Gadgetory

hey guys is black with the verge and i'm joined today by nokia CEO stephen elop so thanks for joining us a larger you have had a whole heap of announcements to make today even though a CES you had some major announcements to make as well you opening up your your portfolio you adding new Asha phones symbian phones are very significantly similar phone and windows phone so tell us about it what is the highlight for you what is I made you I think the biggest highlight for me is that in one year since we launched our new strategy we're showing the fourth Lumia device which is the fourth device with Windows Phone we showed the fifth sixth and seventh Asha device yet and we showed some brilliant innovation in the area photography with the Nokia 808 a symbian device so the highlight for me is not any particular child if you like it's the whole family it's the fact that we've accomplished so much I've heard that from modern low key executives that you love for your children there because they're very different do you love people and that's another thing I had questions prepared in the first question was it's been pretty much exactly one year since you announced your transition to Windows Phone yes I thought that was a clever question and then your entire presentation was all about the one year yes so it's a big milestone for you guys cities and I mean you've said that you've made developments you've pushed forwards and you're working to execute a new strategy but I want to ask you about the downside have there been any setbacks any regrets where you things haven't gone as well as you wish well i think you know during the course of the year it's been very very because changing the strategy is not just about saying it's this ecosystem versus that operating system or whatever it affects people we've had to restructure the company which means some people have lost their jobs we've had to change factory configurations again infecting people and communities we are still in the heart of the transition we have new products new excitement all of that is happening but we're still going through the transition and restructuring of the company so it's a hard time but it's also an exciting time sure I understand well let's talk about the variety of phones that you have at the moment because like I say you have seven extra phones given a lot of diversity for you know developing and emerging markets yes when you have the four windows phones and you still keep in symbian go indefinitely with the 808 would that be the long-term strategy when you still keep a whole bunch of devices for also surprised points and taste something like that yeah I think generally we have a strategy to cover the broad range of price points which is one dimension there's other another dimension related to particular taste for example there are some some opportunities where people want to specialize in photography and things like that so like the 808 we have a specific example of a product for that we also have to think about the different platforms that may be required the Windows Phone platform is great as a smartphone platform but obviously a very very low price points you need something different and that's where we're evolving our series 40 effort with the ash of product line so you look at these different things and say yes with a portfolio of products that make sense at the same time you have to balance it you don't want phone after phone app you want an appropriate number of devices that you can use as broadly as possible in all around the world and you mentioned that with the movie end up in the window with a Windows Phone strategy we just introduced Lumia 610 which is your most affordable when it's gone yet would that maybe kind of way the needs and things like future seemed device kind of obvious but what he also put into the development of Asha when it would it would you keep bringing windows phone down to lower price points and focus on Windows Phone so our intent is to continue to bring windows phone down in place it can still come down quite a bit we believe over time but that being said there's a line if you like with below which something like Windows Phone or other smartphone platforms can't easily going without there being a significant architectural change because when you get to the very lowest price points you're short on memory you're short on processor capacity you may not have a GPU and so forth so those very low price points something else has to happen there today for nokia that's our series 40 line so we anticipate that there's a platform covering the smart for smartphone price points and then something beneath that for the very lowest price points as we go forward what would you say that line is because you know it's 1 89 year old familiar 610 yeah you say can go lower less than 100 year perhaps you know it could be a lot depends on how chipsets memory costs and things of all i don't think it's a firm line and in fact i would think that's probably even a little bit of overlap between the high end of the low end and the low end of the high end if you might be some overlap as well genuine passed out somewhere in the middle yeah yes actually i think when people say mid-ranger thinking higher in price when i'm talking you'll very low down in the price points where these things may overlap sure sure well sticking with Windows Phone discussions with your camera guys and design they've told us that specifically with the 808 and a few of you technology brand-new Boswell megapixel all that craziness everyone's really excited about it later she was a five-year project took a very long time yes yes we spoke to seven Panabaker he said the design of the low key and nine to two years from the first model into came to market these are long developing times do you think they match up to the current fast pace of the mobile market so I think there are different technologies that you know by definition they take a while to develop the fact that the photographic technology in fear of you took five years doesn't mean we do something every five years what we've done is disruptive and redefining the whole photography industry on mobile phones and that's something that we will now iterate on and refine you'll see rapid evolution of other devices on other platforms that take advantage of that I think the pace of change as we've demonstrated we introduced the 800 and the 710 in October the 900 of January the 610 in February it's clear that we've changed the clock speed of Nokia and we intend to continue to do that i'm going to say out of device is another platform so q you can we I was safe to see in Windows Phone is incumbent we've said that Windows Phone is going to have optics in photography as a critical differentiator for it as well so we haven't made any specific product announcements but you know we'll see what happens to be pretty exciting and when you say accelerating the pace there is a noticeable lag in terms of you introduction of brand-new things again like the n9 design first and then it comes to doing an 802 you coming out in symbian first which admittedly has raised a few eyebrows and then potentially coming to Windows Phone I imagine that's a priority for you want to shorten that gap and introduce you to new technologies and innovations and Windows Phone first right yeah I mean we want to very quickly get to the point where we're rapidly iterating on the Lumia products bringing innovation there very quickly this PureView technology it had been developed for years initially on the symbian platform and we felt it was such a big change in that industry for photography that we needed to get it into the market because as we get it into the market we're going to rapidly learn and iterate from all the people who are beginning to use this technology we want to get that learning improve the product and continue to take it forward and I was also wondering in your opinion with regard to Windows Phone it hasn't taken of spectacular rapidly it's growing it hasn't taken us protected rapidly so what would you say is the next step that Windows one really needs to take to become you know to engage users when come I think first of all it is only now that the first real windows phones are in market and those are the Lumia products or no case yes and because we've done our best work for windows phone we've taken our best design or best engineering put it together with the windows phone software and deliver these products so what needs to happen now is we need to make sure that from an advertising and marketing perspective we're getting the message out that in stores all over the world when you walk into a store that the retail sales people are well trained on how to present Windows Phone and Lumia how to differentiate it from the competitors and so forth we have a lot of that type of execution work to do day to day and that will help but also what you should expect to see is successive waves of new versions of Windows Phone of new products from Nokia that really accelerate the pace of innovation because we're really focused on driving that so there's a lot more that will just continue to build and of course we're just in the early stages of getting the product into various countries around the world we have many countries to go with many products there's a lot of build still ahead with the very products we have at the market how are you going to contribute to this because when you form a the announcement of the first we see involved when you said that you had the freedom to customize everything this is including the software but at the moment if you take just the software and you exclude the Nokia exclusive applications which massive but you know that this silo with applications the windows phone software and the interface isn't nokia specific its Windows Phone so can you tell us about how you are you going to slc first of all windows phone is a platform and we have a unique position in the development of that that allows us to add to it make changes or whatever you mentioned the Nokia specific applications that we've done those are actually good examples of where we've added value to the Lumia product where you get free navigation free music the e reading application all of these things included that differentiate our product so we think that's a good first step but what what is important to remember is we joined the windows phone ecosystem when the current version of software was already essentially done so our level of engineering involvement was not high in that first round but it will increase as we go forward so there's more opportunity for us to do those those differentiated elements that being said that doesn't mean we should or would customize everything because if you take for example the base user interface what's called the Metro user interface the live tiles that are actively showing you information we could do something quite different than that but if we went in a different direction with that then what Windows Phone stood for and all of the marketing that will accrue to it both from Windows Phone and for big windows which is adopting the same user interface we would not get the benefit of that so there's certain things yeah we could change but why would we I mean that's sort of the SI can see unless you have something I love it and customers who use it love it as well and so why not build on that but then introduce the differentiation around it so for example I would rather differentiate with say let something like photography or location-based services or other things like that then change in the UI so it looks different than what's being marketed broadly for windows function well you brought it up big windows he also you also said to us previously that you see big potential in tablets can you give us an update the potential is still big but where is nokia with respect to that so we're not making any announcements today about tablets or or what we're doing in that space what i will highlight is that i think Microsoft has clearly stated now how the user interface that's on the Lumia devices that comes with Windows Phone is becoming the user interface across the Microsoft properties PCs tablets Xbox to a certain extent as well as Windows Phone so the amount of value associated with that user experience the amount of familiarity that will develop as hundreds of millions of PCs and tablets going to the marketplace is something that's very advantageous it creates new business opportunities for many companies certainly including nope so presumably you want to see Nokia services-nokia software all across that Microsoft ecosystem including the Xbox in that stuff yeah so for example our location based services that is something that Microsoft is taking advantage of so as you go into a big maps or other of their properties you should expect to see Nokia delivered software and services supporting them because we're taking the lead on the location-based services that's a good example of something were contributing but they leveraged into other properties so the magic pull you back on the topic of making consumers aware about Windows Phone my episodes started to push with a more aggressive new marketing strategy it's called smoke by Windows Phone they're using directly with Android you're smiling you're happy with that I understand it delivers a very powerful message and the powerful message is for all anyone tells you how about you just try and get a facebook photo posted on someone's wall just go ahead and try that yeah and we put two two people one with an android device one with the windows phone and let's see who gets the job done faster let's see who can get there at their news feeds you know look that fast or those types of things and what it quickly shows this is why it's called your smoked smoked by Windows Phone it shows that the quality of the user experience is such that those things that you're trying to do regularly you can accomplish a lot faster with more fidelity using and just to wrap up a quick question we here at mwc in barcelona all of your competition is bringing out a HIPAA clean your clothes as well can you give us your assessment your thoughts about what the other guys are doing yeah it's hard to comment on everything the competition is saying or doing what I will say is that one year later after making our big decisions about strategy I am more confident than ever that we made the right decisions you see just over your shoulder the crowd of people in the Nokia booth looking at the new products whether it's Asha in the lower price tiers the Lumia aquatic ranges that peer review people are seeing that Nokia is really executing well and they're very very interested in what we're doing and to the extent that that represents the ultimate consumer opportunity and very pleased it says it Thank You time thank you