Anssi Vanjoki, the new man in the hot seat at Nokia, has vowed the company will reclaim its position as the smartphone leader.
Vanjoki, who took over as head of mobile solutions last week, says his job is “to ensure Nokia stays as the market and intellectual leader in creating the digital world.”
“We have all the assets — including R&D and product development – at our disposal under one roof – to produce killer smartphones and market-changing mobile computers,” he wrote on the company blog.
“I am committed, perhaps even obsessed, with getting Nokia back to being number one in high-end devices,” said Vanjoki, a 19-year Nokia veteran. But there was “no denying, that as a challenger now, we have a fight on our hands.”
Vanjoki said the company was committed to the Symbian and MeeGo operating systems and had “no plans” to use Android or any other platforms.
He said Symbian was Nokia’s platform of choice for smartphones, but admitted some of the heavy criticism directed at it recently had been “fair.”
The major launch on the horizon is the N8, Nokia’s first Symbian^3, offering HD quality video and integration with Ovi services.
The N8 would be released in the coming months, while the first device on the joint Nokia-Intel MeeGo platform would be released by the end of the year, Vanjoki said.
“MeeGo offers us an opportunity to take mobile technology beyond the smartphone, and into a new world of connected devices. As Symbian gears up to compete with the likes of iPhone and Android, MeeGo is taking clear aim at the computing space,” he said.
Symbian and MeeGo were the backbone of the mobile solutions unit, Vanjoki’s blog added.