Former Nokia boss Jorma Ollila has admitted that the 2011 decision to focus Nokia’s mobile phone production on devices running Microsoft software was a mistake, as it failed to provide the boost that may have helped Nokia challenge industry giants Apple and Android.
”It’s impossible to estimate what would have happened to the company if different decisions had been made at the start of 2011, or at some other time,” Ollila told the daily.
Ollila said that the company’s biggest problem was software knowhow, and that senior management at Nokia had tried to fix it since the 1990s without success.
According to Ollila, Nokia had wanted to focus on high-end smartphones, just as Apple did from 2007, but telecoms operators—the main sales channel for the company—preferred to have a range of cheaper phones to offer their customers.
Ollila, who i now chairs the board of oil company Shell, launches his memoirs on Thursday.
