According to Reuters Nokia’s chairman, Jorma Ollila will be stepping down in 2012 and Nokia is already looking for a new chairman. This will be a huge shift for the company as Jorma Ollila was the man who took Nokia into the cellular handset production sector in the 1990s and built it into the mobile phone giant we all know today.

At the annual shareholder meeting yesterday Ollila said to those gathered that, “it was a tough year, and I expect the year ahead to be a tough one too”. He added to that remark by saying he was prepared to continue on for another full year. He said at the meeting that, “throwing in the towel due to earlier difficulties is not [his] way of doing things.”

Ollila leaving sees the departure of the last of the top managers at Nokia who were part of raising the company from manufacturing TVs and boots to the top of the phone industry in 1990s.

According to John Strand, founder and chief of the Danish firm Strand Consult part of the problem was that under Ollila’s direction Nokia has been slow in the smartphone development area of the cellular phone sector. As well, Strand said, Nokia was not active in the fight with Apple and Google and failed to grab the market successfully in the USA.

Ollila has been with Nokia since 1985, was CEO between 1992 and 2006 and has been chairman since.

According to one shareholder, Matti Virtanen, at the meeting on Tuesday: “If [Stephen] Elop was hired to put out the fire, Ollila is the one who lit it.”

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Reuters story here