Nokia's Burning Ship Strategy | Hacker News Reader

Nokia's Burning Ship Strategy

asymco.com

15 pointsstrandev4 comments

I don't think this piece has taken into account the fact that Nokia isn't jumping onto the "ice cold" Windows Phone right now, but a software iteration downstream.

It looks to me as though Elop has taken the decision that the best chance Nokia has to leverage the assets it has created in its own historic portfolio is through a credible platform it can (at least partly) steer.

The multi-platform guys haven't gone all out for WP7 - why would they? And operators have been tentative. Nokia's arrival in this space is huge for the platform, and huge for mobile network operators all over the planet.

But what's also huge is the risk. Apple's doing OK, but Android is snowballing. 2012 is very, very late to get in to the smartphone 2.0 party.

It's not "very, very late" when you consider that only 1 in 4 American's own a smartphone [1]. The 75% that still own dumbphones are the majority & laggard adopters, who likely make cellphone purchasing decisions in store. The Nokia brand still engenders some goodwill and WP7 is reputably a decent platform. Never mind that Nokia has overwhelming market share in Asia, Africa and South America [2].

[1] http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2010/09/u-smartphone-penetra... [2] http://www.muniwireless.com/2011/02/14/apple-dominates-eu-an...

The eye-opener to me, visiting Mobile World Congress, was that it's fully plausible that smartphones can hit 80% of developed world phone shipments in 2-3 years.

I'd have laughed in anyone's face who'd suggested that a year ago. But the economics of volume have kicked in big time, and the marginal production cost difference has shrunk while the cost and risk of designing the next featurephone keeps going up.

2011 is volume build year. Nobody expects that Apple can retain its market share. Android needs to be smoothed out a lot, but with the breadth and depth of OEM commitment that will happen this year.

Nokia is banking on the cellphone industry moving slowly as it tends to do. Consumers may move faster.

Maybe a "dumb-smartphone" could be a big win in the American market. Create something that makes the non-savvy user feel smart, even if it means severely limiting features. Repeat Apple's playbook, but for an even lower level of expertise. Basically, create the SUV of smartphones. WP7 and Microsoft with Nokia are actually very well placed for this.

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