Nokia produce good phones but have been under a lot of pressure recently. Newer, more seemingly innovative companies such as Apple with their iPhone and Google with their Google Android phone system have been taking market share from Nokia.

There is also an interesting debate as to what do you actually use a mobile phone for?

Surely, the answer is to make a phone call? Oh, and you would probably say to send text messages. Oh, and to check your emails. After all, checking emails was the main reason for the huge success of Blackberry phones.

Oliver Gearing’s recent blog entry raised some interesting points about the changing outputs of iPhones and Blackberries. Anyone with a Smartphone will tell you that the phones are moving away from being just a communications device to becoming more of a “mini computer”. Applications or “apps” are the latest thing that people want on their phone.

Apple for example has over 200,000 apps available for download at their iTunes store and it’s estimated that over 3,000,000,000 apps (that’s roughly 2 apps for every single person living in China) have been downloaded for the iPhone.

Anyway, back to Nokia and as I said at the start, it’s been a tough year for them. Over the last 12 months they have made 2 profit warnings and their share price has fallen by 20%.

A couple of weeks ago though there was some news which went down well with the markets and their share price rose by 5% in one day. Was this a new product launch? Was this a new R&D breakthrough?

Supporting the view that it’s not just service companies whose success relies on getting the right calibre of employee, the share price rose as a result of the announcement of a new CEO.

It was announced that Stephen Elop would take over from Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo as the CEO of Nokia and on Tuesday of this week he duly took the reins of Nokia.

Perhaps giving some clues as to the direction that Nokia will be heading, Mr Elop was previously the president of Microsoft’s business division.

His experience in software will no doubt be useful in terms of future apps. After all, surely the phones will become more “mini computers”.

Their soon to be released flagship product the N8 is seen by many to be a genuine contender for a real “iPhone killer”. For that matter it could be a “camera killer” as well with its impressive 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash.

What about Mr Kappasvuo the outgoing CEO?  After 30 years with the company it will be strange for him when he leaves. He’s reportedly picking up a payoff of nearly £4 million though and that will probably help.

If he so desires, he’ll also have plenty of time on his hands to head to the local Apple store to buy the latest iPhone plus as many Apple apps as he likes.