It has been some time since we the telecoms press have had a high-profile executive departure to report on, but here at Total Telecom we're pretty convinced that one is on the way.
After a difficult week for handset maker Nokia, chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo's position now appears to be untenable.
Rumours surrounding OPK's future have been swirling for some time, reaching fever pitch on Tuesday when the Wall Street Journal reported that Nokia is searching for a new top dog and has already lined up a couple of potential candidates, one of whom turned down the role. Naturally Nokia declined to comment, but Gartner vice president Nick Jones told us he felt Kallasvuo has lost the confidence of investors, suggesting that a change of leadership would be a positive move for the vendor.
Nokia needs to find "a European Steve Jobs", Jones advised.
Meanwhile, his colleague at Gartner Carolina Milanesi pointed out to U.K. newspaper the Independent that the markets had reacted favourably to the news that OPK could be on the way out.
"If the Nokia shares go up so much when the market thinks he is going, what will they do if Nokia announces he's staying?" she asked.
But ultimately it was Olli-Pekka himself who convinced us that change is afoot.
A weak second-quarter results announcement from Nokia compounded the pressure on OPK, and comments made by the CEO about his future alongside that results announcement pretty much seals the deal.
"[The speculation] is not good for Nokia and must be brought to an end one way or another," Kallasvuo said in a TV interview on CNBC. The awkward silences and "no comment" answers when pressed further on the likelihood of his staying with the vendor in the long term suggest that OPK could be leaving Nokia sooner rather than later.
It remains to be seen whether Kallasvuo's confidence that the Symbian 3-based N8 device, due to launch this quarter, will be the answer to Nokia's prayers is misplaced.
Although Nokia still makes around a third of all mobile phones sold worldwide, the company's product mix has shifted dangerously (in terms of ASP, at least) towards lower-end and mass-market devices. The company is relying heavily on the N8 to address this problem; the reception the device gets when it finally makes it to market, several months behind schedule, will be critical.
The N8 will be the first in a "family" of Symbian 3 devices, with others to be launched before the end of this year. The vendor is also working on its high-end MeeGo operating system, which is hopes will help it to conquer the U.S. market. But the fact that Nokia is now lagging its smartphone rivals by some margin has already cost it dear, leaving it with a mountain to climb if it is to regain ground.
Nokia's Kallasvuo is not the only telecoms executive to have experienced some discomfort this week.
On Wednesday Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP), which holds a 0.42% stake in Vodafone Group, called for change at the mobile operator's board of directors, revealing that it plans to vote against the re-election of non-executive chairman John Bond and deputy chairman John Buchanan at the company's annual shareholder meeting next week.
Referring to "significant structural and strategic weaknesses" resulting in an underperforming share price, OTPP said "board rejuvenation is a critical step to catalyze a corporate restructuring and a re-examination of Vodafone's long history of poor capital allocation and disastrous M&A."
However, the group will continue to back Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao, who later in the week presided over a strong set of fiscal first-quarter results and confirmed the telco's full-year outlook.
The mobile group reported service revenue growth in the three months to the end of June for the first time in six quarters, Colao revealed on Friday.
Data revenue growth boosted Vodafone throughout its footprint and helped drive a turnaround in performance at its German and U.K. operations. Meanwhile an end to aggressive price cuts in India enabled Vodafone Essar to drive growth at the company's Asia-Pacific operations. And Turkey also reported impressive growth, although this was tempered by weaknesses elsewhere in central Europe.
Not everyone managed to match Vodafone's solid quarterly numbers this week.
Ericsson saw its shares plummet on Friday after its second-quarter net profit missed expectations and component shortages hit its sales figures. The Swedish vendor's 1.88 billion kronor net profit was some way off the 2.73 billion kronor figure the market had expected.
The same day, Japan's KDDI posted a decline of close to 17% in fiscal first quarter profit as costs increased, while Mexico-based America Movil reported a 17.9% profit drop, largely due to forex gains in the year-ago quarter. And Verizon Communications of the U.S. swung to a Q2 loss due to charges related to the sale of assets and job cuts, but the telco's mobile unit, a joint venture with Vodafone, had a strong quarter, boosted by the popularity of Droid smartphones.
Pan-European business services provider Colt Telecom saw its profit for the first half of the year fall, but expressed confidence for 2H. And India's Idea Cellular reported a drop of more than 32% in first-quarter net profit, its numbers hit by the cost of the debt it racked up in order to acquire 3G spectrum.
It was not all doom and gloom. Indeed, there were more positive results announcements in the telecoms space this week than there were negative. AT&T, Telenor, Juniper, Qualcomm, Microsoft, and, of course, Apple all unveiled healthy-looking numbers.
