New Nokia Chairman Vows to Keep the Course.

The new chairman of Nokia Corp. will not adjust the company's strategic goals or attempt to shift strategy, he said on Thursday at the meeting of the board of directors. Risto Sillasmaa believes that Nokia is on the right track and has the right execution team to rebuild the company.
“I don’t think any new change is required as we are going through a transformation period already. I am confident that Nokia has the right team, right strategy and now increasingly also the right products,” said Risto Sillasmaa, the chairman of Nokia appointed on Thursday, reports Financial Times.
Many shareholders argue that Nokia's current strategy to transit to Microsoft Windows Phone platform is not the right one and note that the actual Lumia products are not getting popular citing sales figures to date: around two million units of all Lumia models worldwide.
At present, it would not make a lot of sense to change short- and mid-term strategic plans as appropriate handsets are already developed and get finalized now. Essentially, Nokia's late 2012 lineup has already been designed and no major changes can be done at this point if Nokia wants to sell hardware this year at all. Moreover, chairmen are not usually involved into creation of particular products, but rather into pointing directions for the company's evolution. Essentially, the new chairman will just follow Stephen Elop's plan to transit to Microsoft's software.

Smartphones are clearly a key, but only one element of the mobile always-connected computing era. There are tablets, transforming tablets, notebooks, various hybrid devices and so on. Both Apple and Google already provide software platforms for various devices, while hardware designers thinking of new form-factors. Nokia, which used to make tablets in early 2000s and even released netbooks in late 2000s, understands the mobile trends, according to Jorma Ollila, the former chairman of Nokia, and is preparing its own breed of devices. Moreover, Nokia plans to offer special services that would differentiate it from the rivals.
"The combination of new products and Nokia services will make a difference. [...] 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,” said Mr. Ollila earlier this week.