nokia, this is something of a "phoenix rising from the ashes" moment. The company, about which so many negative stories were written following its inability to match the smartphone successes of Apple, Samsung et al, has emerged as a slimmed-down version of itself with a new CEO, a new vision and three fairly robust divisions now that it has shed the problematic phones business. It even managed to report a fairly healthy set of results for the first quarter of 2014.
The future of new Nokia now lies in the hands of its new CEO, who has been with the company for almost 20 years and therefore knows it well. In an address to customers and investors on the Nokia web site, Suri said he was taking on the role of CEO with "humility, respect and excitement", and spoke of the "exhilarating times" for the company.
"I see the opportunity ahead of us," he said. "The coming changes in technology will be as profound as the creation of the Internet."--Anne