Nokia China employees going back to work this week, after a short break for the new year, will find they have a new chief executive in the form of Gustavo Eichelmann (pictured right). Based in Beijing, he will have the formidable task of turning round Nokia’s (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) sinking business in China, where tens of millions of Android devices and iPhones are now dominating smartphone usage.
Eichelmann has had plenty of time to prepare for the role, having been officially appointed months ago. It came after the shocking departure of Liang Yumei, the senior VP for China, Korea, and Japan, earlier this summer. In the interim, Colin Giles, Nokia’s global head of sales, had been keeping the seat warm.
Although Nokia is still fighting hard for the massive market for smartphones and cheaper ‘feature phones’ in China – such as working with local startups on cool promos – the Finnish company had an awful 2011 in China, with declining local sales reaching the point that some distributors were refusing to take on new inventory.
For Eichelmann, there are both new challenges and new opportunities in 2012. Firstly, Nokia has totally revamped its lower-end feature phones – such as the new Asha series – to bring some smartphone-like features and aesthetics onto devices costing just US$84 to $164. (A strategy aimed at India, Indonesia, and other developing regions too). Secondly, there are signs that Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone 7 platform will launch in China in this new year, giving Nokia a more serious challenger to popular iPhone and Android devices than it can muster with its aged Symbian mobile OS. To that end, there are rumors that Microsoft is prepping some retail channels for WP7 distribution, and that Nokia is adapting the WP7-powered Lumia 800 for sale in China later this year.
We’re not sure how much Eichelmann is getting paid in this new job, but the Nokia man sure has one of the toughest jobs in tech in the region.
[Source: Techweb - article in Chinese]