The Nokia story
As I was reading a news story about Nokia recently, I was struck by its tagline-“Connecting People” and I wondered if that outdated tagline doesn’t reflect this company’s shortsightedness resulting in its woes in recent years. Mobile phone users now want plump angry birds flying in the air; they want to check who’s doing what on FB and they’d like to have access to apps that they may necessarily never use but want the comfort of knowing they have that option. “Connecting people” is just not cutting it anymore! Nokia’s troubles gave me an interesting insight on why companies at the top of their game somehow just refuse to acknowledge that maintaining the lead in an ever-changing market is a relentless, grinding endeavor of having fingers on the consumers’ pulse. I know some hard-core Nokia fans who will be quite unhappy reading an obituary-like post about their favorite company but this is just a chronicle of Nokia story after 2002. And unfortunately, it has been a downward trajectory all along.
Turnaround trouble
It seems with a new CEO at its helm, Nokia is set for a turnaround. The Finnish giant has dumped its long time OS Symbian and has tied up with Microsoft for their Windows 7 OS. Nokia is now ready to roll out its new Smartphone with Windows 7 this fall. It has also made a deal with Mosaid-a Canadian patent licensing firm. Read more on patent wars here. As I was feeling just a little better about this company, an August 24 announcement had me perplexed. The company launched 3 new Smartphones using their old OS Symbian with upgrades. Why cling to this OS when clearly, it has not proven to be compatible with the Smartphone segment? Is it a surprise that this company has lost its relevance in today’s Smartphone market? This distraction aside, allow me to say that there are more problems that plague this company that make the picture look dismal.
In North America, Nokia just hasn’t created the buzz. What was the last time you remember seeing a Nokia ad anywhere? Let’s assume this new phone goes on the market and does fairly well. But is there a robust App repository that can support this phone? Compare Nokia’s 50,000 apps to Apple’s 425,000 (June 2011). During my last trip to India, I noticed a kind of respect that consumers have for the Nokia brand. It makes a person feel good owning a Symbian-based Nokia feature phone in markets like these. But how long will it last? As the emerging markets move towards Smartphones, they are attracted to Apple and Android devices- not Nokia. The challenge is also from the low cost manufacturers in the emerging markets. Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei, ZTE, and Lenovo are rapidly chipping away at the market share competing solely on price.
Also, Nokia tying up with Microsoft for Windows 7 makes me wonder, why not go with Android instead? If the company puts all its bets on an outsourced OS, why not go with the most robust and tested OS on the market? I also don’t believe that Nokia’s troubles are due to a lack of innovations. I think it is more because of mismanagement, and absence of single-minded focus on user experience.
We are all human after all
Even in the highly technical field of mobile phones and operating systems, it is wise to remember that users are still human. A lot of times, the success of a product depends not so much on how many cool features it has; it is simply a matter of how the product makes the user “feel”. If Nokia wants to change the game to its advantage, it is no longer enough just “connecting people”. It should be more like “amazing people”.