Nokia is playing musical chairs, company reorganization effective January 2008

Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s “matrix” as some employees like to call it, currently looks like this:

Effective on the first day of 2008 the new corporate structure will be vastly different. There will now be three units:

1. Devices: Headed by Kai Öistämö, he will be responsible for, you guessed it, hardware.
2. Services and Software: Lead by Niklas Savander, he will transform Nokia into  an internet company, which means providing services directly to the consumer. Software solutions will become a key part with enterprise customers.
3. Markets: Anssi Vanjoki will be in charge of the group who manages Nokia’s supply chain, sales channels and marketing.

Why is this shift taking place? According to the official press release:

Nokia expects that the new organization will allow it to manage its device portfolio with greater effectiveness, speed up time to market for new products, and increase the efficiency of its marketing and productization efforts. In addition, Nokia expects that having a new unit dedicated to consumer internet services and enterprise solutions will build on the foundations established in the existing organization to best position the company to offer its customers complete solutions.

I for one am glad to see that “devices” is one whole unit. Currently the multimedia division handles N Series, Enterprise handles E Series and the Mobile Phones unit handles the rest of Nokia’s product portfolio. People were isolated based on the class of product they were creating, now everyone is working together.

Is this reorganization only at the executive level or will things actually change through out the company? The analogy people always use is a large company = a large ship, it takes a while for it to turn; smaller crafts are more nimble.

The last reorganization took place in September of 2003.