7 Ways Nokia Can Win Again

Kind of a fluff article, but I'll take the bait.

1. Fragmentation: Given Nokia's "Strong" 44% marketshare, even splitting up the share into three different OS equally would mean 15% each, or about the size of iPhone and Android share. Big enough that developers would target it if there was any interest.

2. Startups: The old throw a bucket a money at the problem to make it go away. Give developers a good business proposition and they will create products. Whether it's direct investment or potential upside based on revenue sharing and mass market doesn't matter.

3. Games: I don't know about the statement that big IP games aren't being created for iPhone. I would dispute that. Nokia had a huge lead in mobile games that they squandered.

4. Make a better store: I think a differentiator would be a curated store and a side loading option. This is a good point

5. Create evangelists: Sorry, but Jobs isn't an evangelist for Apple, John Gruber is. Creating fake evangelists is just a way of saying astroturfing. Evangelists are created for free by offering something compelling to evangelize.

6. Rebuild trust: You can't send out a press release saying you are now developer friendly. It needs to be proven through action.

7. Be more humble: Cause Apple is known for being humble! Developers want to know they can make money, customers want their product to be reliable and fun. Nothing else really matters.

I suggest one way: get rid of Symbian and embrace Android, track it closely making the phones upgradable to the latest possible release they can run (reducing platform fragmentation) and keep launching excellent hardware like Nokia always did. Everybody changes phones every couple years - as long as there are nicer, more capable ones.

Symbian is a dead-end. It runs on smaller, simpler and cheaper phones, but those are not the future.

Obviously nobody in a position to make such decision reads HN, so, this is a pointless exercise. But someone had to say it.