New divisions within Nokia
From 1 April, Nokia will feature two distinct business units: Smart Devices and Mobile Phones.
They will each be their own identity, and have their own section within the financial reports. Essentially, this means that Nokia could feasibly overhaul or even jettison one of the sectors if it's under-performing without affecting the other.
Smart Devices will be responsible for "building Nokia's leadership in smartphones" , with Symbian smartphones, MeeGo computers and Windows Phone 7 all falling under that heading.
Note the use of the word 'computers' in that sentence... it's highly likely that we won't ever see a traditional smartphone running MeeGo with WP7 and Symbian on board.
Mobile Phones will drive Nokia's "web for the next billion" strategy, as Nokia continues to plunder the untapped sector of people who have very basic or no mobile phone.
This is where the feature phone strategy will reside for those that have no need for a smartphone, in growth markets from parts of Africa, Asia and South America.
The Services and Developer Experience is still alive and kicking and will be responsible for Nokia's global services portfolio, developer offering, developer relations and integration of partner service offerings.
And don't forget NAVTEQ, the fundamental part of Nokia's mapping strategy - this will continue in its own right and will play a large part in the company's move to integrate its own mapping software with Bing.
The future
It's not going to just be Nokia Windows Phone handsets that start appearing in the future, as Nokia and Microsoft will be pushing hard to create new areas of common growth.
The two "plan to work together to integrate key assets and create completely new service offerings, while extending established products and services to new markets", so it will be interesting to see what these are.
It's not going to be plain sailing until then though, as this year and the next promise to be transition years, according to an investor release:
"Nokia expects 2011 and 2012 to be transition years, as the company invests to build the planned winning ecosystem with Microsoft. After the transition, Nokia targets longer-term: (1) Devices & Services net sales to grow faster than the market. (2) Devices & Services non-IFRS operating margin to be 10% or more."
What do you think? Is this a case of Nokia finally realising it needs to do something to resurrect the ailing brand, or is it the final death throes for a once dominant brand?
