The Three Pillars of Nokia Strategy Have All Failed 409
An anonymous reader writes "'When all 3 legs of your 3-legged strategy fail, what do you do? You rush — run run run — to change your total strategy. But what would a madman do?' Ex-Nokia exec Tommi Ahonen's new article has a few suggestions. Is the Nokia board either asleep at the wheel, or incompetent, or in collusion with the incompetent CEO? Ahonen provides an insider's view not just of how Nokia's Windows phone strategy has failed, but how this has spread to other parts of the company's technology. He says the 'Elop Effect' has 'single-handedly destroyed [...] Europe's biggest tech giant.' He raises the question: Why is Nokia's board failing to act? We've discussed Tommi's articles before, where he was correctly predicting Windows Phone's market failure at a point where others were claiming that 'the Lumia line is, in fact, selling quite nicely.'"
How many more? (Score:0, Insightful)
Hatred towards Nokia on Slashdot... Why not failing HTC, patent troll Motorola Mobility (nobody in Europe buys that Chinese crap btw)...
Old proverb (Score:5, Insightful)
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." It's the Occam's Razor of the corporate world. Yes, people get greedy or manipulative, it's true... but that's the exception, not the rule. For the most part, people are just really, really, fucking stupid. Senior management in particular tends to develop problems like target fixation, confirmation bias, and even when everything is in the spiral of death and the alarms are going off, engines on fire, they somehow think they'll be able to pull out of the dive and fix the problem... right up until the part where they crater. They teach this in every management course studies... Have an exit strategy. Know what your breakpoints are and when to bail. And company after company, even big ones, really really big ones, still fail at this, not because of greed, but because of stupidity.
Re:How many more? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
No sir, we are really sorry for Nokia.
If any hate is spewing, is targeted against the ex M$ bigwig Elop which brew this destructive strategy.
Far-well Nokia, once pride of Finland.
You are dead and we are really sorry.
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows Phone 7 is dead. Microsoft declared it dead the exact moment Nokia needed it the most, but nevermind. Nobody in his right mind would buy one right now, even if they liked the platform, with Windows Phone 8 on the horizon. If 8 takes off, *and* Nokia can survive until 8 takes off, they could do fine, albeit as a somewhat smaller company. But when you read TFA, and look at the graphs, and look at the general user community reaction to 8 in general, neither of these things (8 takes off, and Nokia can survive until Windows 8 phones become profitable) seem particularly likely.
Why (from TFA) haven't the board fired Elop? Corruption, perhaps? Payoffs?
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hatred towards Nokia on Slashdot... Why not failing HTC, patent troll Motorola Mobility (nobody in Europe buys that Chinese crap btw)...
I think mentioning HTC is very relevant, ignoring the shear scale on which Nokia has been destroyed by Elop in Months, for the third ecosystem [in reality sixth], to produce Windows Phones. Ironically one of HTC's strategy is to produce Windows phones too next year, and they cheaper than Nokia's offerings for equivalent models.
Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, a link to blog post by Ahonen, with nothing really new.
I agree that execution by Elop has been sub-par. But calling that "SYMBIAN WAS WINNING" is even by wearing Symbian-goggles a very red-rosed opinion of what was going on. Nokia was in huge trouble, it's UI teams competing with each other and handset teams not building on the same platform as noted in in an article [slashdot.org] from yesterday. Symbian as it was was dead. Developers hated it, users disliked it compared to competition and why it did so good up until the end was good quality Nokia hardware.
Ahonen is right on some points, but he seems to totally disagree on that Nokia had to do something, by going on with Symbian without major rework was just not feasible, the whole MeeGo thing was really screwed up with competing package managers, UIs and teamwork with Intel so as a CEO what what would have he done - he doesn't tell. Maybe MeeGo strategy would have proved to be success.
I don't want to resort to ad-hominems but in case of Ahonen I would take his comments with a grain of salt - he clearly has an axe to grind with Nokia and the postings he has made and appearances on interviews smell like bitterness. And they always boil to one point: Profits before elop and profits after Elop.
At least wait until the 920 is released (Score:3, Insightful)
Neither Windows phone 8 or the Lumina 920 have been released and we have people already yelling "rrruuunnn!!!"
There is a fine line between working vigorously to save a sinking ship and trying to work the pumps and hand bailer after it is too late. You need equal quantities of balls and intelligence to make the correct decision.
What TFA is doing is seeing a puddle on the floor and immediately sounding abandon ship and running for the life boats.
There is no low hanging fruit left in business. Sometimes you need to slug it out and take risks because changing strategies every two seconds is not a winning proposition either.
I'm not saying they won't fail or that windows phone is good or bad. I'm only asserting it is too early.
They had an alternative - MeeGo (Score:5, Insightful)
Nokia had an alternative, MeeGo. The trouble was at the time it was already outpaced by iOS and Android, so Nokia thought they probably could not catch up without a lot of rework.
And that's why they chose Windows Phone 7. But, as one of the comments in the article notes, the real problem is that Windows Phone 7 was not really a way to catch up either. It was a temporary solution, to be abandoned by Microsoft to the degree that even fairly powerful Nokia phones running Windows Phone 7 could not be upgraded to WP8.
If that were known (as the comment alleges) then Nokia probably would have been better off putting in an All-Hands effort to make MeeGo compete with other modern smartphone OS's. I'm not sure they would have been in a worse place than where they are now, and then they would be in full control of their own destiny.
But as things stand the fate of Nokia and Microsoft are intertwined (with more risk to Nokia than Microsoft).
Re:Old proverb (Score:5, Insightful)
They teach this in every management course studies... Have an exit strategy.
"Hey, I've got my golden parachute right here, just like you said."
"Oh, I see, you meant an exist strategy that saves the company. Haha, I'm off to apply 'lessons learned' elsewhere, enjoy!"
Re:What you do is... (Score:4, Insightful)
You call Apple, and say "Hey, I hear you have a maps problem. Guess what? We have lots of map data and experience."
Response from Apple: "Sounds good, but we'll rather wait until you're bankrupt and pick up the patents and your map data for cheap."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Look at the alternatives. (Score:5, Insightful)
Android is generic, so they have no edge over Chinese manufacturers.
Nokia makes excellent hardware at a good price. Their gear tends to be much more rugged than Apple's fragile mobile devices.
Your second quote puts paid to your first. Nokia was a hardware company. They made good hardware. They should have jumped into Android with both feet. A proven, reliable, popular operating system, that lets vendors customize it, and would have let them concentrate on their strengths - hardware.
Re:Not like Nokia's other phones were selling (Score:5, Insightful)
the iphone stole 14% of mobile PROFITS a year after it was first released. and that was only 1 million units sold.
almost all of those cheapo phones sold around the world make no money. all the profits are made on a few devices.
apple is now at something like 60% of PROFITS of all cell phones sold around the world. Samsung is 30% or more. everyone else is fighting for scraps
iPhone never stole anything! Apple make massive mark-ups to their products and have people prepared to pay for it. Most people aren't which is why Androids market share is 4 times that of Apples...and Apples is dropping. Apple does well with early adopters, but now the market is maturing not so much!
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's clear now that Microsoft, as always, used a stopgap solution to make their followup successful. Winphone 7 was never going anywhere and the plan was always for Win8. Nokia fell into the EEE trap and was used to crack into the market to pave the way for Win8. Their carcass may still prove useful to MS down the road with their patents and such and also as an inroad to European and other world markets. This is yet another brilliant move by MS. I still find it hard to believe that companies partner with them knowing how it usually turns out. I guess the short term benefits are just too tempting. I expect to see Win8 phones from Microsoft. Wonder how that will play with Nokia? I'd say they are helpless.
Suicide by Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they are just another in the long line of suicide-by-Microsoft [groklaw.net] victims
Re:Look at the alternatives. (Score:5, Insightful)
Android is generic, so they have no edge over Chinese manufacturers.
I really don't get why this argument applies against Android but misteriously doesn't apply against Windows Phone. Hello, WP is also a generic, third-party licensed operating system, not a in-house solution. After all, HTC is a Chinese manufacturer and also uses Windows Phone...
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
Symbian was doing well, and I don't think his argument was that it was ultimately a winning strategy to ride Symbian. What he's making a point of is that Elop's "Burning Platforms" memo quickly killed Symbian, which was bringing in money for Nokia. People knew after that that there was no future in Symbian.
I pretty much knew at that point that Nokia was doomed. They pretty much killed everything that made them money, for a weak platform that they wouldn't even have a phone out for almost a year. Even a moron could see that. While things did have to change at Nokia, Elop pretty much destroyed most of the phone division, with little to show for it.
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
The optimism for Windows Phone in the press really does surprise me. Windows Phone 7 was really feature incomplete at launch but people made the excuse that it was their first Version. Ahhh No it was not, Microsoft had been making mobile OSs for a long time and Windows Phone 7 was Major version 7 and used the same kernel as Windows Mobile.
Microsoft has chopped Nokia off at the knees when it announced Windows Phone 8. Not only will it not run on the Nokia Lumia 900 it would not run on any existing Windows Mobile device. At that moment Microsoft was telling everyone to not buy a Windows Phone but wait for the next version and new hardware. Sales probably dropped to as close to zero.
Microsoft and Nokia need to understand that Windows Phone can not be almost as good as IOS and Android, it can not be as good as IOS and Android, it can be a little better than IOS and Android. It has to be much better than IOS and Android. Any new mobile OS that launches will have few apps than IOS and Android so you must be a much better platform than IOS and Android. RIM might get by with good enough because they have a large customer base that trusts them. Microsoft could have gotten by four years ago with Windows Phone 7 when IOS was limited to a few carriers and Android was just getting going. MeeGo could have leveraged the Nokia user base. Palm could have made it because it was at the right place and the right time but had a crippled SDK and not great hardware.
Also Nokia gave up the potential profit center of running the app store and selling media to the devices.
Nokia smelled smoke and jump off the platform and into a cold heartless sea and had to hope for Microsoft to save them. They should have put out the fire.
Re:How many more? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's clear now that Microsoft, as always, used a stopgap solution to make their followup successful. Winphone 7 was never going anywhere and the plan was always for Win8. Nokia fell into the EEE trap and was used to crack into the market to pave the way for Win8. Their carcass may still prove useful to MS down the road with their patents and such and also as an inroad to European and other world markets. This is yet another brilliant move by MS. I still find it hard to believe that companies partner with them knowing how it usually turns out. I guess the short term benefits are just too tempting. I expect to see Win8 phones from Microsoft. Wonder how that will play with Nokia? I'd say they are helpless.
Wow dude. You almost make it look as if Nokia is already bankrupt and is NOT the one finishing the sexiest Windows Phone 8 device (if not the sexiest smartphone overall) to come out in 2012. And Microsoft is already pushing its own Windows Phone 8 devices to compete with Nokia, so it's not just a rumor. But then I go out of the Slashdot bubble and the vision disappears.
Windows Phone 7 was, indeed, a stopgap solution. For Nokia as much as for Microsoft. And it actually made engineering sense to overhaul the hardware platform requirements for Windows Phone 8, because of the depth of the software changes. Legacy hardware, in principle, could have been supported with some extra effort, but my armchair CEO skills are insufficient to give a verdict on how easy would it have been for both companies. The existing Windows Phone users do not have it much worse than the users of Android phones stuck on Gingerbread. Who was the latest refusenik OEM again, Motorola Mobility? Their new owner company, what was it? Must be evil.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Apple gets flack for changing a CONNECTOR after NINE years...
By some, I guess. By many (including me) it gets flack for changing the connector to yet another proprietary connector, when the rest of the world has standardized on micro-USB.
Re:What you do is... (Score:4, Insightful)
If Microsoft wants it that bad, then Apple would be stupid not to bid the price up. They win if they win, and they win if they lose.
Re:Hate targeted at Elop (Score:4, Insightful)
If any hate is spewing, is targeted against the ex M$ bigwig Elop which brew this destructive strategy.
As pointed out above [slashdot.org], it was the board that was already decided at ditching the previous CEO and hiring Elop/MS instead.
Now, as Dilbert [dilbert.com] has pointed out, this was a strategic move of sheer genius, with which MS has realised three very strategic goals:
1. Windows phone introduced in the market,
2. Nokia, the biggest competitor for their own phone hardware sales ambitions has been crushed,
3. Linux as OS for the mobile phone has been disabled.
Luckily, there is still the Jolla [jolla.com] (currently connection time out) initiative with Tizen.
The grand question: How did the Nokia board get played up so much by Microsoft?
Re:How many more? (Score:3, Insightful)
Elop did the exact same thing when he effectively announced that Symbian was dead nine months before they had a Windows Phone on the market. So that's nine months without a product to sell during the transition to Windows Phone 7 and another six months with no product during the transition to Windows Phone 8.
At this point I'm expecting a Windows Phone 9 announcement the week after Windows Phone 8 launches.
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see as hatred, but rather as pity for a once great company crumbling down right before our eyes because of wrong decisions. If there is any hatred, it's for Elop.
Re:I'm not much of a Nokia Fan (Score:4, Insightful)
Google is either lying when they 1.3 million phones are activated per day, or Android is such a piece of shit operating system that you have to activate it continuos over and over again to get it to work.
In 2011 there were a total of 491.4 million smart phones sold [email-mark...eports.com]. 491.4/365 is ~1.3 million. As we all know not every one of those phones is an android phone.
Fun chart plotting Androids activation a day.
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-android-activations-per-day-2012-9 [businessinsider.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How many more? (Score:3, Insightful)