If he had wanted to debunk those rumors that it might buy Palm, Nokia’s new mobile phones head Rick Simonson could have picked a more outright denial.
Simonson, who in November switched from CFO to run the mobile unit of Nokia’s devices division, tells India’s Economic Times: “We have been hearing that for a long time now — maybe it is like one of those things that you keep predicting and hope that by 2010, or in the next 10 years, it will actually come true. It’s like you keep saying, ‘it will rain, it will rain’ and one day it finally rains, and then you say you predicted it!”
Simonson ventures: “I can even make a prediction for 2010: In Latin America, we will grow faster than (RIM). By 2011, our efforts will start producing results, as we will be at par with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) in smartphones. Not only we draw level with them, we will also win the war because, in addition to email, we will be adding content, chat, music, entertainment and several other features, which will soon become very critical for success of any company in this space.”
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) finds itself with diminishing market share in the U.S. and established markets but a growing embrace for Brazil, Russian, India and China. Its Symbian operating system appears increasingly ill-suited to smartphone demands in the west and all manner of systems are snapping at its heels. Simonson tells ET: “Fourteen to 15 operating systems cannot survive. There is definitely not enough room for more than four to five operating systems. Scale is critical. For instance, Palm’s OS is very good, but with less than one percent of the global volumes, it won’t be too appealing to developers.” Might Nokia fancy taking Palm (NSDQ: PALM) OS to the audience of developers its building for its own Symbian?
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