The Verge Interview: Stephen Elop ‘more confident than ever’ about Windows Phone | The Verge February 29, 2012
Posted by John Ruby in Microsoft, News and politics, Platforms & EcoSystems, Windows Phone.Tags: alliance, announcement, carriers, decision, decisions, development, downsides, ecosystem, effort, Elop, February, impact, Interview, jobs, Live, message, Metro, Microsoft, Moreover, Nokia, player, Stephen, strategy, tablet, transition, Verge, Windows, Xbox
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The Verge Interview: Stephen Elop ‘more confident than ever’ about Windows Phone | The Verge
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is on hand at MWC this week to help spread the company’s message to business partners, carriers, and the press. Ever gregarious and approachable, Elop gave us a few minutes of his time today to discuss the first year of Nokia’s transition, which got started with the announcement of a strategic alliance with Microsoft in February 2011. He was candid about the downsides of this fundamental change in strategy, noting the number of jobs Nokia has had to cut in an effort to streamline operations.
Today, Nokia remains very much in the middle of its transition, says Elop, but a lot has been accomplished in those short twelve months. His present assessment of the decision to move to Windows Phone is no less sanguine than it was a year ago:
"One year later, after making our big decisions about strategy, I am more confident than ever that we made the right decisions."
Nokia’s impact on the development of the Windows Phone OS and ancillary services is only now starting to be felt and there’s a lot more that the company will look to contribute to the effort. Moreover, with Microsoft building up an entire ecosystem around the Metro style UI — with Windows Phone, Windows 8, and Xbox Live — Elop believes there’s great opportunity to expand Nokia’s influence beyond the smartphone but isn’t willing to announce anything quite yet. Needless to say, he’s taking a long hard look at how Nokia can be a player in the tablet space.
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