Nokia World Saves The Best Till Last

The last day of the Nokia World show in London was extremely eventful. Normally the halls echo to the sound of displays being dismantled but the show held back some surprises for the end.

News circulated that Peter Skillman, the former head of design at Palm, had been recruited by Nokia. Stephen Elop, the company’s new CEO, arrived ostensibly to present a prize at the show.

First Task: Developing Relationships

Like a sports team in a rebuilding phase, Nokia continues to make incremental moves that can add together to make the team a force to be reckoned with down the road. The recruitment of Elop, Skillman and chief technology officer Rich Green brings much-needed new blood to the company.

Skillman will head up the user experience and services division for MeeGo, the Linux-based open-source mobile operating system project that merges Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo developments into one project.

Though he was not slated to attend, Nokia’s newly named CEO Stephen Elop made an appearance at Nokia World and showed that he has learnt something at Microsoft: developers matter a lot.

Stephen Elop echoed his former Microsoft boss, Steve Ballmer, at the close of the Nokia World conference chanting, “Developers, developers, developers.”

Elop, who is still listed as president of Microsoft’s Business Division, is not slated to take the reins of Nokia until September 21 (with his last day at Microsoft said to be September 20), but he could not resist the temptation of appearing at the annual conference for Nokia users, partners, developers and friends.

Strong developer base

This year, Nokia held its Nokia Developer Summit in conjunction with the Nokia World event, and Elop made an appearance at the closing of the developer summit. He awarded a million-dollar prize to a Kenyan developer during the Calling All Innovators and Venture Challenge Award segment that marks the end of the conference.

“I can’t help but be proud that my first act as CEO-elect of Nokia is to give you a million dollars,” Elop said as he gave the award to John Waibochi from Virtual City, a Kenyan company that focuses on mobile phone products to support small and micro enterprises in emerging markets.

Elop entered the Nokia World venue to enthusiastic applause from the crowd. And developers were clearly his point of focus. “Without you we cannot create the vibrancy and ecosystem we need to be successful and to compete around the world,” he said.

It is important that Elop recognises the importance of having a strong developer base, a lesson Microsoft and Ballmer learned long ago. Elop need only look back at Microsoft’s example of how the software giant built perhaps the strongest industry example of a rapport between a company and its developer base.