Nokia sales head Colin Giles leaves as Lumia 610 ships
updated 09:00 am EDT, Thu April 19, 2012
Nokia sees key exec out as new phone comes in
Nokia saw its dire quarterly results joined by both an executive shift and a key phone launch. The company's executive VP of sales, Colin Giles, will leave as of June 30. The exit gave the company a chance to simplify its structure, as all its regional senior VPs would now talk directly to the executive of Markets, VP Niklas Savander.
Giles was reportedly leaving after "years of travel" made him want to be closer to his family, implying that he had found a new position at local company.
While the personal role may have played a part, it came also as Nokia was having trouble generating sales in its core market of Europe. American Windows Phone sales were doing well, but other areas were struggling. A simpler structure was meant to give executives a better look at how sales were performing in their respective countries.
Simultaneously, Nokia added that the Lumia 610 was on the edge of shipping. The most affordable of Windows Phones would go on sale in the Philippines in the last week of April, with mainland China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam arriving in the weeks afterwards. Their versions will ship both with a flip-to-mute feature unique to Nokia's hardware as well as 3G hotspot creation available by default.
At 189 euros ($247) off-contract, the device is considered a gateway to smartphones. Most of its savings come from using 256MB of RAM instead of the usual 512MB and a lower-clocked Snapdragon processor. It still has a five-megapixel autofocusing rear camera, albeit no front camera.
