Jorma Ollila (pictured above, right) has been with Nokia for 27 years and many Finnish people say he’s the guy that put the country on the map. His decision to transition the company from making cables to making mobile phones made Nokia into the world’s largest handset company. They lost that title in Q1 2012 to Samsung, but still, 14 years of being on top is an amazing achievement. Anyway, we’ve known Jorma would leave Nokia for a while now. He’s giving up his title as Chairman, and he’ll be replaced by Risto Siilasmaa, founder of the Finnish anti-virus and computer security firm F-Secure. On his way out he gave an interview to the Financial Times where he dropped this bombshell:
“Tablets are an important one, so that is being looked into, and there will be different hybrids, different form factors [handset designs] in the future.”
Let’s break that quote down. “Tablets are an important one” is a bit of an understatement. Apple owns the tablet market, Google is trying (and failing) to compete, so all hope now rests on Microsoft. We know Nokia is working on a tablet, their head of design already confirmed that it exists. “Different hybrids” is likely a nod to ASUS and the Transformer Prime. Will Nokia copy that form factor? Lenovo already said they would. “Different form factors [handset designs]” is a bit of a tricky one. Everyone out not is a giant slab of glass. QWERTY devices are out, flip phones are out, dual screen devices have been tried, but no one wanted them, so … we’re stumped.
It can’t be said enough that Nokia’s success is now almost entirely dependent on Microsoft. If Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 ends up failing, then Nokia will have to figure out what to become. They used to make paper, they used to make cables, and at the rate they’re going, we’ll soon be saying they used to make phones.
[Via: The Nokia Blog]