Things are looking pretty grim for Nokia right now. Nokia boss Stephen Elop has compared the company to an oil-rig, stating that they are on a “burning platform”. He seems to be shocked and disgusted that they have nothing to compare to the iPhone despite the Apple handset launching in 2007.
He also tells staff that..
“Android came on the scene just over two years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.”
He is obviously aware how bad things are with the company and there’s now rumours of a partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, a company that Nokia boss Elop will know well after working for them for many years.
Reading the internal memo is certainly uncomfortable…
“Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It’s also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.
How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?
This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.
Nokia, our platform is burning.”
over the decade Nokia has shown NO INNOVATION in software but just nice cover “express-on” or just hi-resolution camera.
Similarly Pocket PC/ Windows Mobile of MS for a decade.
While Android is now climbing up. Which actually to compare with Windows 7 it is nothing. So Nokia has to introduce the ‘real’ new innovation otherwise leave out.
Nokia at last sees they are left behind. How can a big player in mobile comms take their eye off the ball for so long. Symbian is robust, reliable and flexible for phones but things have moved on and we are not just talking phones. Devices today, well for 6 years maybe, have evolved and are now quite different and Nokia have been left pedaling yesterday’s wares to yesterday’s market. Come on Nokia, if you can do what you did for the mobile phone in general I’m sure if you put your mind to it you can come up with something for today, and for goodness sake choose Android rather than try and do it alone with a new OS.
The problem with Nokia is very simple. They made their name back in the day when phone hardware was king. No one really cared what the software did (I did but I ran WinMob). Today it’s software that controls what phones people buy (iPhone hardware isn’t particularly special) and Nokia still haven’t realised this.
They keep releasing one decent phone after another but with rubbish software, so no one is interested. Aside from people who only want a dumbphone and those don’t make Nokia enough money.
Bradavon is correct in his last paragraph. I would like to see HTC, SE and Moto with some serious competition. More importantly them getting involved with Android could ultimately save them. Just look what its done for Moto. WP7 just isn’t what they need in their crisis.
Bradavon is spot on there. Nokia are a hardware company, and very good at it. Software? Not so much. Until recently they didn’t realise the world had changed.
Even dumbphones are not so dumb anymore, you need decent software nowadays.
Well the first step to solving a problem is realising that you in fact have a problem.
I would be intruiged to see what kind of steps will nokia take in the near future, especially after these ruours floating about. I recently had to use one of their recent “smart phones” and I was dumbstruck on how primitive it looked. It made the whole phone look bad.