How quickly it can all change …
The only constant is change
Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.535 BC – 475 BC)
This truth of this insight must be searing through the consciousness of Nokia’s management …
[Courtesy of AFP / SMH:]
The worlds top mobile phone maker Nokia is standing on a burning platform surrounded by a blazing fire of competition, new company head Stephen Elop said in a dramatic call for radical change.
How times have changed for Nokia …
The Finnish company was once the industry’s top dog, with a 40 per cent share of the mobile device market as recently as second quarter of 2008 but it has been on the slide ever since, falling to 31 per cent in fourth quarter 2010.
According to a leaked memo, Nokia is beset with the following woes:
non-competitive operating system Symbian, a lack of accountability and leadership, painfully slow product delivery, a lack of internal collaboration and a general series of misses
What I found quite profound about this rapid turn-around in fortunes for Nokia is that the competition didn’t come from ‘a better phone’ – it came from a different type of consumer device, the ‘smart phone’ (and the associated ecosystem), which many commentators claim is ‘an inferior phone’.
I remember when I bought my first iPhone (after years of using Nokia and Windows phones) – I was blown away by the intuitive, ease-of-use features – and the market place of applications. It was a completely different device! – one that also happened to make phone calls.
I look forward to seeing how Nokia responds – and other business insights from a company that was once the clear market leader.
Cheers,
Carl
Reference links:
Nokia ‘on a burning platform’: new CEO in leaked memo – smh.com.au, 10 February 2011
