Nokia lost out to Apple Inc and Google Inc in the first wave of smartphone business and is now pinning hopes of a turnaround on Lumia, a new range which uses Microsoft software.
"I am confident that Nokia has the right team, right strategy and now increasingly also the right products on the market to get us through this transition period," Siilasmaa told reporters as he headed into the meeting.
Sales of Nokia's new smartphone range have so far been slow and are yet to compensate for diving sales of previous products. Nokia also lost its position as the largest volume cellphone maker to Samsung Electronics last quarter.
Investors have seen the value of their Nokia holding fall 90 percent in less than five years -- two-thirds of that since its new chief executive Stephen Elop unveiled the company's strategy shift to Microsoft in February 2011.
"The situation of Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks is close to catastrophic," shareholder Pekka Jaakkola told the meeting in Helsinki. "Nokia is fighting against time."
Ratings agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor's both recently cut Nokia's credit rating to "junk" status given its bleak outlook.
Investors said they were willing to give Elop and the company more time, but wanted to see signs of a turnaround soon.
"Something needs to happen this year that brings confidence back," said Tomi Lahti, who said he was holding onto the shares because the company was the country's industrial flagship.
"It's more of a sentimental thing I have, it probably has nothing to do with numbers. I have to believe in it since it is this famous Finnish company," he said.
Ari Rikkila, head of Finnish software company Efecte, said he bought Nokia shares a few months ago in hopes Siilasmaa would help the company recover.
"This year the strategy should be implemented. Next year we should be seeing results," he said. (Reuters)
