Elop Fights Nokia Traditions in Race to Ship Microsoft Phone

A post from bloomberg.com by has the whole story. Here is a part:

Speeding up Nokia’s product development is at the top of Chief Executive Stephen Elop’s agenda as he tries to meld the Finnish company’s handsets with Microsoft Corp. software to narrow the widening gap to Apple and Google Inc. Photographer: Henrik Kettunen/Bloomberg

Every summer for the last four years while Apple Inc. (AAPL)shipped a new iPhone, Nokia Oyj (NOK1V) managers vacationed at their lake cottages in Finland.

“In mid-July, Nokia House is a ghost town,” said Adam Greenfield, managing director of Urbanscale, a design consulting firm in New York, who worked for Nokia from 2008 to 2010. “If you need a decision and the key person’s at the summer cottage? Forget it. You’ll resolve that issue in September. It’s something that hampers their agility.”

Speeding up Nokia’s product development is at the top of Chief Executive Stephen Elop’s agenda as he tries to meld the Finnish company’s handsets withMicrosoft Corp. (MSFT) software to narrow the widening gap to Apple and Google Inc. (GOOG)Nokia has delayed most of its top-end smartphones in the last two years, resulting in sliding profit and market-share losses. Its shares have dropped 25 percent since the Microsoft deal was announced.

Elop, a former Microsoft executive brought in as CEO in September to turn the company around, is relinquishing Nokia’s homegrown platforms Symbian and MeeGo for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7. Nokia may provide a peek at its first Windows phone this year, though it’s promising volume shipments only in 2012.

“It’s risky even to wait that long,” said Rob Sanfilippo, a consultant with Kirkland, Washington-based consulting firm Directions on Microsoft. “It would be great if they had them out by the middle of the year, June or summer, even if it’s one device to show that there’s real progress happening quickly.”