Nokia CEO's blunt assessment

Courtesy of Daring Fireball, an Engadget piece quoting Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's "brutally honest" memo to employees. It seems to be genuine and to have been leaked to Engadget and at least a couple of other media outlets. (Whether the leaks were intentional or not is unknown. Nokia might not be averse to outsiders seeing the memo: credit agencies are considering whether to downgrade the company's credit rating, and any sign the company is trying to turn itself around might help to forestall such a move.)

It's not often you see a company executive, much less the CEO, deliver such a forthright appraisal of his own firm. It helps, of course, that Elop was brought in as new blood because Nokia was already in trouble, so he can put much of the blame on actions and people who preceded his arrival.

Elop explained that Apple's iPhone dominated the high-end smartphone market, that Google's Android is "now winning the mid-range," and Chinese manufacturers are churning out competitive low-end phones that are "taking share from us in emerging markets." Nokia, meanwhile, has been unable to muster a challenge on any of these fronts: MeeGo, its high-end smartphone technology, has been a bust; Symbian, Nokia's OS for mid-range phones, is "non-competitive in leading markets like North America" and "an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements." And Elop made one of his harshest criticisms of his own company by quoting one of his own employees:

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."

Ouch. It's one thing for the rank and file to grouse about corporate atherosclerosis. It's quite another for the CEO to do it.

I believe at least some of [Nokia's decline] has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally.

If I were a Nokia executive I'd be updating my resumé. It sounds like a housecleaning is on the way.

Speculation is that Nokia will announce it is adopting either Android or Windows Phone 7 at a media event the company has scheduled for 11 February.