Let’s review: a) the firm has been blown past by their competition; b) they decide to pin their hopes on Microsoft (another former early default leader within this segment; c) their C.T.O. has just announced that he is going on ‘leave’ {read: there’s a very high-probability that he’s bailing due to his disagreement with point ‘b’} and; d) their C.E.O. goes on the record bashing the mobile phone revolution (e.g., the iPhone).
It is pretty obvious what’s going on here: Nokia got caught flat-footed and while at one-time they did do a brilliant job with marketing their phones (that in retrospect were a result of being an actual innovator once-upon-a-time) the market passed them by. Moreover, as they continued to sell lots of low-end handsets (predominately within developing economies) Apple introduced a smartphone game-changer (that one could argue was there’s for the taking akin to how Apple also introduced an MP3 player that was Sony’s market segment for the taking).
Conversely; upon closer examination, Samsung also got caught flat-footed (due to governmental protection and nationalism within S. Korea) as their smartphone (handsets) were once priced too high to justify buying (in their home market) until the iPhone was finally introduced (after already working successfully in 90 other nations). Yet; the major difference with this company is that they decided to counter this challenge by hitching their fortunes to Google’s Android OS.
Adding RIM to the mix; neither company has an OS – let alone anything really close to being able to compete with what Apple and/or Android-powered handsets offer currently. Leaving RIM aside for the moment; Nokia’s brilliant move was to link their future to Windows?! Name any consumer that’s clamoring for a Windows Phone 7… echoing silence ensues (no offence Redmond but it’s largely the truth…)
Nokia’s fault boils down to hubris; bureaucracy; a silo-mentality therein and the simple fact that they got beat by a more innovative; nimble and able to set the trend that they wanted to set competitor (who as did actually ‘revolutionize’ the market itself).
From Info Sync: http://bit.ly/muVeDI
From the BBC: http://bbc.in/l5322d