It was under Ollila's leadership that Nokia became of the leading mobile phone and telecoms infrastructure companies, completing a transformation from a rubber boots, cabling and electronics conglomerate. In the second half of his period as CEO Nokia pioneered the creation and development of the early smartphone era. A key move was to become one of the founding partners of Symbian Ltd. in June 1998; since then Nokia has shipped more than 300 million Symbian devices.
However in recent years Nokia's smartphones, especially the high end, have faced increasingly fierce competition from RIM's BlackBerry, Apple's iPhone and Google's Android devices. This has led to a decline in Nokia's smartphone market-share and ultimately the lack of competitiveness is a large part of the reason behind the recent announcement of the switch to Windows Phone as Nokia's primary smartphone platform.
The degree to which blame can be attached to Ollia for Nokia's recent troubles is open to debate. While he has been the Chairman of Nokia's Board of Directors, this is a part time position. Nokia's Board of Directors is empowered to regularly evaluate the strategic direction of the company, management policies and the effectiveness with which management implements them. In practise this is an oversight role, rather than a leadership role.
The Nokia CEO and his leadership team (previously the group executive board) is responsible for setting strategy and day to day operations and management of the company. As such, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia's CEO from 2006-2010 and his team are widely seen as bearing the greatest responsibility for Nokia's recent malaise.
Nonetheless the departure of Jorma Ollia will mark an important milestone for Nokia and will draw something of a line under the old guard of Nokia as the major strategic renewal and restructuring takes place under Stephen Elop's leadership.