What Will The Emerging Nokia Look Like?
A friend of mine’s post got me thinking about what I’m hearing from my friends who, technically, still work for Nokia, though they have no job. They were the people that either were not offered a job at Check Point Software when they bought our business from Nokia or declined to take an offer.
I won’t get into the specifics of what I’ve heard, but it isn’t good. The double whammy of the global recession and market pressures from Apple and RIM is shaking Nokia to its very core. Nokia is shedding people, reorganizing, and hopefully, trying to get more focused.
While I don’t truly have any inside information, I suspect we’ll see Nokia announce more layoffs over the next several months. We will hear more about how Nokia is refocusing. The company that emerges from this process, which I suspect will take a couple of years or more, will be very different than the one I spent 10 years at. Hopefully leaner, meaner, and hungrier, prepared to properly address triple-threat of RIM, Apple, and the emerging threat of Google via Androio.
What will this company look like? What will this company do? And will it be too late? It all remains to be seen.
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Tags: apple, iphone, nokia Fnord
Comment by Texrat
Thanks for the acknowledgment!
I agree the overhaul is necessary, but I’m not sure it was started correctly. Hopefully that will improve… I just wanted to stay there and be PART OF the transformation. : /
Comment by Stuart
A few years…. won’t be fast enough. There is a technology gap already, there’s an increasing user gap and the core values in “connecting people” need to be reinvented. Apple is about “creative energy”, by contrast Nokia’s passion is much deeper. Their positioning and strategic intent won’t let them go after Apple. However, they are incredibly slow to recognize the shift from telecom to mobile social networks in terms of power. They appear to have even less understanding of the metamediaries that are emerging and the impact of the cloud. Nokia has to think ahead with new people and consider how they change the culture. They should start with a mini team and let them loose on the problem for six months. This is not consultants etc. It is people that understand what “connecting people” really means. So far there is a lot of copycat going on and they will fail at it.
Comment by Texrat
Stuart, there are many people in Nokia who get all that (I was one, so was Dameon, but so were plenty of others in positions of leadership)– the problem has been one of execution, not raw knowledge or awareness.
Nokia just cannot seem to get out of its own way.
Comment by Stuart
Texrat, I agree there are many inside that get elements. The leadership can’t or doesn’t. I don’t really make the distinction between execution and knowledge. Knowledge comes from asking better smarter questions faster. Leadership comes when people execute on the answers. Including the answer… we must move faster. Those answers include setting the benchmarks or hurdles for performance and design. Plus those that question and act learn faster. The problem in my view has to trace to the leadership. Naturally, I am only an outsider and Nokia is / has been a highly successful company. I don’t know if Ovi will be a complete failure. It clearly is off to a poor start. A new playbook will only come from new management and coaches. Current management has plenty of excuses for the moment. I would not invest money in Nokia today. Yet the “connecting people” I remain highly passionate about. On execution they lost me about 2 years ago to the day. Within the year I’d equipped my family with iPhones etc. As a futurist and scenario planner I’d even spoken at Nokia HQ years ago. I know they were exposed to what was possible long ago. It’s looking a lot like a collective failure to me right now.
Comment by Texrat
I certainly can’t argue with your perception. From the inside we could all see why and where the gears were rusted, and we knew what the oil looked like– there were just too many hurdles in between…
Comment by PhoneBoy
The one observation I’ll add is that while there are many people “in charge” at Nokia, nobody is truly calling the shots and tries to please everybody. As a result, Nokia puts out products that often compete with each other and lack a common, unified vision. Each product is a silo in and of itself, not part of a larger ecosystem.
Comment by Texrat
Man, isn’t that the truth! And OPK supports the “strategy”. He defended it at a Dallas visit last year.
Comment by PhoneBoy
Seems like he’s just repeating the same failed strategy of his predecessors.
Comment by NF
Now that I have been out of Nokia for about six weeks, I am starting to think that Nokia reminds me of DEC. They both got very successful and that success blinded them to move to the next things. DEC was great doing mini-computers and then the VAX. But they never were able to move beyond the VAX to workstations. Nokia was very successful doing digital GSM phones, colors, multiple models, 3G, etc., but has never learned how do really develop software to compete with the likes of Apple and RIM.
Last weeks problems with OVI going live after many years of preparation, isn’t a good sign. The CNET video where they joked about Nokia being surprised how much traffic there was given their almost 40% market share, while amusing, seems to me that they were not really expecting it to be successful. The senior management doesn’t really take this Internet stuff seriously.