Anyone remember Paul Amsellem? He’s the Nokia employee who a little over three months ago gave an interview to the French newspaper Les Échos and spilled the beans on two of the company’s upcoming devices. The first piece of hardware he leaked, and I’m using the term “leak” very loosely here, was the Nokia Lumia 900. Paul said something to the tune of “the Lumia 800 is a BMW 5 series, and we’ll have a BMW 7 series equivalent soon.” The second product he leaked though is far more interesting. Paul said that in June 2012 Nokia would unveil a tablet running Windows 8. Now Paul isn’t a piece of low hanging fruit, he was the Head of Nokia France, which is why today’s announcement that he’s left the company has caught my attention. According to the French website Business Mobile, which is a ZD|Net affiliate, Amsellem left Nokia in late January. In total he spent less than half a year with the company. Paul’s replacement is Philippe Baudrier, who according to his LinkedIn profile has been a Nokia employee since May 2004. Curiously, his employeer before Nokia was Microsoft. Baudrier spent five and a half years there as a “Key Account Manager”.
Does any of this mean anything? Not really. The Business Mobile article suggests there was a power struggle between Nokia France and Nokia UK, which is kind of sad, but hey, corporate back stabbing is unfortunately how the inside of Nokia works. Take it from someone who has seen it first hand. People pour their heart and soul into a project, and then their boss has to fight to make sure that they get any credit for their work.
Anyway, what really matters here is that Paul was right about the Lumia 900, so will he be right about the Windows 8 tablet? And June, seriously? That’s less than 100 days away!
[Hat Tip to Thomas Husson]