Nokia might still be the world’s largest maker of mobile handsets, but the company has struggled to make serious inroads in the burgeoning global smartphone market. Nokia’s valuation has been tumbling and the company has been rolling through high-level executive changeups in an effort to get back into the game—and assure investors it can get back into the game. Now Nokia’s smartphone efforts have suffered another loss: Ari Jaaksi, the head of Nokia’s MeeGo software platform, resigned from the company just ahead of Nokia’s planned launch of its first MeeGo devices later this year.
Jaaski confirmed his resignation to the newpaper Ilta-Sanomat (Finnish); Nokia has also confirmed the resignation to Reuters. Jaaksi said he is leaving Nokia for personal reasons.
Jaaksi’s departure marks the second major executive to leave since Nokia appointed former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop as its new CEO—Nokia’s head of smartphones and services Ansii Vanjoki also resigned after Nokia brought Elop on board.
The open source MeeGo platform is a collaboration with Intel, melding Nokia’s development tools and Maemo technology with Intel mobile technology developed under the name Moblin. Nokia has said it plans to ship the first MeeGo devices by the end of the year.
