"Old Nokia" Leadership

The appointment of Elop removes at a stroke one of the longstanding beefs about Nokia – that the firm was long overdue bringing in fresh blood to replace the old, mainly Finnish, guard that drove the former rubber boots-to-toilet paper conglomerate to cellphone market leadership in 1998.

Board chairman Jorma Ollila and Kallasvuo had worked together since the 1980s, when Nokia started to invest more in the fledgling cellphone business and spin off non-core units like monitors, televisions, car tyres and cables.

Elop's appointment boosts the foreign content among top management. Nokia's board vice chair is Marjorie Scardino from Pearson, while on the firm's executive board there is Venezuelan Alberto Torres and American Mary McDowell.

Failed services push

One of Kallasvuo's top initiatives, Nokia's push into the higher-margin Internet business to make up for falling hardware margins has either stalled or, in some cases, failed completely.

The firm's services cornerstone, its Ovi Web site, has yet to attract the same volume of users as Apple's App store.

Its "share on Ovi" media sharing site, opened to the public in February 2008, was iced in May 2009. Gaming service N-Gage, itself the reincarnation of poor-selling gaming phones first launched in 2003, will be run down this year.

Nokia said this month that its remote file access service Ovi Files would be closed effective Oct 1.

Nokia has not disclosed data on its bundled music service "Comes with Music", which lets users download unlimited music that can be kept after a yearly contract has expired, but has said takeup in Europe has not matched its expectations.

And the firm has yet to reap the benefits from its glitziest push into services, its $8.1 billion purchase of digital map maker Navteq in 2007. In January Nokia said it would offer free navigation on its phones to try to boost sales and prices.

Exposure to the cut-throat telecom gear market

Nokia has long said its exposure to the telecom infrastructure market, first through Nokia Networks and then via its Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) joint venture, gives it better insight into designing phones that work better on networks around the globe.

While this may be true -- Nokia phones usually rank high in terms of voice quality and the firm has a bumper crop of cellular patents -- it has come with a cost.

The market has struggled for years with reduced operator investments and tough competition from China's Huawei and ZTE.

NSN said in July it would buy Motorola's telecom network equipment business for $1.2 billion in an effort to add new customers in markets such as Japan and North America and bolster its position behind market leader Ericsson.