Nokia is coming under increasing criticism for its partnership with Microsoft, with shareholders looking for the removal of CEO Stephen Elop, and a Finnish union looking for severance pay for workers laid off as a result of the deal. It seems to point to a coming showdown that may rear its ugly head at its annual meeting in July in Helsinki.
The shareholder group calls itself Plan B, and is comprised of nine anonymous "small" shareholders of the company that were also former employees. Among their demands is the firing of Elop, restructuring of the Microsoft deal to limit it to the North American market, and adoption of MeeGo as the company's primary smartphone platform.
MeeGo is an open sourced, linux-based mobile platform that Nokia developed in conjunction with Intel. When the Microsoft deal was announced, MeeGo team head Alberto Torres left Nokia, giving rise to speculation that the Finnish phone maker could be abandoning the project.
Overall, Plan B's demands seem to be akin to a circling of the wagons around Nokia's own efforts in an attempt to bring the company back from the brink. Its popular Symbian mobile OS would also get a lifespan extension of five years, and even its Ovi service platform would be a focus of the group "at a later date," all but killed off by Friday's deal.
In a statement to Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia said it was aware of the group's demands, but had not been contacted. It noted the proposed deal and strategy had the full support of its board of directors, and it was focusing on its execution.
Shareholder troubles are the least of Nokia's worries, however. Finnish trade union Pro slammed its decision to adopt the Windows Phone platform, noting the change would result in the loss of jobs for those who worked on Symbian development. About 5,000 Nokia employees are represented by Pro.
Among its own demands is a hefty 100,000 euro severance to each employee in order to defer costs associated with "reeducation."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
