Nokia, Onward They GoWell it would've been astounding to me if we had not heard from Nokia’s leadership soon after they exited the smartphone business. Which played such a big part of their business. Nokia started around 150 years ago as a paper mill in the 1860’s. Which as you can imagine is a hell of a jump up the innovation food chain, pulping to advanced electronics is no small thing. However let us recall what has actually been confirmed. Nokia and Microsoft have sealed a very large purchase where upon Microsoft bought substantially all of Nokia’s Devices & Services business, license Nokia’s patents, and license and use Nokia’s mapping services for a staggering €5.44billion. Which also includes a transfer of employees to the new division of Microsoft from Nokia.

I am interested to note that Catherine Shu of TechCrunch posted an interesting statement from the Nokia Chairman Risto Siilasmaa outlining his intentions for the company. With so much change occurring around him, it is worth taking a note of what his plans are for the remaining components of Nokia. The statement below is taken from a blog post by the Chairman himself, published by Ian Delaney on September 11th 2013.

Quote“The first element of Nokia Reinvented is NSN, our networks business, supplying technology and infrastructure to operators worldwide. We will continue to manage NSN as a strong, independent unit. NSN is the mobile broadband specialist and especially strong in LTE. With our strong and focused investment in R&D, we will continue to launch uniquely innovative solutions such as the Liquid Applications that was announced in Barcelona earlier this year. HERE is another key business for Nokia. HERE is making solid progress to becoming the leading location cloud business through an offering across connected devices, enterprise solutions and car.

We believe that location technologies and services will be pivotal in the next phase of the mobile Internet, where more and more devices are connected to the cloud. We also believe that location will become an essential building block across all industries. HERE is already available in 4 out of 5 cars with in-dash navigation and we have mapped millions of kilometers of road across the world. And we’re committed to continue to extend our coverage. We have also recently launched exciting new technology to connect the car to the cloud in order to bring previously unseen benefits to both the driver and car manufacturer.

Finally, we will form a new business, Advanced Technologies, building on most of the activities from the current CTO unit and the IP business team, while exploring new, strategically important topics. Our CTO organisation has a strong track record in innovations that continue to shape the industry. In recent years, these have included the leading technologies for video and audio encoding, including H.264 and HD voice; low-power connectivity technologies such as Bluetooth LE (low energy) and imaging technologies which are now powering augmented reality apps such as HERE Live Sight.”

My FeelingWith all this in mind it is clear to see that Nokia will not be sitting idle. They clearly have someone at the top who still has a lot of drive and dedication to the company, employees, customers and shareholders of course. Which I believe is exactly what you need in a Chairman and interim CEO. Perhaps with this massive release of resources from the sale of the smartphone division and incoming funds from Microsoft, the Chairman is beginning to realise just how big of an opportunity this can be for a company which has held a large and important place in so many industries for so long.