Nokia's MeeGo device chief quits
The VP in charge of Nokia's MeeGo Devices has resigned. Ari Jaaksi confirmed to Finland's Talous Sanomat that he resigned last week. According to a Nokia spokesman his departure does not affect MeeGo's rollout schedule which had called for a first device to be delivered before the end of 2010.
Context & Ripple Effects
Nokia enters October with its platform story in visible churn: a pep-talk Nokia World where executives insisted they were 'not sorry we're not Apple,' executive Anssi Vanjoki ruling out Android on record, new CEO Stephen Elop handed board authority to reshape strategy, and an unconfirmed report that Windows Phone 7 could be added as a second platform. Into that uncertainty, the man running MeeGo hardware — the OS Nokia had positioned as its next-generation answer — walks out.
The resignation lands three weeks after Nokia hired former Palm design VP Peter Skillman as MeeGo user experience chief, meaning the platform's top two product roles were both freshly reshuffled within a single month, with a first device promised before the end of 2010.
First-order effects
- MeeGo Devices loses its VP with weeks left on Nokia's stated commitment to ship a first MeeGo handset before year-end 2010, leaving Skillman's freshly hired UX team without its hardware counterpart.
- Nokia publicly pins the schedule to continuity — a spokesman insists the rollout timetable is untouched — making the Q4 delivery date itself the test of whether the departure was cosmetic or structural.
Second-order effects
- Rival platforms built on the same open-source Linux base — and HP's newly acquired Palm operation, whose alumni Nokia has already recruited from — gain a window to court Nokia's MeeGo bench while its leadership is in flux.
- Intel and carrier partners evaluating MeeGo read executive departures as risk signals; every further shake-up raises the bar Nokia must clear to convince them the end-of-year device is real.
Third-order effects
- With Elop explicitly authorized to change strategy and a Windows Phone 7 addition still unconfirmed, sustained churn atop MeeGo points toward a forced, binary platform decision rather than the multi-OS portfolio Nokia has defended all autumn.
- If third-platform contenders keep bleeding senior product leaders, the smartphone OS market consolidates around ecosystems with self-reinforcing developer pull — leaving Linux-based challengers competing mainly on openness.
The trend: Smartphone operating systems are consolidating around a few ecosystem-backed platforms, and Nokia's revolving MeeGo leadership is one data point in the squeeze on independent third OSes.