[update] CEO-Memo: „Nokia, unsere brennende Plattform!“

Exzellente Morgenlektüre: Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, zweijähriger zwei Jahre langer Bereichsleiter der Microsoft Office-Abteilung und seit September 2010 Chef des finnischen Mobilfunk-Konstrukteurs, schreibt eine Status Quo-Brandrede an seine Mitarbeiter.

Engadget verifizierte dessen Authentizität angeblich mit mehreren Quellen.

Die Highlights lauten:

• We too, are standing on a „burning platform,“ and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.
• The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience.
• Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.
• We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.
• At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment […]
• At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, „the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.
• The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things.
• Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands.
• We are working on a path forward — a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company.

Damit gewinnt das London-Meeting am 11. Februar an gesteigerter Brisanz. Vielleicht ist doch mehr an den Windows Phone 7-Plänen, als zuvor vermutet?

Für den gesamten (Smartphone-)Markt bleibt jedenfalls zu hoffen, das der Löwe nicht zahnlos brüllte.

Update

Nach Informationen der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters hat Nokia ihr erstes (unveröffentlichtes) Smartphone auf Basis des Betriebssystems MeeGo, das unter den Bezeichnungen ‚N9-00‘, ‚RM-680‘ sowie ‚Dali‘ entwickelt wurde, eingestellt.