Thursday, June 9, 2011

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