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Henry Tirri appointed CTO of Nokia, permanently replacing Rich Green
Not much of a surprise here, but today it finally becomes official: Henry Tirri has been appointed CTO of Nokia, nearly four months after assuming the position on a temporary basis. Tirri, who joined the company in 2004 and previously served as head of its research center, will permanently replace former CTO Rich Green, who took an indefinite leave of absence from Espoo back in June, citing "personal reasons." At the time, some local media outlets reported that Green's absence would be permanent, due to disagreements over CEO Stephen Elop's smartphone OS strategy. Reportedly a one-time Meego advocate, Green will now return to the US to "pursue new opportunities" and, as of today, is no longer a member of the Nokia Leadership Team. Tirri, meanwhile, will be responsible for designing "Nokia's technology agenda both now and in the future, and driving core innovation to enable business development opportunities." We'll have to wait and see where that path leads, but you can find more details about the appointment in the full press release, after the break.
Rich Green, Nokia CTO, takes leave of absence for 'personal reasons'
Rich Green's only been with Nokia since 2010, making his way onto the leadership team in February when the Elopcalypse rolled through Espoo. As CTO, the former VP of Sun Microsystems is charged with defining Nokia's technology vision; be it hardware, software, user experience, cloud services, or developer programs. So yeah, he's the guy looking at what's next, what's beyond Windows Phone and S40. Well, we just got official word from Nokia that he's taking a leave of absence for an unspecified duration for "personal reasons." Of course, that could mean anything -- business is always personal, regardless of those empty bromides tossed around whenever something distasteful happens between corporate personalities. The story first broke in the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, citing two independent sources claiming that Green likely won't be returning to the company because of disagreements over strategy. Interesting, don't you think? Update: Reuters says that Henry Tirri, head of Nokia Research Center, will be acting CTO
Nokia ends talk of Symbian^4, adopts HTML5 in Qt framework
Things are turning upside down in Espoo today. Besides, earnings and reported job cuts of some 1,800 employees, Nokia also announced that it'll be streamlining its development strategy to unify environments for Symbian and MeeGo. Nokia's new approach calls for the adoption of Qt, and only Qt, as its application development framework from today onward. Here's what that means for new N8 owners: You can buy a Nokia smartphone confident that any improvements introduced later to the Symbian platform, such as the user interface, can be made available to download on your device as well. No need to wait for Symbian^4 - the improvements we were planning for Symbian^4 will be introduced as and when they become available. In fact, we will no longer be talking about Symbian^3 or Symbian^4 at all – it will be one constantly evolving and constantly improving platform. Sounds like a smart move to us. After all, it's Symbian's UI, and not the OS, that we have the most trouble with -- an issue that Nokia readily concedes. So the faster they can improve it -- even pieces of it in a continuous evolution of the experience -- the better. Nokia also announced support for HTML5 web content and applications for the Symbian and MeeGo platforms in both Qt and the browser. Click through for the press release and to hear Rich Green, Nokia CTO, discuss the new strategy.
