Conor Pierce tells how Nokia is undergoing its biggest change since it ditched rubber boots in favour of mobile phones

THERE IS nothing unusual about an executive expressing confidence in their company’s direction; however when Conor Pierce does so, there is no doubting his sincerity. Pierce, a native of Dublin, is Nokia’s general manager for Britain and Ireland, an appointment made just weeks after the company announced its hugely significant alliance with Microsoft.

As a result he comes to the job at a time when the Finnish phone maker is undergoing its biggest transformation since it ditched rubber boots in favour of mobile phones.

There is no doubt in his mind though that it is on the right track.

“If you have seen what I have seen and used what I have used, it’s amazing, it’s so inspiring,” he says, “especially considering that it’s only a few months since we announced our alliance with Microsoft. I’ve actually held the first working sample [of a Nokia phone running Windows software] and it’s beautiful, it’s stunning.”

Not every Nokia employee echoes his passionate advocacy of the company’s new approach. In Finland in particular, there has been some resistance to the vision of new chief executive Stephen Elop, fuelled to a large degree by fears over the job cuts it will facilitate. There are also those angered by the decision to axe products into which they have put years of hard work.

This is because the core of Elop’s vision is the adoption of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system in favour of the company’s own Symbian and MeeGo platforms.

It is a risky manoeuvre as it makes Nokia hugely dependent on another company’s software for the first time in its history and sees it backing a horse that has come late to the race.

However Pierce looks at the changes in terms of opportunity rather than risk.

“I say to the team that it’s really rare to be a part of something so dramatic, such a turnaround, and it will happen. I am really confident about that. Since Stephen Elop has come in, there’s been a really transparent and shrewd wave of building the consumer into everything we do.”

This consumer focus is a key point for Pierce. He argues that the company must continually strive to create a strong relationship with its customers to identify what they want. Everything else comes as a result of that.

“Don’t think that the consumer is going to understand your language, listen to the language they speak and then help them understand the value we offer,” he says.

“When you go into any big organisation, it’s even more important to remember that. The consumer is at the beginning of the equation and everything falls out of that.”

Pierce says he takes this consumer focus from his past business experience, which, much like Nokia itself, has very very low-tech origins.

His father owned Glenross Hosiery Ltd, a producer of designer socks, and he spent his early years working there. As part of this, Pierce says, he would often buy products from the factory himself, taking them to a stall in the Blackrock market to sell on.

He later sold insurance, which he cites as one of his biggest learning experiences as it proved to him the value of trust and good communication with customers.

In college, he studied commerce in UCD and later an took international marketing master’s in the college’s Smurfit Business School, after which he started a six-year stint at Ericsson.

He has worked for Nokia since 2004 and during that time has been general manager in Ireland, Turkey and most recently Britain and Ireland. That is a lot of change to endure in a relatively short period of time but it is no less than what his employer has experienced.

Since the arrival of the iPhone and Google’s Android operating system in 2007, Nokia has gone from dominant player to playing catch-up, with global market-share haemorrhaging along the way.

However Pierce is keen to talk up the company’s strengths, of which he says there are still many.

“We have a really unrivalled emotional connection with the customer because in most cases it was their first mobile experience,” he says, “and they really enjoyed the simplicity, the quality, the trust and the variety and that is a really strong competitive advantage.

“When I talk to our partners, they are really supportive of the aim of rebuilding a strong Nokia too; they want us to bring this third eco-system to market.”

He also points out the company’s strength outside of the smartphone sphere, an often overlooked but still hugely profitable piece of the mobile market. This is as true in the western world as it is in emerging markets.

“Everyone seems to breathe and think smartphones but over half of the UK market is non-smartphones and we’re in a very strong position there,” he says.

However it is clear that getting smartphones right will be critical to Nokia’s survival in the long term. Pierce has set himself the goal of seeing the company return to leadership in this area.

“That’s a big challenge but that’s what I expect of myself and that’s what I expect of my team,” he said.

When asked for a timeframe on this goal he is hesitant , “but I’m not very patient,” he adds. “I expect it to happen before you expect it to happen.”