new CEO at Nokia

Posted by Golden on January 21st, 2011

Anssi Vanjoki resigned from his job as head of Nokia’s smartphone division. He was touted as the possible replacement for the erstwhile chairman of Nokia Olli-Pekka Kallusvo but when that didn’t happen last week as anticipated, the number two man to the former chairman resigned his post. Stephen Elop from Microsoft was hired to take over from Olli in what many see as a shift to software development. Anssi was regarded as the “Steve jobs of Nokia”. He didn’t last long enough to live up to the billing.

Ben Wood, an analyst at CSS Insight described Mr Vanjoki as "the public face of Nokia" and a "key engineer of Nokia's phenomenal success” in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Mr Wood said he expected Mr Vanjoki's exit to be "the first of a series of management changes".

It still remains to be seen what positive changes Anssi exit from the scene would bring to the giant telecommunication company. Before now Nokia was regarded as the largest phone company until the emergence of the iphone from Apple which hit hard on their sales.