The Symbian Foundation announced that Executive Director Lee M. Williams is stepping down, effective immediately. Symbian Foundation CFO Tim Holbrow has been appointed by the Foundation's Board of Directors to take his place.
Before joining the Foundation, Williams led the S60 Software organization in Nokia's Device unit. He was appointed to lead the Foundation in October 2008.
Although the Symbian Foundation is independent from Nokia, changes to the organization still affect the Finnish phone giant.
Nokia proper has had several high-profile leadership changes over the past three months, including the recent departure of Ari Jaaksi, the head of Nokia's MeeGo division. That came just one month after Stephen Elop became Nokia's new CEO and Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's head of mobile solutions, resigned.
Nokia is still trying to balance its investments in Symbian and its new Symbian^3 handsets with its future plans for MeeGo (the merger of Intel's Moblin platform and Nokia's Maemo project). Meanwhile, one of the biggest challenges Nokia continues to face is actually getting its handsets subsidized by U.S. carriers.
During the Symbian^3 device launch, Nokia discussed with North American press its desire to be back in the U.S. marketplace, but had no strategy to actually make it happen. Nokia seemed to think the problem was just getting through the carrier red tape. We think the real challenge will be convincing North American customers that a Nokia device -- whether it runs Symbian^3 or MeeGo -- is a compelling alternative to the Apple iPhone or one of the many Android mobile devices.