A mobile phone manufacturer’s smartphone strategy is important to the success of their mobile phone departments, and one only need to look ate both the CEO of LG and CEO of Nokia who recently departed their positions due to concerns over the weaknesses is smartphones.

Both Nokia and LG on paper aren’t fairing too badly with LG as the number 3 handset vendor while Nokia remains at the top slot. However according to an article over on Mobile Business Briefing by Matt Ablott, both Nokia and LG are deemed to have missed out in terms of the smartphone.

Nokia has in recent year tried to come up with a smartphone that could battle the Apple iPhone, without success while LG has virtually been no existent when it comes to smartphone strategy.

So can a new CEO actually make any difference? Nokia now has ex-Microsoft Stephen Elop at the helm, and he will have some big decisions to make including if Nokia should stay with the Symbian platform or perhaps move towards a different OS such as Android, although Nokia’s Vanjoki has recently remarked that if Nokia was to adopt Android it would be “like boys who pee their pants for warmth in winter.”

As for LG’s new CEO Koo Bon Joon, his challenge is somewhat more straightforward in as mu7ch as LG has to get more smartphone out into the market as soon as possible. Thus far LG has pinned their smartphone hopes on the Android toting Optimus range and Windows Phone 7 handsets should hit before the year is out.

Changing CEO could well be a good move as shown with Motorola for instance. A year and a half ago Motorola’s mobile division switched their concentration to Android and the Verizon Droid which brought the unit to announce its 1st profit for years and is attributed to appointing the new CEO Sanjay Jha.